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/ 
 
 NOTES ON IRELAND 
 
 MADE FROM 
 
 PERSONAL OBSERVATION OF 
 
 ITS POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND ECONOMICAL 
 
 CONDITION 
 
 BY 
 
 J. BAKER GREENE, JLL.B. 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR GOLD WIN SMITH 
 
 RErRINTED FROM "THE MOENING POST ' 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SIMPSON LOW, MAESTON, SBAELB, AND ElVINGTON 
 
 CROWN BUILDINGS, i88 FLEET STREET 
 
 1886 
 

 
 It 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Amidst the smoke of the political battlefield it is very 
 difficult to see what is really going on in Ireland. 
 Statements the most contradictory come from sonrcea 
 apparently the most authentic. The account given by 
 an ex-Ohief Secretary of the number and character of 
 the evictions is met by a positive denial on the part of 
 persons who ought to be almost equally well informed. 
 The same is the case with regard to the ability of the 
 farmers to pay their rents, the prevalence of terrorism, 
 the extent of the popular desire for an Irish Parlia- 
 ment, and every subject connected with the condition 
 and disposition of the people. The report of a com- 
 petent, careful, and dispassionate observer, after inves- 
 tigations conducted on the spot, is therefore of the 
 
iv INTRODUCTION-. 
 
 greatest value. That character seemed to me to 
 belong in an eminent degree to Mr. Baker Greene's 
 " Notes on Irelanfl " wlien they appeared in the Morn- 
 ing Post, and I was probahly not alone in expressing 
 the desire that they should he reprinted. By all who 
 are interested in 'the Irish question they will, I feel 
 sure, be found instructive. 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith, 
 Sept. II, 1&86. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 I. 
 
 Dublin. 
 It is ju,sfc eight montlis ago, I was over liere " elec- 
 tioneering." A general election was on tLe point of 
 taking j)lace, and the newly formed Irish Loyal and 
 Patriotic Union was busily engaged in preparing to try 
 conclusions with the so-called Nationalist party at the 
 polls. The immense increase made to the electorate 
 by Mr. Gladstone's Representation of the People Act 
 had given to Mr. Parnell an opportunity of sending to 
 the House of Commons an infinitely stronger Irish 
 party than had ever been seen within its walls since 
 the legislative Union between Great Britain and 
 Ireland was effected in the last year of the last 
 century ; and the leader of the Nationalists was 
 jubilant over what he rightly regarded as his assured 
 success. A National Convention had by judicious 
 manipulation been made the instrument of dictating 
 to the constituencies the particular patriots they should 
 select as " fit and proper persons " to represent them 
 in Parliament, whilst funds supplied from the other 
 side of the Atlantic enabled the said patriots to fulfil 
 
 B 
 
2 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 the prosaic but still costly obligations imposed by 
 returning officers on aspirants for parliamentary 
 honours. But although there was but little doubt of 
 what would be the results at the polls, the new asso- 
 ciation for maintaining the Union between Great 
 Britain and Ireland decided on pursuing to some 
 extent the tactics of their opponents, by supplying a 
 fair amount of powder and shot to enable their 
 champions to fight hopeless battles, the object being 
 to ascertain, if possible, the relative numbers of those 
 who desired to throw the Government of Ireland into 
 the hands of men avowedly hostile to British rule, and 
 those who were not only content to abide by, but 
 who were anxious to entrust their interests to, an 
 Imperial Parliament. In the three provinces of 
 Leinster, Munster, and Oonnaught the Unionist repre- 
 sentatives were without exception beaten, and very 
 badly beaten, at the polls, and those who put them 
 into the field had not even the poor satisfaction of 
 ascertaining approximately the respective numbers of 
 their friends and their foes. The careful organiza- 
 tion of the National League, the terrorism which it 
 inspired, and the vigilance of the Roman Catholic 
 clergy at the polling-booths, rendered it practically 
 impossible for weak-kneed electors to register their 
 votes against the nominees of the Convention ; whilst it 
 must also be admitted that the Loyalists, as they were 
 then termed, either through demoralization, inspired 
 by the certainty of impending defeat or an inability to 
 realize the imminence of the peril which threatened 
 them, did not exert themselves as they ought to have 
 done. 
 
 Now, another general election has taken place, and 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 3 
 
 the relative numbers of the Unionist and the Nation- 
 alist representatives are absolutely nnchanged, but so 
 far as regards the condition of this country and the 
 temper of its inhabitants a very marked alteration has 
 taken place. A good many things have happened 
 since last November, and it is impossible to be in the 
 Irish capital for even a day or two without observing 
 that large numbers of those who last autumn regarded 
 Home Rule in any form as chimerical and mischievous, 
 now treat it as not only within the range of practical 
 politics, but as not possible to be excluded from it. 
 I do not say that Unionists have been converted into 
 Nationalists, or that they have become blind to the 
 perils which would attend the establishment of an 
 Irish Parliament ; but owing to a variety of causes, to 
 which I shall presently refer, they have arrived at the 
 conclusion that some large, though by them undefined, 
 measure of Home Eule has now become indisjiensable 
 to rescue Ireland from the slough of despond into 
 which she has sunk. There are, of course, large 
 numbers who are as strenuously opposed to concessions 
 of any kind as they were last year. I am simply 
 referring to the change of opinion which has taken 
 place with many whom I met last November, and to 
 the views which within the past few days I have heard 
 expressed by commercial men in this city. The pri- 
 mary ground of this change is unquestionably the 
 course pursued by the late Prime Minister in inviting 
 the Imperial Legislature to practically repeal the Act 
 of Union, thereby creating a widespread impression in 
 Ireland that it would be repealed. It is argued, and 
 with great plausibility, even by those who are still 
 Unionists at heart, that if so great a change was 
 
 B 2 
 
4 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 proposed and endorsed by 313 members of the 
 House of Commons, some smaller change recom- 
 mends itself to the majority of 343 members, and 
 therefore that the ^oner such change is effected tJie 
 better. But they are principally impelled to this 
 conclusion by the absolute stagnation of trade and 
 enterprise in the country, which makes itself felt no 
 less severely in the metropolis than in the provinces. 
 The utter impossibility of protracting this existing 
 condition of things, without entailing the absolute 
 ruin of many who now only just keep their heads 
 above water, has convinced the sufferers that something 
 must be done. "It is the uncertainty which is killing 
 us," was the remark made to me to-day by one of the 
 leading tradesmen in Dublin. No one knows what is 
 going to happen, and in this state of insecurity capital 
 is taken out of the country, whilst not a single sixpence 
 comes into it. 
 
 If the general condition of things in the commercial 
 and financial world here is compared with what it was 
 six weeks ago, there is an undoubted improvement. 
 The rejection of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill gave 
 a decided fillip to the value of all securities. This was, 
 of course, to be expected, but the significance of the 
 reaction should not be exaggerated. There is compara- 
 tively little gambling on the Exchange here, and the 
 alterations in the value of securities is not to be ex- 
 plained by the haste of " bears " to close their accounts. 
 But, although there has been a very sensible rise in 
 prices, there is a very material falling off, as compared 
 with those of last year. Let us take, for example, the 
 stock of the Bank of Ireland, which last autumn 
 stood at £330, which fell after the introduction of Mr. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 5 
 
 Gladstone's Bill to £2 5 o, and has now made a recovery 
 to ^265. The depreciation still continnes enormous, 
 and the same remark applies to the debenture stock of 
 the principal Irish railways. The cause of the depre- 
 ciation I have ascertained to be the unwillingness of 
 people — not excluding zealous Nationalists — to keep 
 their money in Irish securities when they can ponvert 
 them, as is mostly the case, into American investments. 
 As regards the Bank of Ireland, it is notorious that 
 the Nationalist leaders regard that institution with 
 feelings of great hostility, and it is apprehended, not 
 without reason, that any govemmsnt similar to that 
 which Mr. Gladstone proposed to establish in this 
 country would transfer the Government accounts to 
 other banks. It is also considered extremely probable 
 that the Irish Government, if established, would im- 
 pose a heavy tax on railway stock, and this naturally 
 accounts for the heavy fall which took place in that 
 class of securities. In a word, Mr. Gladstone's scheme 
 threatened such widespread mischief that investments 
 of all kinds came tumbling down, whilst its rejection 
 has gone but a very little way indeed towards restoring 
 the public confidence. The volcano has for the moment 
 ceased to threaten the surrounding country, but the 
 terrified inhabitants, though they have recovered a 
 little of their courage, are evidently apprehensive that 
 it will burst forth again. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 II. 
 
 Dublin. 
 
 The condition of the metropolis of a State may be 
 expected to not inadequately represent the condition 
 of the country itself, and if the soundness of this test 
 be accepted, it certainly would not be necessaiy to make 
 a journey in the provinces in order to be convinced that 
 things are very far from flourishing in Ireland just 
 now. Dublin, according to my ideas, has never been 
 remarkable for its liveliness ; it has always, since the 
 time of my youth, presented the appearance of having 
 seen better days. The evidences of decayed grandeur, 
 and of even respectable mediocrity, in many of its 
 buildings having sunk to squalor and filth, have been 
 always too striking, and it will probably be admitted 
 by its inhabitants that it has not been undeserving of 
 the title which, with a grim humour and " alliteration's 
 artful aid," they themselves have given it of " dear 
 dirty Dublin." But although the imposing residences 
 of the Irish nobility before the Union have long since 
 passed into other hands, and shops have supplanted 
 private houses, there has until recently been nothing 
 to lead the passing visitor to conclude that Dublin was 
 not a thriving, if not absolutely an opulent city. But, 
 I am bound to confess that even within the past year 
 I have noticed a considerable change for the worse, 
 and the result of the inquiries I have made from men 
 well entitled to speak with aiithority convinces me 
 that the impressions made upon me as I strolled 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. . 1 
 
 through the streets have been only too well foimded. 
 When in leading business thoroughfares in such a city 
 as this, numerous houses with their shops are seen 
 closed, and apparently closed for some time, from an 
 apparent imwillingness or inability on the part of 
 tenants with the needful capital to occupy them, it 
 is not necessary to go much further for proofs of very 
 considerable commercial depression. Trade is stag- 
 nant, and the consequences of that stagnancy present 
 themselves upon all sides. Supply and demand coun- 
 terbalance each other, and as the demand has fallen 
 off through the disappearance of those from whom it 
 proceeded, those who maintain their living by supply 
 must necessarily suffer. 
 
 I was speaking to-day to a gentleman who, although 
 not in all respects similar to " the Universal Provider " 
 of Westburnia, has opened various and different places 
 of business in Dublin. He had just returned from a 
 commercial visit to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aber- 
 deen, and he told me that when he saw how thriving 
 business was in these Scotch cities, he could not help 
 telling his friends there that they should come to 
 Dublin if they wanted to form a correct estimate of 
 the Gladstonian policy which they so zealously sup* 
 ported at the late elections. According to this gentle- 
 man's opinion, there would be nothing left for the great 
 mass of those who have embarked in trade in Dublin 
 but to dispose of their property upon any terms they 
 could get, if power was transferred to the Nationalists. 
 He directed my attention to the large number of places 
 of business which were closed, and were likely to re- 
 main empty some time, owing to the sense of insecurity 
 created by the late Prime Minister's policy, and he gave 
 
8 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 me some statistics illustrative of the fall in tHe value 
 of house property in Dublin which were perfectly start- 
 ling. Houses on lease which commanded considerable 
 premiums two or three years ago can now with diffi- 
 culty secure tenants at the mere rent ; and, speaking 
 generally, he declared that he had no hesitation in saying 
 that the value of house property in Dublin had fallen re- 
 cently to the extent of 5 o per cent. He further instanced 
 a number of matters connected with the trade in which 
 he was personally concerned, to show the extent to which 
 it had fallen off within the past twelve months. For 
 example, he supplied several hotels in Dublin and its 
 suburbs with bread, but as the number of consumers 
 has been considerably diminished, some of the hotels 
 have been almost empty. 
 
 On all sides I hear the same story with doleful 
 reiteration. Professional men make the same com- 
 plaint as tradesmen. In the hall of the Four Courts 
 never has there been so little work to be done, and 
 even medical men would seem to suggest that the 
 people have so little of the circulating medium at 
 their disposal that they cannot afford to get ill, or if 
 they do so, they ai-e obliged to trust to the cheaper 
 and, as the cynical might suggest, the more efficacious 
 merits of the vis medicatrix natural. Merrion Square 
 has long been the chosen abode of the more distin- 
 guished of the Dublin physicians and surgeons, and 
 the houses there used to be snapped up at a large 
 premium whenever any became vacant. There are, 
 however, now, and have been for the past two years, 
 several which await tenants, although the terms which 
 the owners are willing to accept have been considerably 
 reduced. A pTiysician to whom I was speaking to-day 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 9 
 
 told me that lie had given ^2500 preniiiim for a very 
 long lease of his house only a few years ago, and he 
 felt confident that it would not now fetch £1000; 
 and he mentioned the case of a former neighbour in 
 the Square who had paid ;^2 5oo premium, and laid 
 out ;£^iooo in improvements, and the lease had since 
 been sold for £ 1 200. Having abundant opportunities 
 of seeing all classes of the community, he declared that 
 in his experience never was poverty more general, or 
 the prospects of still greater poverty more assured. 
 
 The Dublin carmen have always had a reputation 
 for their shrewdness, and happening to hit upon a fair 
 specimen of his class, and a member of what Mr. 
 Gladstone calls the masses— and in this instance the 
 Irish masses might be presumed to be particularly 
 desirous of justice being done to Ireland — I asked him 
 what he thought of the present state of things, and of 
 the means by which the late Prime Minister sought to 
 remedy it. As regards the former it was the old 
 story. He required to make at least 8s. a day to 
 keep himself, his horse, and possibly a family, and 
 some days he did not earn more than 5 s. I inquired 
 the cause of the bad times. " Well, you see," said he, 
 " that the landlords and those who have the money to 
 spend don't come to Dublin. There is not the same 
 demand for ' vay hides ' ; and as for a tenant farmer, 
 why, if he takes one, he pays the smallest possible 
 fare, 6d.^ and it may be five minutes before he fishes 
 that out of a bag, which is tied round with no end of 
 string." "Then," said I, "you don't think it would 
 be a good thing to buy out the landlords and convert 
 the tenant farmers into owners ?" " Sure, it "would 
 be the ruin of the country," he replied ; " they woiild 
 
10 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 not hare any money to spend, the rent would all be 
 paid to the Government, and even if they had any 
 money they would keep it mtich closer than the 
 ' quality.' " I did not venture to ask him for an 
 alternative policy, but it was quite evident that he was 
 utterly disgusted with the latest form in which it 
 has been- suggested that justice should be done to 
 Ireland. 
 
 I cannot say that any extraordinary interest is taken, 
 by either Unionists or Nationahsts in the constitution 
 of the new Ministry. Ireland has been so often made 
 the shuttlecock of party warfare in England, that the 
 feeling of distrust is not disarmed by the accession of 
 a Tory Administration. The fact that Lord Salisbmy 
 does not contemplate taking any decisive step before 
 February is accepted as a proof that his bark is worse 
 than his bite, and that " the twenty years of coercion " 
 will not in any case be commenced for another half- 
 year. On the subject of coercion, I must say that, so 
 far as I have had an opportunity of judging, it would 
 be regarded with disfavour by nearly every one. I am 
 now speaking of legislation specially directed against 
 the Irish, and from whose operation the iGuglish and 
 the Scotch would be excluded. There is a pretty 
 general belief that if the ordinary law were vigorously 
 upheld and administered, there would be no necessity 
 for exceptional legislation, and I may add that it is 
 denied that the ordinary law has been made the most 
 of since the expiration of the Crimes Act, a twelve- 
 month since. Of the manner in which rent is paid I 
 shall have occasion to speak in a subsequent letter ; 
 but a very unmistakable intimation was thrown out 
 at a meeting of the National League a few days since, 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. li 
 
 tliat a coercive poiicy would be ioUowed by a complete 
 suspension of payment of rent. There is, however, 
 an offence for which the ordinary law makes no pro- 
 vision — namely, "boycotting," and in respect to it 
 there is a very general consensus of opinion that if 
 any Government would devise a mode by which this 
 practice could be suppressed, it would be entitled to 
 the gratitude of ninety-nine hundredths of the Iri&h 
 people. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 III. 
 
 COIIK. 
 
 Whatever may be the social or political condition of 
 Ireland just now, it is impossible to make the jonrney 
 .from the capital to this south-west corner of the 
 island without being struck by the beauty of the 
 country, its surpassing verdure, and the evidence it 
 presents on all sides of that amazing fertility for 
 which it has always been famed. So far as Nature is 
 concerned, her bounty is apparently inexhaustible, and 
 one cannot help marvelling at the incomprehensible 
 perversity by which human ingenuity has managed for 
 so many centuries to turn such lavish gifts to so little 
 account. Perhaps it is the English, perhaps it is the 
 Irish themselves, and perhaps it is the principles of 
 political economy, which have rendered Nature 
 powerless to give effect to her good intentions ; but 
 the fact is incontestable, that Ireland as an agricul- 
 tural and a grazing country is not as fruitful as it 
 might be. I saw but few corn-fields on my way down, 
 but that did not surprise me, for it has long become 
 impossible in Ireland — or for that matter, in England 
 ■ — to make money in that direction. But I was 
 astonished at seeing considerable tracts neither con- 
 verted into meadow nor used for grazing purposes. 
 Of sheep I saw only a few very scanty flocks, and the 
 herds of cattle were very small and singularly dispro- 
 portioned to the extent of the fields in which they 
 were turned out. Of course all this land commands 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 13 
 
 a good rent, and it is utilized in some form or another, 
 but it certainly was not made as much of as if it had 
 been transplanted to the English shires. 
 
 Cork was looking its best on Saturday, for it was 
 market-day, and the principal streets were thronged. 
 Contrasted with Dublin, it was much more cheerful 
 and liyely ; there were more signs of business about, 
 and, taking them altogether, the people had a satisfied 
 and contented appearance. My inquiries, however,, 
 led me to conclude that this was more superficial 
 than real, that the condition of trade is rotten ; and 
 some very heavy failures within the past few weeks, 
 not to mention the recent collapse of the Munster 
 Bank, led to confirm that conclusion. The principal 
 trade in the county of Cork is in butter, and it is 
 in connection with that commodity, and the price it 
 commands in the market, that the payment or non- 
 payment of rent virtually depends. Before leaving 
 Dublin I spoke to one or two of the principal agents 
 for the collection of rents in various parts of Ireland, 
 and I was agreeably surprised to hear that on the 
 whole, and putting out of account exceptionally law- 
 less districts, rents are fairly well paid. But in order 
 to secure the payment it is a condition precedent that 
 an abatement of about 1 5 per cent, should be made 
 in the judicial rents which were imposed by virtue of 
 the Land Act of 1 8 8 1 . It may be said that the 
 demand for this abatement is unjust, and so it is on 
 the assumption that the judicial rents which were 
 " fair " five years ago are " fair " now ; but I am 
 bound to say that in the opinion of men who, if any- 
 thing, are biassed in favour of the landlords, it is much 
 more difficult for the tenant farmers to pay the fair 
 
14 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 rents now than it was when they were imposecl by the 
 Land Oonrts. All property has depreciated during 
 the past five years, owing to causes into which it is 
 unnecessary heri to enter, and the. farmers have 
 suffered in common with the rest. So far as I can 
 gather, the demand for 1 5 per cent, abatement is 
 considered not unreasonable, and when it is complied 
 with the rent is paid. But there are many cases, 
 especially in the ranks of the smaller landlords, where 
 the charges they have to meet are proportionally so 
 large that they cannot consent to this abatement with- 
 out seriously trenching on the small margin on which 
 they have to live, and it is in these instances that 
 those unhappy conflicts arise between the landlords 
 and tenants which culminate in writs, evictions, and 
 derelict farms as the result of boycotting. In some 
 of these cases the owner takes his stand upon his 
 strict rights, irrespective of his pecuniary necessities ; 
 in others he is as much to be pitied as the tenant, 
 because he cannot consent to a ruinous diminution of 
 his already slender income, but in both the result is 
 the same — namely, to still further intensify the ill- 
 feeling subsisting between the landlord and tenant 
 classes. 
 
 In this county, as I have already remarked, the 
 production of butter is the chief agricultural industry, 
 and butter has fallen to fivepence and sixpence a 
 pound. The superior qualities of butter still com- 
 mand a good price, but the ordinary butter brought 
 to market by the greater number of the farmers has 
 fallen to this low figure. This is due to the simple 
 fact that they do not possess or cannot supply them- 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 15 
 
 selves with the most modem appliances for produc- 
 ing butter, and that in adopting primitive methods 
 the commodity they turn out is of a very inferior 
 character. Although the product is really butter and 
 is not adulterated, it is not so attractive to the pur- 
 chasers as those singular compounds which, with the 
 aid of oleomargarine, are now sent into the market. 
 A very considerable amount of the butter produced 
 in the counties of Cork and Limerick is of inferior 
 quality, and it necessarily fetches the low price I have 
 mentioned. But with the commodity at this price, it 
 is confessedly impossible for the farmers to pay the 
 rents which they paid only a few years ago, when it 
 commanded tenpence or a shilling a pound, and conse- 
 quently even a much larger share of indulgence than 
 the mere remission of 1 5 per cent, has been extended 
 to them by landlords in a position to do so. 
 
 There are still other causes which operate adversely 
 to the farmers in this county, though of an entirely 
 different kind. Some years since the pernicious 
 habit arose On the part of the banks and the butter 
 merchants of making advances against the butter to 
 be subsequently supplied, and this had the necessary 
 effect of making the farmers anticipate their income 
 and live in a chronic condition of indebtedness. I 
 believe this practice is peculiar to Munster ; it is cer- 
 tainly unknown in Ulster. During the past twelve- 
 month, however, the fall of the Munster Bank, and the 
 increasing depreciation in the value of property, have 
 caused a discontinuance of the system. Neither the 
 banks nor the butter merchants will continue to make 
 the advances, and the farmers are unable to meet the 
 
1 6 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 accruing rent. It was only last week, as I was 
 credibly infomied, that three farmers pledged their 
 batter for the remainder of the year for the money 
 which was necessary to pay the gale of rent already 
 due, and thereby save themselves from the risk of 
 eviction, with the consequent loss of all the rights 
 incidental to their tenancy.. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 17 
 
 IV. 
 
 Bantry. 
 In my last letter I directed attention to some special 
 causes which affected the tenant farmers in this 
 region of Ireland, and particularly as regards the 
 butter industry. With butter at half the price it 
 commanded five or six years ago, and in presence of 
 the hopelessness of competing in th^ English meat 
 markets, the farmers are unquestionably placed in a 
 position which entitles them to considerable indulgence. 
 I am now, of course, dealing simply with matters 
 admitted upon all sides, and placing out of account for 
 the present the uses made by political agitators and 
 National League leaders of the existing depression. 
 But it is necessary to go deeper still in order to 
 explain a condition of things which, irrespective of 
 that depression, is to many incomprehensible. I mean 
 the antagonism which exists between the landlord and 
 tenant classes, and which has made the very name of 
 landlord a term of opprobrium. The owners and the 
 occupiers are both sufferers, but the popular sympathy 
 is all on one side. 
 
 When the Encumbered Estates Act was passed, 
 several years ago, it was expected that the then exist- 
 ing land difficulty would be solved by clearing off the 
 encumbrances, and creating a new race of landlords, 
 with parliamentary titles and every inducement to 
 expend capital. The result, however, was far different 
 from what was anticipated. The law of landlord and 
 
 C 
 
i8 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 tenant Lad tlien been unaffected ; the power of th-e 
 former remained as complete as it was in feudal times, 
 and as soon as the Encumbered Estates Court opened 
 its doors a crowd of speculative purchasers came 
 forward, many of whom had made their money in 
 commercial pursuits — shopkeepers, &c., who knew 
 nothing and cared less about tenant farming — and they 
 bought at as low as seven and ten years' purchase the 
 land that was thrown into the market. At that time, 
 as now, the greater portion of the land was held by 
 yearly tenancy, and the first act of the new purchaser 
 was to make a considerable addition to the rents of 
 his tenants, with the alternative of eviction. The 
 tenants had substantially no alternative but to comply 
 with the demands of their new landlords, and they 
 assented to the terms, though knowing that it would 
 be very difficult, if not impossible, to comply with them. 
 The increased rental thus obtained, and enforced in 
 most cases with unscrupulous rigour, necessarily gave 
 a much higher marketable value to the newly acquired 
 properties than they had when piirchased imder the 
 sanction of the Court, and the new landlords, if they 
 held on, splendidly recouped themselves by the in- 
 creased rents, whilst if they re-sold they did so on the 
 terms of a most profitable speculation. In a word, 
 the Encumbered Estates Act, though conceived with 
 the best intentions and apparently followed by the most 
 satisfactory results, did in effect devote a considerable 
 portion of Ireland to the operation of the most un- 
 scrupulous jobbery. 
 
 It is therefore not difficult to understand how 
 landlordism has become in this country odious to an 
 extent which in England is incomprehensible, although 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. ig 
 
 in the latter tlie position of tKe tenant is by no means 
 so good as it is at present in Ireland. Th,e Land Acts 
 of 1870 and 1 88 1 were passed with the view of 
 correcting the evils to which I have drawn attention, 
 but they have only done so in part, and at best in a 
 very unsatisfactory way. I might cite a number of 
 illustrations in support of the complaints I have heard 
 so frequently expressed on all sides, of the rapacity of 
 many of the new landlords, but one will serve the 
 purpose. I met on Sunday a Eoman Catholic clergy- 
 man on board the steamer going down the river from 
 Cork to Queenstown, and he told me the following 
 story of his own family : — His father was a tenant 
 farmer, with a holding of about 100 acres, near Cork. 
 When he first entered into possession he paid 9s. an 
 acre, but having improved it considerably, the landlord 
 recognized the increased value of the property by 
 raising the rent to 1 6s. This he paid for some years, 
 and the property, which then belonged to an Irish 
 peei", was sold by order of the Landed Estates Court, 
 and was purchased by another Irish peer. The first 
 act of the purchaser was to raise the rent on the 
 estate all round, and to this particular tenant he gave 
 the option of giving up his farm or accepting a lease 
 at the increased rent of 25 s. an acre. He accepted 
 the latter alternative, though he felt that the struggle 
 would be hopeless. For four years he paid the in- 
 creased rent, and then, being unable to meet a half- 
 year's rent, then six months overdue, he was evicted, 
 and the farm, with the improvements which he had 
 made, passed into the landlord's hands. He emigrated 
 to Australia, where he died. Four of his sons were 
 equally obliged to quit the country, and have swelled 
 
 C 2 
 
20 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 the ranks of the enemies of England ; and the fifth — ■' 
 the clergyman to whom I refer — alone remains in 
 Ireland, and is certainly actuated by no kindly feelings 
 to the Imperial Ifegislature which permitted so cruel a 
 wrong to be done. 
 
 This is to a great extent ancient history, and as the 
 Act of 1 88 1 has completely revolutionized the relations 
 between landlord and tenant in Ireland, it may seem 
 irrelevant to deal with matters whose recurrence has 
 become impossible. But it is indispensable to keep the 
 pre-existing state of things in mind, in order not only 
 to understand the feelings with which " landlordism " 
 in the abstract is regarded, and the uses to which they 
 have been turned by those who lead the crusade against 
 the owners of property, but also to measure the practi- 
 cability of schemes for buying out the landlords, and 
 the conversion of the occupiers into owners. Now, 
 so far as I have had an opportunity of forming an 
 opinion in this county, the tenants are prepared to 
 meet the landlords, provided that the latter will 
 recognize their inability to keep their engagements in 
 full, and those who, as I pointed out in a previous 
 letter, are willing or able to do so receive their rents 
 with an abatement of ij to 20 per cent. Btit there 
 are some whose properties are largely encumbered, the 
 rent-roll is considerably shorn of its fair proportions by 
 the first charges to mortgagees, amongst whom, I may 
 remark, some English and Scotch insurance companies 
 hold a prominent place, and practically they have no 
 control whatever over their estates. In these and 
 similar cases the drastic operation of the Landed 
 Estates Court would necessarily seem applicable, but 
 unf or I unately we are met by the veiy formidable and 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 21 
 
 at present insuiinouiitable obstacle, that the freehold 
 of land in Ireland is now practically unsaleable. The 
 right of occupancy is, as I will have occasion to show 
 in a subsequent letter, very valuable indeed, whilst 
 the fee-simple is, for marketable purposes, substantially 
 worthless. This is a very remarkable — indeed, I may 
 say, an astounding — fact, but it is one which is estab- 
 lished every day by the prices which tenancies fetch 
 when sold either by auction or by private contract, 
 and by the total inability of owners or their represen- 
 tatives to sell their property upon any terms that sane 
 men would accept or that the Court would authorize. 
 It is therefore impossible to do anything jiist now 
 with encumbered estates in the way of sale, and if the 
 rent which the tenants are willing to pay, and beyond 
 which they are unable in the present depression to go, 
 is sufficient to give the landlords a siu-plus after meet- 
 ing the charges, so much the worse for the latter. It 
 will no doubt be said that the landlord can enforce 
 his rights by legal process, and that is so. When this 
 is done, the full rent is obtained in those cases when 
 the tenant either has a fund on which he can draw, or 
 is enabled to obtain the assistance of friends. He 
 has the very strongest motives for meeting his engage- 
 ments, because his right of occupancy, or tenant right 
 as it may be termed, is, as I have remarked, veiy 
 valuable indeed, and no sacrifice can be too great to 
 preserve it from forfeiture. In the event of eviction, 
 however, this right perishes, and consequently in those 
 cases in which this extreme measure is resorted to by 
 the landlord, or the receiver, or the agent, and when 
 the tenant is unable to pay the rent which is due, he 
 loses not merely his holding, but the marketable value 
 
23 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 at whicli tliafc holding could be voluntarily transferred 
 by him to somebody else. But if eviction presses 
 hard upon the tenant, it presses no less hardly upon 
 the landlord, who considers himself compelled to 
 enforce his rights. Under the system of boycotting, 
 to which on a subsequent occasion I must refer in 
 detail, a farm from which a tenant has been evicted 
 cannot be let to any one else. Such farms become 
 absolutely derelict, and as valueless as if they were 
 in the midst of the Great Sahara. There are half a 
 dozen farms, some exceeding i oo acres, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the city of Cork, which are in this con- 
 dition. No one is permitted to occupy or to utilize 
 them in any way. If any one is bold enough to 
 make the attempt, he is mercilessly bdycotted, if not 
 made the victim of still more serious outrage. It 
 will be seen, therefore, that the legal rights which the 
 law confers iipon the landlord are divested of their 
 practical value by the novel system which has come 
 into existence within the past few years, and is 
 known by the name of its first victim. In one case 
 of a boycotted farm to which my attention was called, 
 and the facts connected with which were attested by a 
 gentleman in a high official position, the landlord was 
 certainly not entitled to much sympathy. The rent 
 and costs recovered against the tenant amounted to 
 £i\0. Proceedings were then taken for eviction, 
 and £iif was tendered by the tenant, with a promise 
 of a further sum of £a^ the same evening, but refused 
 by the landlord's agent. The tenant was thereupon 
 evicted, but the farm has since remained derelict. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 23 
 
 V. 
 
 Kenmare. 
 
 There are few pleasantei' drives on tHe west coast 
 than that between Bantry and Kenmare, provided the 
 weather be fine, and this very necessary condition I 
 was fortunate enough to secure. The Bay of Bantry 
 is one of the finest roadsteads on this much-indented 
 coast. It stretches more than thirty miles to the head- 
 lands which mark the entrance, and appears to be a 
 favoured resort of the Channel Fleet, a portion of 
 which is at present there. I need not dilate on the 
 scenery, which in beauty is absolutely unrivalled, espe- 
 cially at Glengariff ; but I was specially struck by the 
 extraordinary luxuriance of all species of vegetation, the 
 countlessyarieties of ferns, and the hedgerows of fuchsia, 
 now coming into full bloom. At this time of year 
 tourists are tolerably plentiful in the south-west, but this 
 season they are limited in number, and are almost ex- 
 clusively American, the English element being entirely 
 absent. Many are the questions which have been 
 addressed to me to explain this unusual phenomenon, 
 and I have been compelled, with some hesitation and 
 timidity, to suggest that the impression is general in 
 England, that Ireland is in a somewhat unsettled con- 
 dition, and that outrages of the most serious kind are 
 of somewhat frequent occurrence. This objection is 
 met by the time-honoured accusation that the English 
 newspapers are notorious for their untruthfulness and 
 exaggeration in respect to everything reflecting on 
 
24 NOTES ON IRELAND, 
 
 the law-abiding and peaceful cliaracter of the Irish 
 people ; and secondly, that whatever may be thB 
 differences which arise between the natives, they in 
 no way affect the (Secnrity or the comfort of strangers. 
 The latter is strictly true, and I have no hesitation 
 in saying that if the absence of English visitors from 
 Ireland this season is due to personal apprehensions, 
 they are entirely unfounded, for I am perfectly certain 
 that a stranger would be infinitely safer in the loneliest 
 glen in Kerry than on the Thames Embankment after 
 nightfall. But there are other causes also at work to 
 check the usual immigration of tourists from the 
 other side of St. George's Channel. The late general 
 election, the reassembhng of Parliament in the 
 present month, and the almost universal depression, 
 have had a great deal to do with upsetting many 
 holiday arrangements. Still, however, if there be 
 any individuals who are still hesitating about the 
 direction in which they will bend their steps, I do not 
 think they could do better than pay a visit to a 
 country which has recently engaged so much of their 
 attention, and is likely to continue to do so for some 
 "time to come. 
 
 Speaking for myself, I must say that, after the 
 experience of the last few months in England, it is a 
 great relief to visit a region where nothing is heard 
 about Home Eule. The Dublin people are full of it, 
 for reasons that are very intelligible ; but since I left 
 that city, five days ago, I can coBEcientiously say that, 
 with one exception, no person whom I have met has 
 alluded to the subject directly or indirectly, or seemed 
 to give it a moment's consideration. That exception 
 Avas an old acquaintance, a member of the Munster 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 25 
 
 Circuit, with whom I spent an evening at the Cork 
 City Club, and he declared his conviction that, unless 
 " the inextinguishable spirit of Irish nationality " was 
 duly recognized by the British Government, and some- 
 thing done towards conferring legislative independence 
 on the Irish people, all remedial legislation, however 
 excellent in itself, or however comprehensive, would 
 fail to put an end to disaffection and disloyalty. My 
 learned friend, it will be seen, is a pronounced 
 Nationalist, and he disregarded as chimerical the 
 apprehensions that, if Ireland obtained a Parliament, 
 the majority would abuse their power to the prejudice 
 of the minority. With respect to the scheme for the 
 expropriation of landlords, he contended that if the 
 tenant occupiers were converted into owners they 
 would become Conservative by the natiire of the stake 
 they would have in the country, and that although at 
 first the existing " Nationalist " element would be 
 sti'ong in the new Parliament, it would speedily be 
 eliminated by the numerous Conservative landowners, 
 who would take the places of the equally Conseivative 
 though numerically insignificant landlords, who would 
 be got rid of. Without questioning my friend's 
 sincerity, I could not, however, help feeling that he 
 did not treat the question very dispassionately or 
 regard it in all its bearings. But outside the metro- 
 polis, with its special interests, it does not appear to 
 me that Home Riile ias any attraction for the masses 
 except as a means to the attainment of cei'tain 
 specific ends. It .is the land question in all its bear- 
 ings, including possibly the means of enabling the 
 native producers to compete on more favourable terms 
 with foreigners, which engrosses their attention ; and 
 
26 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 if that could be settled satisfactorily, and they could 
 discover a way of making both ends meet, or possibly 
 overlap, they would not trouble themselves whether 
 their laws were made at Westminster or in College 
 Green. They are Home Eulers now because they 
 despair of obtaining relief from a British Government 
 and a British Legislature ; and with their own Par- 
 liament they think, and perhaps not incorrectly, that 
 they could do what they liked, and what they would 
 wish to do would be to get rid of the landlords and 
 revive a policy of protection. It has frequently and 
 conclusively been objected by those who are in favour 
 of virtually repealing the Act of Union, that there is 
 nothing that an Irish Parliament could do which could 
 not equally be done by the Imperial Parliament. 
 This is indisputable, and it seems to me that, as a 
 separatist policy has been unequivocally condemned 
 by the con.stituencies at the late elections, the vital 
 question for the new Government to determine will 
 be the lengths to which they will go in the same 
 direction as an Irish Parliament would infallibly 
 proceed if it were established under the existing 
 condition of things. A large extension of local self- 
 government, short of the creation of a Legislature, 
 has, I know, a great attraction for many English 
 politicians, and it would unquestionably be followed 
 by beneficial results. But unless accompanied by 
 some very comprehensive legislation on the land 
 question, it would be regarded in Ireland almost uni- 
 versally as a mockery. The recognition of this fact 
 may prevent the commission of some fatal blunders. 
 Even under the most favourable circumstances no 
 extension of what is termed local self-government 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 27 
 
 would meet the aspirations of " Irish Nation- 
 ality." 
 
 I alluded in my last letter to the extraordinary 
 and I believe hitherto unprecedented fact, that in this 
 country the right of occupying land is very much 
 more valuable than the right of ownership, or, to put 
 it in other words, that the privilege of paying rent for 
 land with the occupancy commands a higher price in 
 the market than the right of demanding that rent in 
 consideration of parting with such occupancy. I was 
 at the trouble of collecting some statistics to satisfy 
 myself that this was really the fact, and amongst 
 many I subjoin the following as fairly illustrative of 
 all. In the neighbourhood of Roscrea, in the county 
 of Tipperary, the following sales were recently made 
 by tenants of their interest to others willing to take 
 their places : — 
 
 £ s. cl. £ s. d. 
 
 Yearlji tenancy, rent ..650 sold for 85 o o 
 
 jj )j • • 5 
 
 S 
 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 
 
 
 
 SI i) • • 5 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 77 
 
 
 
 
 
 » » . . 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 85 
 
 
 
 
 
 Judicial lease for 15 years 33 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 362 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 III 
 
 
 
 
 
 In the county of Leitrim the following sales recently 
 were effected in consideration of the transfer from 
 tenant to tenant, the tenancies being from year to 
 year : — 
 
 £ s. d. £ s. d. 
 
 Rent . . . 18 o o sold for 246 o o 
 
 „ ... 16 2 6 „ 250 o o 
 
 ,,••■759 ., 125 o o 
 
 ,,...100 „ 32 10 o 
 
 These are not exceptional rates, but furnish fair 
 
28 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 samples of what is taking place in -all tLe four 
 pi'ovinces of Ireland, and they bring us face to face 
 with the very curious fact, that whilst tenants are 
 admittedly unable to pay their rent in full, they 
 are prepared to give 12, 15, and in one of the above 
 cases 32 years' purchase in order to acquire the 
 obligation to pay it. The cynical will perhaps suggest 
 that they make these purchases because they do not 
 intend to pay the rent, and regarded from this point 
 of view the investments would seem tolerably sound. 
 Such, however, is not the case. The right of 
 occupancy in land in Ireland is just now looked 
 ui^on as carrying with it a not unreasonable expecta- 
 tion of acquiring the fee-simple for nothing at no 
 distant date, and this little fact is worthy of the 
 consideration of those who entertain schemes by 
 which the Irish landlords would be bought out by 
 their tenants upon fair terms. But for precisely the 
 same reasons that tenant right under the Act of 
 I 8 8 1 has acquired a value in' some instances exceed- 
 ing that of the fee-simple a few years since, the latter 
 has diminished in value, and has become practically 
 unsaleable. The landlord cannot command for the 
 fee anything approaching the price which his tenant 
 can easily secure by transferring his right of occupa- 
 tion to somebody else. I am of course putting out 
 of account sales by landlords to tenants under the 
 Land Purchase Act of 1885. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 29 
 
 VI. 
 
 TllALEB. 
 
 Ix my previous letters I have directed attention to the 
 depreciation in the value of property in Ireland, to the 
 low prices which agricultural produce commands, and 
 the necessary difficulties which the farmers encounter 
 in fulfilling their engagements to the landlords ; and, 
 further, to the singular anomaly, that the rights of the 
 tenant are more easily transferable by sale, and 
 command a seemingly higher price in the market than 
 those of the owner. I have now, however, to deal 
 with a very different subject, which I have hitherto 
 refrained from touching until I had the opportunity 
 of obtaining the most exhaustive information from 
 every available source. I refer to the organization 
 which is now known by the name of the National 
 League, to the jurisdiction which it wields, to the 
 nature of its decrees, to the mode of their en- 
 forcement, and to the general effects which its existence 
 and its authority produce upon the social condition of 
 the entire community. The county of Kerry is 
 perhaps an exceptionally favourable region for such 
 inquiries as I have instituted, inasmuch as it has the 
 invidious reputation of having been for some time past 
 the most unsettled and the most lawless in Ireland ; 
 bu.t it is only in degree that the condition of various 
 counties where the National League has taken a firm 
 hold may be said to differ, and what is true of one is 
 true of all. With regard to the sources of my in- 
 
3° NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 formation, I may say that I have consulted gentlemen 
 holding high magisterial positions, district inspectors 
 in the Constabulary, land-owners and land-agents, and, 
 though last, certainly not least, clergymen holding 
 high rank in the Roman Catholic Church, and exer- 
 cising their functions not merely within the limits of 
 their respective parishes, but in much larger areas. 
 On some points it is unnecessary to say that there 
 have been certain diversities of opinion on the j)art of 
 the various gentlemen who have favoured me with 
 their views. Some have been inclined to adopt a more 
 drastic treatment than others, but they all unanimously 
 concurred in declaring that the disorganization and 
 disintegration of society are proceeding at a fearful 
 pace, and that unless something be done, and that very, 
 speedily, to put an end to the terrorism and the 
 intimidation to which all classes, from the highest to 
 the lowest, are exposed, universal bankruptcy must 
 follow, whilst the demoralization of the people will 
 become so complete that it will be scarcely possible to 
 restore that respect for the law which furnishes the 
 foundation of all civilized society. The ediiSce, or such 
 as remains of it, is rapidly crumbling away, and that 
 process will not cease without some active intervention. 
 The National League is now universally conceded 
 to be the mere continuation of the original Land 
 League, which was suppressed when Lord Cowper was 
 Viceroy and Mr. Forster Chief Secretary, It is the 
 same organization, but its title has been partly changed, 
 and I find that over here people are unable to under- 
 stand how it has come to pass that, although the 
 original association was suppressed by a mere pro- 
 clamation of the Lord Lieutenant, and although it was 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 31 
 
 then declared that its revival should not be tolerated 
 under any other name, the present National League 
 has been allowed to take its place. The Land Leagup 
 provoked extinction by its manifesto against the 
 payment of rent, but the National League has vastly 
 improved upon its predecessor by establishing a 
 jurisdiction by which it controls the actions of all who 
 come within the sphere of its influence. It holds 
 through its innumerable branches, which have honey- 
 combed three out of the four Irish provinces, courts 
 which exercise a jurisdiction which its members do 
 not venture for an instant to dispute. These courts 
 are for the most part held on Sundays after Mass. 
 The plaintifis and defendants appear, the merits of 
 the disputes are inquired into, and the cases are duly 
 reported in such local journals as sympathize with the 
 League. These cases arise chiefly out of the exercise 
 of indubitably legal rights by the defendants, but 
 which prejudices, or is alleged to prejudice, the plain- 
 tiffs, and in almost every instance the defendants are 
 ordered to discontiuue the enforcement of their rights, 
 and for the most part they submit to the decree. I 
 might furnish numerous illustrations did space permit, 
 but I take one or two at random from a newspaper 
 lying before me. A widow cited one Daly for having 
 cut some turf on a bog alleged to be hers. It appears 
 he had done so in previous years, but, as was alleged, 
 with her genei-ous permission, owing to his own bog 
 being flooded. Daly had justified his action on the 
 strength of what is stated to have been " some 
 arrangements made with the landlord," and hence the 
 widow's appeal. Daly appeared, and declared his 
 willingness to abide by the decision of the court, and 
 
32 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 he was thereupon directed to have nothing further to 
 do with the place after removing the turf already cut, 
 which the widow was graciously willing to permit. 
 In another case the court passed a resolution that one 
 Mooney, who was present, having declared that he 
 made a mistake in attending an auction and buying a 
 small portion of meadow, and that he was prepared to 
 give it up, the thanks of the court were tendered to 
 him for his manly action, and it was hoped that others 
 " who made similar mistakes " would follow his good 
 example. In another instance a resolution was passed, 
 that, it having come to the notice of the court that 
 " certain meadowing is looked after by certain parties, 
 every honest National Leaguer is called upon to have 
 nothing whatever to do with the said meadowing," 
 owing to the harsh manner in which the owner treated 
 his tenants " in these depressed times." These cases, 
 with others, are reported in a single column of one 
 newspaper. But there are case'fe of a different kind, 
 in which the authority of the League is set at naught 
 or is believed to be disregarded, and then the de- 
 linquent is denounced, and, in a great number of 
 instances, some terrible outrage, of which he is the 
 victim, follows the denunciation so speedily as to 
 make the relation of cause and effect only too palpable. 
 Several of these cases have been mentioned to me as 
 having occurred in this county quite recently, and 
 one of them was in its sequel so singular that I will 
 refer to it. A portion of a bog having been reclaimed, 
 a man named Conway proceeded to cut turf on it, 
 this right being also claimed by others. His conduct 
 was condemned by the local branch of the League, 
 and he was denounced. Ten days afterwards his 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 33 
 
 house was entered at nigiit ; he was dragged forth 
 and shot in the leg. He fortunately survived the 
 injury. The organs of the League disavowed any 
 connection between the denunciation and the outrage, 
 and the crime was condemned in ingenuous and 
 becoming language by the parish priest in his sermon 
 on Sunday, August i. After mass a meeting of the 
 League Court was held under the presidency of the 
 parish priest, at which Conway was present, and 
 declared that he had no intention of disregarding its 
 jurisdiction, and that in what he had done in cutting 
 the turf he did not believe that he was giving the 
 League or any of its members offence, whereupon a 
 resolution was unanimously passed by the Court mag- 
 nanimously " exculpating " the wounded man. I may 
 remark that Conway, when first cited before the local 
 branch of the League a month ago, refused to abandon 
 his rights, denied the authority of the Court, and flung 
 his ticket of membership indignantly on the table. A 
 few days later a rifle bullet through the leg led him 
 to view the matter in a different light ; he made his 
 submission, and was " exculpated." 
 
 Perhaps it will be suggested that he might have 
 avoided this little unpleasantness if he had abstained 
 from joining the National League. But such is the 
 condition to which things have come that it requires 
 no little com-age to refuse to join that association. 
 The leaders regard those who are not with them as 
 being against them, and find adequate means of 
 punishing them. And it is to this point I am par- 
 ticularly anxious of directing attention. The only 
 real authority exercised, at least in the country dis- 
 tricts, is that of the National League ; it has virtually 
 
 D 
 
34 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 superseded that of the Crown, aud it is only conform- 
 able with human nature that those who can be made 
 to feel its power should endeavour to secure its pro- 
 tection. The price they are compelled to pay is the 
 complete abandonment of any legal rights the exercise 
 of .which is condemned by the League, but as they 
 find by bitter experience that the legitimate Govern- 
 ment of the country is unwilling or unable to protect 
 them in the exercise of those rights, they are driven 
 to make what bargain they can with their oppressors. 
 It is a significant fact, and one which cannot be too 
 strongly emphasized, that for a considerable time past 
 the victims of the most diabolical outrages — ^those who 
 have been murdered, those who have been maimed, 
 those whose cattle have been houghed, and whose 
 pi'operty has been maliciously destroyed — have been, 
 with scarcely a solitary exception, tenant farmers and 
 labourers, men who have dared either to rent or to 
 take care of farms from which evictions have been 
 made, or who have disobeyed the " resolutions " and 
 the " recommendations " of the local branches of the 
 League by buying property which the League has 
 been pleased to decree should be unsaleable, or by 
 dealing with or even consorting with those upon whom 
 this association has pronounced a ban of social ex- 
 communication. The popular idea in England, that 
 this is a war against landlords, and that they are the 
 fitting victims of their own rapacity, is one of the 
 greatest errors and delusions. The landlords suffer, 
 as I shall have occasion to point out in my next letter, 
 by the successful methods by which the League leaves 
 them no alternative between accepting such terms as 
 their tenants may be pleased to offer, and seeing their 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 35 
 
 farms, after eviction of the tenants, left derelict and 
 abandoned. But the sufferings of those classes I 
 have mentioned, and the shopkeepers in the country- 
 towns, are more various, more serious, and much more 
 diflBcult of avoidance. They, as I shall have occasion 
 to show, are made the daily victims of circumstances 
 over which they can exercise absolutely no control. 
 Boycotting is an offence the general nature of which 
 has nflw^come familiar to all, but until I made my 
 present visit to Ireland I did not believe it possible 
 that in a coxxntry presumably governed like other 
 civilized States the commonest rights of citizenship 
 could be so generally and so wantonly superseded by 
 an association with which the so-called established 
 Government is either imable or unwilling to inter- 
 fere. With this, which is perhaps the strangest 
 phase of social life in Ireland, I will deal in my next 
 letter. 
 
 d2 
 
36 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 VII. 
 
 TfiALEE. 
 
 In my last commimication I referred to the National 
 League, its organization, and tlie machinery by which 
 it exercises its jurisdiction, and I now propose to deal 
 with one of the most formidable of the penalties 
 which it is enabled to impose, and which in its effects 
 is more far-reaching than I could possibly have sup- 
 posed. Until comparatively recently the war against 
 landlords, their agents, and other persons who have 
 rendered themselves obnoxious, was conducted for the 
 most part with the blunderbuss and the rifle ; but 
 without entirely abandoning the use of these valuable 
 weapons, those who, whether rightly or wrongly, con- 
 sider themselves aggrieved have devised a system of 
 ostracism which, in respect to efficacy, is now brought 
 to the highest degree of perfection, aud possesses the 
 exceptional merit of being practically universal- in iLs 
 application. The new government, which has vir- 
 tually superseded that of the Queen in Ireland, 
 has drawn up a code the observance of which is 
 enforced with a certainty and a rigour which are 
 notably wanting in the administration of the ordinary 
 law. The offender, if not made the victim of more 
 serious outrage, is denied the enjoyment of all the 
 rights which make social existence possible, and, what 
 is still more wonderful, the National League, by the 
 terrorism which it inspires, secures the complete, 
 though possibly the unwilling, co-operation of those 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 37 
 
 who are not affiliated to it, in giving effect to its 
 decrees. Amongst the numerous offences of which it 
 takes cognizance none is more serious or more seyerely 
 punished than attempts to vindicate in a legal manner 
 rights sanctioned or conferred by the ordinary law. 
 The National League is specially jealotis of the juris- 
 diction of the Queen's courts, and I am bound to say 
 that it has now almost entirely superseded it. That 
 a landlord who evicts a tenant who either cannot or 
 will not pay his rent should be boycotted, and that all 
 men should be prohibited from taking possession of 
 this land under pain of being dealt with in a similar 
 manner, is, after all, only a logical corollary from the 
 allegation that rents are exorbitant and that tenants 
 should not be turned out on the roadside because they 
 cannot do impossibilities. But it is not easy to draw 
 a sharp line of limitation when making a breach 
 either in the Commandments or in the laws of the 
 land, and an immunity from paying debts of one kind 
 is strongly calculated to beget a desire to obtain 
 immunity from paying any debts whatever. The 
 shopkeepers are now in the same position as the land- 
 lords, and dare not enforce payment for the supply of 
 goods by the ordinary process of law without incurring 
 the risk of total ruin by a decree of the League for- 
 bidding persons to deal with them. " Were the 
 shopkeepers to press for payment of debts due to 
 them, there is scarcely a tenant whoso stock or hay 
 crops would escape the sheriff's hammer." Such is 
 the language of one of the correspondents of United 
 Ireland in referring to the condition of Tipperary, and 
 whether the insolvency of the tenants be real or 
 assumed, the results to the unfortunate shopkeepers 
 
38 NOTES ON IRELAND, 
 
 are the same. The law for the recoveiy of debts has 
 for them been so long in abeyance that credit has 
 been absolutely annihilated. Here in the south-west 
 of Ireland all sales in the shops are for cash. No 
 tenant farmer, however respectable, can obtain credit ; 
 whilst as for the banks, they do not now make even 
 the most trifling ad^-ances. 
 
 If I were to attempt a definition of " boycotting " 
 I am sure I could not improve upon one which appears 
 on the title-page of a pamphlet recently published by 
 the Cork Defence Union : " It means that a peace- 
 able subject of the Queen is denied food and drink, 
 and that he is ruined in his business ; that his cattle 
 are unsaleable at fairs ; that the smith will not shoe 
 his horse, nor the carpenter mend his cart ; that old 
 friends pass him by on the other side, making the 
 sign of the cross ; that his children are hooted at the 
 village school ; that he sits apart, like an outcast, in 
 his usual place of public worship ; — all for doing 
 nothing but what the law says- he has a perfect right 
 to do." Now, since my arrival in this part of Ireland 
 I have had abundant opportunities of verifying the 
 accuracy of this definition. I have passed scores of 
 farms which have become derelict because no man 
 dare to take possession of them, or cultivate them, or 
 use them for meadowing or for grazing purposes. I 
 have travelled and walked the streets with men and 
 women who night and day are under the special 
 protection of the police, by the side of whose houses 
 huts have been raised for the reception and accommo- 
 dation of the little garrisons whose almost exclusive 
 duty it is to protect those individuals from murder and 
 outrage. On my way to this town I passed the house 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 39 
 
 occupied by the Curtiii family, the members of which 
 cannot to the present day pass through the streets or 
 make their way to the adjoining chapel without being 
 hooted by the village ruflBans, even though accom- 
 panied by constabulary, and all because their father 
 was murdered last November on his own doorstep in 
 defending his house against a party of moonlighters, 
 one of whom was shot dead. And here in this town 
 I have seen a gentlewoman's car and horse standing 
 in the street for hours because the hotel and stable 
 keepers were too terrified to give accommodation, as 
 the owner was under the ban of the League. 
 
 The lady in question lives some seven miles from 
 Tralee, in a region so lonely that she described hei' 
 house as being "four miles from anywhere." I had 
 the good fortune of being introduced to her on the 
 day of my arrival, as she happened to visit the town, 
 and she was good enough to favour me with some of 
 the experiences of one who has now been boycotted 
 for close on five years. Miss Thompson — for I am 
 guilty of no indiscretion in mentioning her name — is* 
 a lady under middle-age, of great vivacity, an ex- 
 tremely attractive manner, and indomitable resolution. 
 She has been at open war with the League since its 
 foundation, and enforces her rights against her ten- 
 ants with the most perfect indifference to its menaces. 
 I am told that, although she has frequently had to 
 threaten her tenants with writs, she has never been 
 compelled to have recourse to eviction, for the simple 
 reason that the vent has always been paid. Part of 
 the property she holds in her own right and part in 
 the quality of trustee for a minor ; but whether dealing 
 with the one or with the other, she is equally firm, 
 
45 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 She had driven into Tralee accompanied by two armed 
 constables, and, as I was precluded from accepting a 
 hospitable invitation to visit her at her house, she 
 favoured me with more than an hour's conversation as 
 we sauntered in the town gardens. 
 
 Miss Thompson has got a garrison of seven con- 
 stabulary stationed at her house, and she takes as 
 much pride in their smartness and is as particular 
 about the way in which they turn out as if she were 
 the German Kaiser himself. Noticing three con- 
 stables following us, I jestingly alluded to her "army," 
 when she told me that only two were in attendance 
 on her, and that the third was easily distinguishable 
 as one of the town constables by the absence of that 
 trimness and smartness which were noticeable in her 
 troops. The conditions under which she habitually 
 lives, moves about her farms, and travels on the 
 public roads may be easily imagined. She is extremely 
 active, passes the greater part of the day out of doors, 
 and is always prepared to frustrate any attempt to 
 carry her house by assault or to circumvent her 
 garrison by a surprise. She thinks nothing of driving 
 for many miles after nightfall through the loneliest 
 districts of this thinly-populated country, relying on 
 the pusillanimity of those who have so frequently 
 threatened her, to abstain from attacking her when 
 accompanied by a couple of her " men-at-arms." In 
 Tralee she has recently excited fresh odium under cir- 
 cumstances to which I am about to refer, and it was 
 her horse and car that I' saw standing in the street 
 because the hotel-keeper, in whose place she had put 
 them up for years, had received a " recommendation '" 
 to discontinue the accommodation, a similar intimation 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. \l 
 
 being sent with the same results to others to whom 
 she might apply. 
 
 A tenant had held some land from Miss Thompson, 
 close to Tralee, on lease, at a rental of £<^ 5 . The lease 
 terminated in March 1885, and the tenant then pro- 
 posed to take the farm at a reduced rental of £60. 
 This offer she declined. He held over until March of 
 the present year, continuing the negotiations for a 
 reduction of rent ; but failing to secure the desired 
 concession, he then surrendered the farm, paying the 
 previous rent for the last year. There was no 
 eviction, but simply a failure to agree upon the basis 
 of a new tenancy. The result was that the farm was 
 boycotted, and Miss Thompson was denied the very 
 commonplace right of having her horse and car put 
 up in livery stables whenever she visited Tralee. 
 Refusing to yield to intimidation, that lady converted 
 the land into meadow, and secured the assistance of 
 men from a different part of the country to cut the 
 grass and make the hay. They, as a matter of course, 
 were boycotted also, but she persevered, and when I 
 saw her she had succeeded in " saving" the hay — that 
 is to say, in having it " cocked " on the farm, though 
 in order to do this she was obliged to make frequent 
 visits to Tralee with her guard of constabulary, in 
 order by personal supervision to see that the work was 
 done. This case is illustrative in its way of the ex- 
 tent to which boycotting is carried, and as showing 
 that the mere repossession of a farm by voluntary 
 surrender, owing to a refusal to reduce the rent by 30 
 per cent., is considered by the National League as 
 meriting the exercise of its extraordinary powers. 
 Nineteen out of twenty in the position of Miss 
 
42 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 Thompson would have succumbed, and either assented 
 to the terms offered to her or allowed the farm to 
 become derelict. But this struggle to vindicate 
 rights, which in any other portion of the United 
 Kingdom would be unquestioned, involves a wear and 
 tear of human energy and endurance, not to say an 
 exhibition of personal courage, which is not conceiv- 
 able save by those who are obliged to sustain it ; and 
 I was certainly not surprised when this heroic lady 
 freely confessed that she had begun to doubt whether 
 the game was worth the candle. It is not very 
 astonishing that the National League reigns prac- 
 tically supreme, and that the bulk of the population 
 submit to a yoke which they are powerless to cast off. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 43 
 
 vm. 
 
 Thuelks. 
 The general condition of things is substantially the 
 same in the various counties in the south-west of Ire- 
 land, and what is true of one is, save in one particular, 
 true of the rest. Kerry is, as I remarked, the 
 scene of more violent outrages than the adjoining 
 counties in Munster, and this is all the more remark- 
 able, as until a few years since it had the credit of 
 being an exceptionally peaceable region. Moonlight- 
 ing is conducted in Kerry on a scale unknown else- 
 where, and not a tithe of the predatory visits made to 
 farmhouses is made public, owing to the unwillingness 
 of the victims to make representations to the authori- 
 ties, thus provoking prosecutions and bringing down on 
 their own heads future punishment either by boycotting 
 or by attempts on life or property. A Koman Catho- 
 lic clergyman of high position, and possessing excep- 
 tional opportunities of obtaining information, assured 
 me that crime was developed in the direct ratio of the 
 multiplication of the branches of the National League. 
 There were eight such branches in Kerry about a year 
 since, whereas there are now fifty, and one of the con- 
 sequences of the increase of crime is the necessity 
 of largely augmenting the numbers of the constabulary 
 in particular districts. Where half-a-dozen constables 
 sufficed a few years since for the preservation of 
 the peace and the protection of property, fifty are 
 now required ; and in Castleisland, which, with the 
 
44 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 surrounding district, has an exceptionally bad name, 
 the previous force of fifteen constables has been 
 increased to 120. Of these, and also of the con- 
 stabulary stationed elsewhere, the greater number are 
 engaged on protection diity, whilst very few indeed 
 are left for patrol work. The consequence is, that the 
 moonlighters have it pretty much their own way, and 
 the constabulary incur an amount of blame which is 
 wholly undeserved. No men have deserved better of 
 the country than the Royal Irish Constabulary by 
 their thorough loyalty and efficiency. But the Govern- 
 ment would do well to recognize the fact that they are 
 now submitted to influences which in the long run 
 must tell to the prejudice of even the best organized 
 and best disciplined men in the world. Their em- 
 ployment on protection duty is particularly harassing 
 and thankless, and although huts are constructed for 
 their accommodation when employed in small bodies, 
 they are, when acting singly or couples, frequently 
 obliged to make shift in cabins that in England would 
 not be considered fit for the temporary accommodation 
 of cattle. But by far the most serious source of de- 
 moralization to which they are exposed is the daily 
 evidence afforded to them of the utter powerlessness 
 of the law they are employed to enforce. When some 
 outrage is committed, and they are sent to the spot, 
 they have generally but little difficulty in ascertaining 
 who are the culjprits, but they are unable to obtain the 
 necessary evidence to justify a prosecution, much less 
 to obtain a conviction. Those who talk glibly about 
 enforcing the ordinary law in Ireland overlook the fact 
 that it cannot be enforced, at least in respect to indict- 
 able offences, and to a great extent in respect to those 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 45 
 
 of a minor class, without the co-operation of the 
 people. Witnesses must give evidence and jurymen 
 must convict, in order that the law may be adminis- 
 tered, and in the south-west of Ireland neither class 
 will do the one nor the other. Police can only be of 
 service in preventing the commission of crime, and in 
 discovering and bringing to justice those who have 
 violated the law. But the Irish constabulary see that 
 they can only discharge the former function when 
 they are engaged in protecting some individual or his 
 premises, and that notwithstanding the moral convic- 
 tion that they can lay their hands on the outrage- 
 mongers, they are unable to secure their punishment, 
 and they are consequently disheartened and demora- 
 lized by the fruitlessness of their most strenuous 
 endeavours to do their duty. At the last Kerry 
 Assizes a prisoner asked Baron Dowse to assign him 
 counsel, and elicited the following reply : " You need 
 have no fear. I know this county well, and the safest 
 place in it is the dock." 
 
 It is a frequent complaint with the Nationalist 
 Party that the increase of police in disturbed districts 
 greatly adds to the pecuniary burdens of the inhabit- 
 ants, while at the same time it is reproachfully added 
 that the constabulary do little or nothing for the extra 
 expenditure. I have just explained the reason why 
 the constabulary, save by the protection they give to 
 those who move about in danger of their lives, are 
 enabled to do but little to prevent or to punish out- 
 rage. But it is an incontrovertible fact that in many 
 of the districts in this region of Ireland the rates and 
 taxes have reached proportions at which, on the other 
 side of St. George's Channel, men would stand aghast. 
 
46 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 The p6or rates in many places exceed four shillings 
 in the pound, and the county cess and local taxes 
 bring the total charge to between eight shillings and 
 nine shillings in the pound. It must be admitted, 
 therefore, that when " hard times " are taken into 
 consideration, the depreciation in the value of agricul- 
 tural produce of all kinds, the friction between the 
 landlords and tenants, the baneful influence of the 
 National League, and the total uncertainty what will 
 be the next move on the political chessboard in Eng- 
 land, all classes in Ireland are compelled to carry on 
 the struggle for existence under very unfavourable 
 conditions. The increase in the poor rates is not due 
 to any abnormal development of pauperism, for, on 
 the contrary, it has of late years notably diminished, 
 but to the recklessness with which the guardians dis- 
 tribute the funds at their disposal. They, like four- 
 fifths of the Irish representatives in the House of 
 Commons, are elected by men of so-called Nationalist 
 sympathies, who, whether willingly or unwillingly, 
 have become connected with the National League, who 
 are actuated by feelings of bitter hostility to the 
 landlord classes, and who have a direct interest in 
 depreciating the value of landed property in order to 
 get rid of the owners on the cheapest possible terms. 
 The guardians accordingly make those who are evicted 
 the special objects of their solicitude, and in the form 
 of outdoor relief £i a week is generally granted to 
 those who have been thus deprived of their holdings, 
 though their previous earnings may have fallen con- 
 siderably short of this amount. When Forster's Act 
 for the imprisonment of suspects was in operation the 
 grass widows of the martyrs were allowed assistance 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 47 
 
 on tKis scale, and a story is told of a liberated suspect 
 being anything but well received by his wife on his 
 return home. He, however, speedily took his leave, 
 intending again to supply cause for his arrest, as 
 he admitted that he was never so well housed or 
 fed as when he was in prison. 
 
 Tipperary several years ago was the most disturbed 
 county in Ireland, and at that time murders and out- 
 rages of the most serious description were of frequent 
 occurrence. It has now improved in this respect, but 
 it has simply changed the machinery. The National 
 League branches are in full opei'ation, and the practice 
 of boycotting is no less tiniversal and effective here 
 than in the other counties I have traversed. As a 
 confirmation of the accuracy of my observation, I will 
 cite a witness who regards the National League with 
 special favour. I mean one of the special correspon- 
 dents of United Ireland : — " The old method," he 
 writes, " which made Tipperary a name of terror, has 
 given place to the passive resistance that neither law 
 nor authority can grapple with. The new system is 
 a thousand times more effective than the blunderbuss, 
 and it has the great advantage of being safe and sin- 
 less." I freely admit that as the law stands it is safe, 
 though opinions would probably differ as to its being 
 sinless, but these are some of the results of the meri- 
 torious practice of boycotting which this gentleman 
 regards as highly satisfactory: — "When a landlord 
 exterminates (evicts ?) a tenant, and gets a Land 
 Corporation emergency man in his place, he passes 
 from the frying-pan into the fire. He is the biter 
 bitten. It is a game of ruin for the landlords of 
 the district. Their estates are returning to primaeval 
 
48 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 w'ildness ; tlie buildings from which the tenants were 
 driven are dilapidated. Fourteen or fifteen hundred 
 acres of land are in the care of emergency men, who 
 have been broi^ht from England and elsewhere at 
 heavy expense. Their average pay is 30s. a week, 
 for which they do as much work as they please. 
 Cattle to be sold must be sent by divers routes and to 
 distant markets." And this, save the mark, is in a 
 county which stands in favourable contrast to Kerry, 
 as quiet and peaceable, which is almost completely 
 free from crime, there having been but one case in 
 the calendar at the recent assizes for the South 
 Riding, a Whiteboy offence, in which there was no 
 conviction. 
 
 On a subsequent occasion, when summing up the 
 evidence which I am now collecting on the present 
 condition of Ireland, I may perhaps be tempted to 
 offer some suggestions as to the manner in which it 
 ought to be dealt with, but for the present I simply 
 desire to place on record facts about which there is 
 no dispute whatever. Whether the practice of boy- 
 cotting be reprehensible, or sinless, as is alleged by 
 the chief organ of the National Party in Ireland, it 
 is incontestable that the effects are most disastrous to 
 all classes. With credit at an end, rates and taxes 
 reaching the figures I have mentioned, the rights of 
 property and also of labour placed in abeyance, 
 personal liberty, comfort, and happiness affected to a 
 degree of which only the victims can form an ade- 
 quate idea, considerable tracts of fertile land tempo- 
 rarily blotted off the surface of the country as if they 
 were so many arid wastes, the value of produce greatly 
 reduced, the administration of justice paralyzed, and 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 49 
 
 the jurisdiction of the established tribunals superseded 
 by that of the numberless branches of the National 
 League, the condition of such portions of Ireland as 
 I have visited within the past fortnight is as terrible, 
 as disheartening, and I had almost said as hopeless, 
 as it is possible for the human mind to imagine as 
 existing in a civilized country. The immediate effects 
 are bad enough, but the not very remote consequences 
 which must inevitably follow will be immeasurably 
 worse. 
 
so NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 IX. 
 
 LONDONDERKY, 
 
 It has been a matter of frequent remark during the 
 discussions to whicli the Irish question has given rise, 
 especially during the past six months, that within this 
 island there are two distinct Irelands, one constituted 
 by the northern province, and the other by the remain- 
 ing three. And this is so to a very considerable degree, 
 but by no means to the extent that is popularly sup- 
 posed. In the first place, in Ulster the population are 
 on the whole much more thrifty, provident, and indus- 
 trious than in the other provinces, possibly because 
 they possess a great deal of the Scotch element; and, 
 in the second, the Protestants have in the towns a 
 marked ascendency. It is impossible to pass from the 
 South to the North without being immediately struck 
 by the prominent part which religion plays here in the 
 consideration of all political questions. It gives to them 
 a distinct local colouring, which is novel if it cannot be 
 correctly described as refreshing. And it must be ob- 
 served that there are particular seasons of the year when 
 what may be termed the religious epidemic rages with 
 peculiar virulence. In July and August it is at its 
 worst, because in these months there happen to fall 
 certain anniversaries which seem to impose upon the 
 extreme or Orange section of the Protestant com- 
 munity the obligation of somewhat offensively flaunting 
 their superiority over their Roman Catholic fellow- 
 countrymen. It is at no time pleasant to be sat upon, 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. St 
 
 and it must be still more unpleasant to be trampled upon, 
 and if a section of tte Ulster Protestants do not actu- 
 ally trample on tlie Koman Catholics, they frequently 
 go considerably out of their way to make them feel that 
 if it were not for their abundant charity thsy would 
 certainly do so. Processions, attended by bands play- 
 ing airs commemorative of victories gained a couple of 
 centuries ago over the Catholic Irish, are not conducive 
 to good-fellowship, especially when the processions take 
 place and the airs are played, as the French say, "with 
 intention." Rival processions, with rival bands playing 
 different airs simultaneously, are organized as a matter 
 of course, and then all the necessary elements for a 
 " scrimmage " are supplied. When I was in Ennis- 
 killen the other evening a demonstration and counter- 
 demonstration of this kind took place in the neighbour- 
 hood, and very serious fears for the peace and security 
 of the town were entertained by the authorities, as it 
 was almost denuded of police owing to the drafting of 
 nearly the entire of the local force to Belfast. -The 
 Orange leaders, however, under these exceptional cir- 
 cumstances, considerately forebore to march the pro- 
 cession through the streets, the small crowds which 
 collected in the main thoroughfare were kept apart, and 
 with the exception of the stabbing of a Roman Catholic 
 in the abdomen by a Protestant, within a hundred yards 
 of my hotel, the rejoicings were brought to a conclusion 
 without auy untoward incident. 
 
 The 1 2 th of August is always a " grand " day in 
 Deny. It is the anniversary of the close of the 
 memorable siege when the army of James II. was com- 
 pelled to retire discomfited from before its walls. The 
 inhabitants have good reason to be proud of the valour 
 
 E 2 
 
S2 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 and endurance of their ancestors, and in the past cen- 
 tury, and even well into the present one, the annual 
 celebration of the raising of the siege was a c3remony 
 in which Protestants and Roman Catholics took an 
 equal and a disinterested part. But the growth of a 
 strong religious antagonism subsequent to, but not 
 directly in consequence of, the Union, together with 
 the foundation of the Orange Society, had the effect 
 of completely altering the character of the customary 
 festivities. That which had been preyiously regarded 
 as the deliverance of an entire community, irrespective 
 of creed, from arbitrary rule, came to be treated as a 
 great step towards the establishment of Protestant 
 supremacy in Ireland, and as year succeeded year this 
 novel feature in the celebration became more accen- 
 tuated. The gallant cry of " No surrender," coming 
 from the garrison and inhabitants of a town reduced 
 to extremities by famine and disease, became prostituted 
 into a sectarian watchword, and is now invariably em- 
 ployed in Ulster to indicate both the moral and the physi- 
 cal superiority of the Protestant over the Catholic popu- 
 lation. A religious service was celebrated on the present 
 occasion in St. Augustine's Church, as the Cathedral is 
 under repairs, and a sermon preached in which a special 
 appeal was made to the congregation not to exhibit 
 apathy in the celebration of an anniversary so inti- 
 mately connected with the vindication of their Pro- 
 testant rights. The usual procession of Orange Lodges 
 and Apprentice Boys then took place around the his- 
 toric walls of Derry, and although by virtue of one of the 
 many Coercion Acts passed by the British Legislature 
 the Protestant zealots were precluded from discharging 
 the artillery with which they provided themselves some 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. S3 
 
 years since, they made a brave show, with their banners 
 flying and their bands playing the peace-inspiring 
 strains of "The Boyne Water" and "Croppies lie 
 down." The monument raised npon the walls to the 
 memory of Walker, Bishop and Governor of Derry 
 during the famous siege, bears an inscription paying a 
 j list tribute to the gallantry of the garrison and towns- 
 people. When, however, it records that the result of 
 the struggle was to confer on " their posterity the bless- 
 ings of civil and religious liberty," the hypercritical 
 may be tempted to point out that for more than a 
 century afterwards " civil and religions liberty " were 
 so extremely one-sided that the lloman Catholics were 
 absolutely denied both the one and the other. I 
 should add that, with the exception of stone-throwing, 
 with the result of a few cut heads, and the employ- 
 ment of an ill-constructed infernal machine consisting 
 of a bottle containing paper and a small quantity of 
 gunpowder with a fuse, which was happily cut before 
 it exploded, the day's proceedings passed off quietly 
 enough. The city was in charge of three resident 
 magistrates, lOO additional police were sent in from 
 the county of Leitrim, whilst the military were repre- 
 sented by detachments from the Black Watch and East 
 Lancashire Eegiments. 
 
 It is, for m.any reasons, to be regretted that the 
 " religions colourirg," which I have already referred 
 to, should be so all-pervading in this part of Ireland, 
 because, amongst other things, it increases the diffi- 
 culties of obtaining accurate information on the matters 
 in which I am interested. The exclusive claims made 
 to " loyalty " by the Ulster Protestants are necessarily 
 accompanied by imputations, either open or covert, of 
 
-54 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 disloyalty against the " Romish " section of the people, 
 and if loyalty be regarded in a certain specific sense 
 there can be no doubt that these imputations are not 
 unfounded. The, Ulster Protestants know that their 
 security depends upon the maintenance of the English 
 connection, because, notwithstanding the specious pro- 
 mises of the Nationalists, they have only too much 
 reason to fear that an Irish Parliament, with the exist- 
 ing franchise, would give to th'e Roman Catholics the 
 absolute command of the situation, and that they would 
 abuse this power to the prejudice of the Protestants. 
 They fear that " civil and religious liberty" would be 
 all on the other side, and therefore they are resolved 
 not to sacrifice their existing rights without a bitter 
 and, if necessary, bloody struggle. This is only com- 
 mon sense and human nature, and it is equally ridicu- 
 lous and dangerous to ignore such a factor in dealing 
 with the Irish question. But I cannot bring myself 
 to place Ulster loyalty on any higher footing. If the 
 sectarian element were eliminated there would scarcely 
 be less discontent in the North than in the other por- 
 tions of Ireland. The land question is just as pressing 
 here as it is elsewhere, and there is not very much to 
 choose between the county of Donegal and the county 
 of Cork. Ulster tenant farmers, it must not be for- 
 gotten, secured for themselves, without the aid of the 
 Legislature, the " custom " of tenant right, long before 
 the first feeble attempts were made in the other pro- 
 vinces to alter the feudal relations between landlord 
 and tenant, and since the passing of the Land Acts 
 none have had more frequent recourse to them, or been 
 more successful in reducing the landlords' rents to fair 
 judicial rents, than the tenant farmers of this province. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 55 
 
 They will hear nothing of Home Rule, but they are 
 nearly as clamorous as their brethren of the South for 
 further reductions in view of the depreciation in the 
 value of produce. This was perfectly recognized by 
 the Nationalist candidates in the North at the late 
 General Election. They were careful to say nothing 
 about an Irish Parliament, and rested their claims on 
 their promises to obtain further measures of Land 
 Law Reform. The general feeling on the subject, 
 even amongst the extreme Orangemen, may be ga- 
 thered from a remark attributed to a staunch loyalist, 
 who said that he was ready to walk as many miles in 
 a day as any man to shoot a Papist, but all the same 
 he wanted his land cheap. 
 
 The apparent devotion of the Protestants of Ulster, 
 and especially of the tenant farmer class, to England, 
 must therefore not be construed as an unqualified 
 acceptance of the existing order of things, or of pleased 
 acquiescence in the manner in which Irish interests are 
 made subordinate to party considerations in England. 
 I may be wrong, but I cannot help thinking that 
 Ulster loyalty closely resembles that of the fag at a 
 public school to the big boy who protects him. He 
 believes in the prowess of his champion, he relies upon 
 it for his own security, and he never falters for a 
 moment in his devotion. But this does not prevent 
 him occasionally thinking that his protector would be 
 none the worse if he did not put on quite so much 
 side, if he showed himself a trifle less selfish and 
 overbearing, and if he was not so ready to throw his 
 boots at his head on the slightest provocation. Of 
 one thing I am perfectly convinced. Ulster loyalty 
 is absolutely dependent on the English connection. 
 
S6 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 If Ulster is cast adrift and the Protestant minority- 
 left to shift for themselres, it is quite possible there 
 would be a united Ireland ; but it would be ever ani- 
 mated by the bitte;;pst hostility to England, and none 
 would be more bitter or unrelenting than the Pro- 
 testants of Ulster. 
 
 The Irish Society, of which Sir J. Whiitaker Ellis, 
 M.P., is governor, and Mr. Frank Greene, deputy 
 governor, are over here now on their annual visita- 
 tion. When James I. undertook the plantation of 
 Ulster, the native Irish having been pretty nigh exter- 
 minated by famine and the sword, a commission was 
 issued by the Grown to make inquisition respecting 
 the forfeited lands in Ulster, and application was made 
 to the City of London to supply the necessary funds 
 for the plantation. " Four wise, grave, and discreet 
 citizens," having been sent over " to view the situation 
 proposed for the new colony," made a favourable re- 
 port to the Court of Common Council, which was 
 adopted. A provisional agreement was concluded 
 between the Lords of the Privy Council and the repre- 
 sentatives of the London Corporation, and the con- 
 stitution of the new Company of " Undertakers " 
 designated the Irish Society was set forth in the 
 agreement and shortly afterwards embodied in a royal 
 charter. A sum of ;£^40,000, subsequently increased 
 to ;^6o,000, which, considering the then value of 
 money and the price of commodities, was very large, 
 was subscribed by the various Livery Companies of 
 London, and estates were allotted proportionately to 
 the outlay. It was provided that Derry and Coleraine 
 should be rebuilt and fortified by the Irish Society, 
 and these towns became their property. Without 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 57 
 
 following the vicissitudes of the society as Irish land- 
 owners during more than two centuries and a half, it 
 may be sufficient to say that their funds, exclusively 
 of what is necessaiy for the machinery of the society, 
 are exclusively spent upon their property. The Cathe- 
 dral of Londonderry was erected entirely at the cost 
 of the sccietji, and is now, under their supervision, in 
 process of restoration. The society have also built 
 several chapels and churches, established free elemen- 
 tary schools and colleges, endowed scholarships, aided 
 in carrying out public works, promoting railways, de- 
 veloping trade and manufactures, and advancing in a 
 variety of ways the interests of the inhabitants of 
 Londonderry and Goleraine. 
 
58 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 X. 
 
 KAinisirLLAN, Co. Donegal. 
 The little village from which this letter is dated is 
 very prettily situated about midway on the west 
 coast of Lough Swilly. On the opposite side the 
 peninsula of Innishowen separates the Lough from 
 Lough Foyle, whilst behind and to the westward lie 
 the highlands of Donegal. Their scenery is dis- 
 tinguislied by a grandeur and ruggedness which well 
 deserve the attention of the tourist ; but the soil is 
 for the most part of a poor quality. The population 
 is sparse, and large numbers of the holdings are so 
 small that the matter for wonder is, that the tenants 
 manage to exist, much less to pay rent for the few 
 acres which, on the fulfilment of that necessary con- 
 dition, they are permitted to call their own. The 
 region of Gweedore has during the past week been 
 the scene of numerous evictions in which a small 
 army of constabulary has been engaged, and sensa- 
 tional accounts have appeared in the Nationalist organs 
 of the circumstances under which these evictions have 
 taken place. On the legal merits there is of course 
 nothing to be said, because, if the landlord is not paid 
 his rent, however small or however severe the struggle 
 to produce it, he is entitled to recover possession of 
 his property. On what may be termed the moral 
 merits I forbear to offer any opinion, because the 
 considerations which may influence him may be of a 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 59 
 
 veay complex character, and it may very well be tliat 
 unless lie enforces his rights in certain portions of his 
 estates, he may fail to secure their recognition in others. 
 But, speaking generally, I may say that not only in 
 this country, but in others that I have visited, the 
 difficulties which arise between landlords and tenants 
 are in a direct proportion to the smallness of the 
 holdings. Men who live on farms of three or five 
 acres, even if they had them for nothing, are hardly 
 able to support themselves and their families, and this 
 class has long been in the habit of supplementing their 
 incomes — if such a term is not a cruel misnomer — by 
 harvest labour in England. There are, I believe, 
 120,000 tenant farmers in Ireland whose holdings 
 do not exceed half-a-dozen acres. They are, however, 
 precisely those who suffer worst when the extreme 
 rigour of the law is enforced against them. Capital 
 they have none ; they live as -best they can on the 
 slender produce of their small holdings, and when 
 times are " hard " they are literally reduced to 
 destitution. When the next measure of land law 
 reform is undertaken their interests should not be 
 forgotten. 
 
 This mischief of subdividing holdings, which, I 
 may add, has been greatly enhanced by the legislation 
 which has given to tenants the right of dealing with 
 their farms as they please, independently of their land- 
 lords, has long been recognized by the latter. I had 
 the opportunity of speaking to a gentleman, the 
 possessor of a considerable estate in this neighbour- 
 hood, who informed me that under the old system of 
 Ulster tenant right it was his practice to purchase 
 generally at five years' purchase the farms of those 
 
6o NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 tenants who desired to give up possession, and then 
 dispose of them to tenants with adjacent holdings, 
 thus increasing the size of the farms into which his 
 property was subdfedded. That has been rendered 
 practically impossible under the new system, and he 
 views with considerable apprehension, and, as it seems 
 to me, with justice, the steady increase of small 
 farmers, who will be unable either to meet their 
 engagements or to work their farms. Those who 
 believe that the conversion of this class into owners, 
 even upon the most favourable terms, would be 
 beneficial, will do well to take note of the position of 
 those farmers who hold at almost nominal rents under 
 what is known as perpetuity leases — that is to say, 
 leases extending over hundreds of years. They are 
 for all purposes absolute owners, though, their estate 
 being leasehold, they are subject to eviction if they do 
 not pay the small reserved rent. Some forty years 
 ago, at the time of the famine, they were infinitely 
 worse off than the tenants at ordinary rents, because 
 they had no capital to meet pressing necessities and to 
 provide seed for their land, and there was no one who 
 had any interest in assisting them. With the ordinary 
 tenants the case was different. The landlord knew that 
 if he did not provide them with the means of pro- 
 ducing crops for the coming year lie would lose not 
 only the ciirrent but the future rent, and he accord- 
 ingly helped them. Now, there are Eome of those 
 tenants who hold land at 2S. 6d. per acre, which is 
 well worth 15 s. or ;£^i, who at the present moment 
 declare, whether truthfully or otherwise, their inability 
 to pay their rent, and proceedings in eviction are 
 about to be taken against them by the superior lord. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 6i 
 
 This fact is significant, because, if under such, fayonr- 
 able circumstances men who hold at rents confessedly 
 far below the actual value refuse to pay them, it is 
 permissible to doubt whether a peasant proprietorship 
 upon any terms which the Legislature would sanction 
 would prove a successful experiment. 
 
 It may not, perhaps, be out of place to recall the 
 fact that in the eighteenth century the greater portion 
 of the land in Ireland was let on long leases upon 
 favourable terms, and the result was that the imme- 
 diate tenants of the landlords sublet to others, and 
 those in turn to others under them, with the necessary 
 consequence of creating middlemen,-who became the 
 curse of the country. This evil has been corrected, but 
 the Legislature has too frequently lost sight of the 
 necessity of identifying the interests of landlords and 
 tenants, instead of treating these classes as necessarily 
 antagonistic, and widening the breach between them. 
 Under the recent Land Acts it is not too much to say 
 that landlords and tenants are mutually led to regard 
 each other as enemies. A striking illustration of this 
 is afforded by what is known as the system of conacre- 
 letting. A landlord knows that if he parts with a 
 farm, even on the terms of a yearly tenancy, he cannot 
 dispossess his tenant without paying him such a price 
 as he chooses to set upon his tenant right. In order 
 to avoid this the practice has arisen of letting a farm 
 for a single season, the tenant being at liberty to make 
 as much out of it as he pleases within that period, and 
 being obliged to surrender possession when he has 
 gathered in his crops. Of course this is not tenancy 
 in any true sense of the term, and resolves itself 
 into a mere hiring of the use of the land for a few 
 
62 NOTES OMIRELAND. 
 
 montlis by a landlord who is indifferent about farming 
 it himself. 
 
 In dealing with the land question in Ireland per- 
 sons are too apt to suppose that there are only two 
 classes with which the Legislature has to deal — ^viz., 
 the landlords and the tenants. This, however, is not 
 so. There is another and a very numerous class which 
 must be taken into account. I mean the labourers. 
 Already a very strong antagonism has arisen between 
 these latter and the tenant farmers, the labourers 
 anticipating that the result of the present agitation 
 may be that the tenants will become owners, and they 
 will be denied much of the employment which is now 
 afforded to them by the landlords. And it would be 
 idle to pretend that their apprehensions are groundless. 
 The labouring class cannot find as constant or as liberal 
 employers as they have hitherto done, if the landlords 
 were expatriated and they were made dependent upon 
 men who would have neither the inclination nor the 
 means to supply them with work. 
 
 Here in the North, as in the South, the tenants 
 complain that they are called upon to pay more than 
 the land is worth, as measured by the present prices 
 of produce. But, as I remarked in a previous letter, 
 the fault is primarily that of the tenants, because they 
 do not make as much out of their farms as they might 
 do. The Irish are, and I fear always will continue, 
 behind the English and the Scotch in the art of hus- 
 bandry. They are content to. follow the old systems, 
 and, either from want of inclination or of capital, they 
 do not provide themselves with improved implements. 
 The National League has in various notices which I 
 have seen prohibited the use of machines, upon the 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 63 
 
 protective ground that their employment prevents men 
 getting work, and although from a politico-economical 
 point of view the League may be wrong, the appre- 
 hension of boycotting prevents any person being so 
 ill-advised as to question the soundness of its reason- 
 ing. Then I have heard it stated on all sides that the 
 farmers live beyond their means, that they never keep 
 accounts of the receipts and expenditure incidental to 
 their farming operations, that they do not dream of 
 laying by any of their profits to meet the contingency 
 of a possible bad harvest or a fall in the prices of 
 stock or produce. And so far as I am in a position 
 to judge, I must say I think these charges are well 
 founded. When all is said, Irish farmers are neither 
 as provident nor as prudent as they might be, and 
 they are too ready, to call upon the landlord to re- 
 coup them for losses which, with a little prudence 
 and care, they might avoid. To this must be added 
 the undoubted fact, that in their eagerness to acquire 
 land they pay preposterous sums for the tenant right ; 
 or, what is worse, involve themselves in debt to make 
 the purchase, and thus deprive themselves of any 
 command of capital for the fitting utilization of the 
 land they have acquired. 
 
64 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Belpast. 
 
 It is not my infcentiou to make any special reference 
 to the riots which have recently brought discredit on 
 this populous and thriving city, and have been attended 
 with a most lamentable loss of human life. The causes 
 of these riots have but little connection with the 
 present general condition of Ireland, save so far as 
 they illustrate that unhappy sectarianism which has 
 now for nearly a century prevented Protestants and 
 Catholics uniting for any great national or patriotic 
 purpose. To assert that they have any connection 
 with Lord Randolph Churchill's speech delivered here 
 some months ago is the veriest balderdash. The 
 religious epidemic which, in my letter from Londou- 
 deiTy, I mentioned as being prevalent in Ulster in 
 July and August, has been exceptionally severe this 
 year in Belfast, and has been intensified by the recent 
 parliamentary contest, which resulted in the return of 
 a Nationalist for one of the divisions of the city. The 
 clamour raised by the Orange party against the 
 constabulary is as unjust as it is ungenerous. That 
 the majority of this force is Roman Catholic is inevit- 
 able, considering the population from which it is 
 recruited ; but the allegations so flippantly made, that it 
 was sent by the late Irish Secretary for the purpose of 
 coercing, if not of murdering, the Protestants of Belfast, 
 and that the constabulary, animated by sectarian zeal, 
 readily availed themselves of the opportunity of shooting 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 65 
 
 down the members of a different creed, are so palpable 
 a misrepresentation, and so gross and transparent a 
 slander on a most meritorious and thoroughly honest 
 and loyal body of men that they would not deserve 
 even a passing notice if they were not so persistently 
 circulated. Every man of ordinary intelligence in 
 Belfast, whatever his creed; must know perfectly well 
 that in perhaps no other country in the world would 
 the Executive Government have allowed its patience to 
 be so severely tried before putting, or rather stamping, 
 down its foot in a manner which, if it did arouse 
 religious feelings in the minds of the rioters, would 
 probably cause them to reflect on the facility of 
 transition to a future state. The epidemic is now, 
 however, dying out. Protestants and Catholics will 
 become as good friends as ever for the next ten months, 
 until the recurring anniversaries of victories, which 
 many sane men still believe were gained in the cause 
 of religious liberty, will again occasion a temporary 
 suspension of their amicable relations. I shall not be 
 surprised to find that many of the prosecutions to 
 which the late riots must give rise will totally collapse. 
 By the time the next assizes come on, the members of 
 the rival creeds will have made it up, and the necessary 
 evidence will not be forthcoming. At least, this has 
 been the experience of the past. 
 
 The present may, perhaps, be not an inappropriate 
 occasion on which to refer to what may be termed the 
 religious aspect of the Irish question. The English, 
 as a rule, know very little about Ireland, or perhaps I 
 should say about their own country, because Ireland 
 and England, as we all know, form parts of one single 
 and undivided kingdom. Nothing is more frequent 
 
66 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 than allusions to the loyal Protestant minority, with 
 the accompanying inference that the Catholics, with 
 perhaps some rare exceptions, belong to the disloyal 
 majority. ,Now, I declare with confidence that no more 
 serious or mischievous misapprehension can possibly 
 exist. If by loyalty is meant desire to maintain the 
 British connection, not necessarily from feelings of 
 attachment, but from considerations of expediency, I 
 believe that if Ireland was polled to-moii-ow, and every 
 man was free to record his vote without fear of the 
 consequences, a majority would be found in favour of 
 maintaining the Union. But however this may be, 
 there is a vast number of Catholics of all classes, high 
 and low, clerical and lay, who are as bitterly opposed 
 to the transfer of power to the leaders of the National 
 party as are the most fanatical of the Orangemen of 
 Ulster. With comparatively few exceptions, all those 
 Catholics who have a stake in the country justly 
 apprehend the misuse of these powers which would be 
 made by an Irish Parhament with a majority of 
 National Leaguers in it, and an Irish Government in 
 which the American-Irish element would not improbably 
 largely predominate. The Ulster dissentients from 
 the Separatist policy are tolerably compact, and might 
 find means of providing for their own security. But 
 the isolated sections of Loyalist Catholics and Pro- 
 testants in the other provinces would be placed in 
 considerable jeopardy, and that jeopardy would natu- 
 rally be increased in proportion to the resistance ofiered 
 by the men of Ulster to accept a Parliament in which 
 their representatives would be hopelessly outnumbered, 
 and a Government in which it may safely be predicted 
 they would have no voice whatever. I may refer to 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 67 
 
 Irisii loyalty, va. tlie popular acceptation of tlie term, 
 in a subsequent letter, but I am now simply desirous 
 of pointing out that, should any proposals similar in 
 character to those of the late Government be again 
 revived and made the subject of discussion in Parlia- 
 ment, there is an important section — in my opinion 
 politically and socially the most important section — of 
 the Roman Catholic population of Ireland which has 
 the very strongest motives, because of a distinctly 
 selfish character, for opposing any relaxation of the 
 existing bonds of Imperial control. 
 
 Any treatment of this branch of the subject would 
 be incomplete without reference to the position in 
 which the Irish Catholic priesthood now stand to their 
 flocks, to the special political aspirations they may 
 entertain, and to the general tenor of their teaching 
 in connection with the relations which should be main- 
 tained between those who accept their guidance and 
 their Protestant fellow-countrymen. Thanks to the 
 indomitable energy of Daniel O'Connell, the emancipa- 
 tion of the Roman Catholics was secured, and for the 
 first time their clergy became their political leaders. 
 The influence which they exercised began to wane with 
 the organization of the various Fenian associations 
 some years ago, consequent on the condemnation of 
 sscret societies by the Church of Rome and the 
 necessary antagonism which arose between the obliga- 
 tions of religious duty and the promptings of mis- 
 directed patriotism. It was not, however, until the 
 general election of 1880 that the clergy discovered 
 that in political matters they were losing touch of their 
 flocks, and that the spiritual influence which had here- 
 tofore constituted so potent a factor in determining 
 
 F 2 
 
68 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 the choice of what might be termed the " popnlai- " 
 candidates had almost disappeared. The imprimatur 
 of the Catholic bishop of the diocese used to be a con- 
 dition precedent Before a Liberal conld venture to 
 issue an address to a constituency, but at the elections 
 I speak of it was found that the recommendation of 
 the Protestant leader of the newly-created Nationalist 
 party counted far more in a candidate's favour than 
 the benedictions of the entire hierarchy. This was a 
 very serious discovery for the priesthood to make ; and 
 it is needless to say that the general elections of last 
 year must have satisfied even the most sceptical of 
 the clergy that Mr. Parnell had undisputed control of 
 the Nationalist vote. Between 1880 and 1886 the 
 priesthood had therefore the alternative of seeing 
 themselves out-distanced by their flocks or of accom- 
 panying them, and the dissensions which it was only 
 too notorious arose between some of the highest 
 members of the Irish episcopate testified to the serious 
 character of the issue. Of the indirect negotiations by 
 which Mr. Gladstone hoped to secure the influence of 
 the Holy See in turning the scale against the Nationalists 
 I need not speak, but it might have occurred to any 
 one but a statesman that a quid is invariably required 
 for a quo, and that if it was worth the while of her 
 Majesty's Government to secure the influence of the 
 Pope in dealing with the great bulk of the Irish 
 population, the Envoy to the Vatican ought to have 
 been instructed to ring the visitors' bell instead of 
 going down the area steps. I suppose that even 
 Popes have their susceptibilities, and the Holy Father 
 might not unreasonably object to being approached 
 with so much secrecy and so many precautions, in 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 69 
 
 order that an English Minister might be enabled in 
 strict " Gladstonese " to assure Parliament that nego- 
 tiations with the Vatican were never even so much as 
 thought of. 
 
 The Papal selection of Dr. Walsh for the archi- 
 episcopal see of Dublin marked the failure of Sir 
 George Errington's mission, and established an apparent 
 community of interest between the Catholic clergy and 
 the Nationalist, or, as it may more correctly be termed, 
 the Sepai-atist party. Some of the first utterances of 
 the new Archbishop savoured rather of the Convention 
 Hall of Chicago than of apostolic charity, and created 
 as much surprise in Catholic as in Protestant circles. 
 With the direct encouragement thus given by the 
 Primate of Dublin, the clergy had practically no 
 option but to go with the current, and as the new 
 Nationalism had found one of its principal outlets in 
 the National League, they saw it was impossible to 
 avoid identifying themselves with that institution. I 
 do not wish to be understood as meaning that the 
 large numbers of the Irish Catholic clergy who are 
 not only members of the League, but who preside at 
 the meetings of its branches, are unwilling assistants. 
 Many of them, I believe, are so, and are desirous of 
 controlling the action of the League within reasonable 
 limits. Others are no less " thorough " than their lay 
 colleagues. But the point upon which I wish to lay 
 stress is, that the present movement is of lay and not 
 of clerical origin, that the clergy, instead of being the 
 leaders, are for the most part led, and that, dependent 
 as they are upon the " dues " of their parishioners, it 
 has been practically impossible for them, whatever 
 may be their sentiments, to separate themselves from 
 
70 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 their flocks upon the political issues which are now 
 raised. 
 
 The settlement of the Irish question upon any basis 
 which would be saliisfactory to the whole people has 
 been rendered much more diflBcult by the Ultramontane 
 spirit which has guided the councils of the Catholic 
 hierarchy in this country for more than a quarter of a 
 century. Since the death of Dr. Murray, one of the 
 most liberal-minded prelates that ever filled the 
 Catholic archiepiscopal throne of Dubhn, the apparent 
 policy of the Chmrch has been to widen the breach 
 which separates the Protestant and Catholic com- 
 munities. Any system of secular education, under 
 which the two sects might at an age when the mind 
 is most impressionable meet on a common footing, has 
 been sedulously tabooed. Trinity College was inter- 
 dicted to the Catholic youth, though they were 
 exempted from the very mild and apparently in- 
 nocuous theological teaching which forms part of the 
 ordinary university curriculum. The Queen's Colleges 
 were stamped as " Godless," because sectarian teaching 
 of any kind was vigorously excluded ; but, perhaps, 
 the strongest step taken by the Catholic Church to 
 prevent the ultimate fusion of the Protestant and 
 Catholic sections of the people, and the consignment 
 to oblivion of those unhappy differences which, I 
 believe, constitute the only real obstacle to a united 
 Irish people, practically dictating their own terms as 
 to their form of government, was the prohibition of 
 what are known as mixed marriages. The Catholic 
 must not marry the Protestant, because, the sanction 
 of the Church being withheld, any ceremony of 
 ~ marriage, however recognized by law, is treated as 
 
NOTES ON Ireland. jt 
 
 absolutely inyalid ; the Catholic who thus acts is ex- 
 communicated and treated as living in a state of 
 prostitution, and the children are, I presume, re- 
 garded as being born out of wedlock. The effects 
 of this prohibition are more far-reaching than 
 the mere prevention of " matches," which woxild 
 otherwise be made. They are manifested in the 
 greater accentuation of the distinction, social and 
 religious, between the two sects, and in the not 
 iinnatural fears entertained by the Irish Protestants 
 of the uses to which a Legislature, dominated by 
 Catholic influences, would put its strength. The 
 ground of objection to these marriages, that the 
 ceremony is a sacrament and cannot be shared by 
 individuals of different creeds, is perfectly logical. 
 But, if I may say so without irreverence or disrespect, 
 the Catholic Church is rather " eccentric " in its 
 application of this principle. Mixed marriages are 
 sanctioned by it on the English side of St. George's 
 Channel, or, what comes to the same thing, the 
 necessary dispensation for the celebration is not with- 
 held. When a couple of " loving hearts " over here 
 mean to be united they are not to be baulked by the 
 obstacle of taking monthly return tickets to a "Welsh 
 watering-place, where their courtship will not be 
 impeded, whilst the necessary term of residence runs 
 its course and enables them to comply with the 
 formalities of the law, and also to secure the benedic- 
 tion of their respective Churches. If the spirit of 
 sectarian animosity and proselytism could only become 
 dormant in Ireland for half a centuiy, and if Irishmen, 
 both Protestant and Catholic, could only bring them- 
 selves to regard the ultimate fate of their neighbours' 
 
n NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 souls with the philosophical indifference which is 
 generally manifested in other Christian lands, Irish 
 Nationalism would become a reality and a power 
 instead of a sham and a source of division and weak- 
 ness, and Ireland would recover that prosperity which 
 she so ardently desires, and instead of paralyzing, 
 would materially add to the strength of the empire of 
 which, by the necessity of her geographical position, 
 she must always form a part. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 1^ 
 
 XTI. 
 
 Bkay, Co. Wicklow. 
 
 In some of my earlier letters I directed attention to 
 the large sums paid for tenants' interests in their 
 holdings, and also to the nnsaleability of the owner- 
 ship of land upon any terms which a landlord could 
 with • ordinary prudence accept, or which, in the case 
 of sales by the Landed Estates Court, that tribunal 
 would authorize. The estimate of prairie value 
 which was set up by Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt as a 
 not unreasonable compensation to the landlords for 
 parting with their property naturally made a great 
 impression on the minds of the tenant fanners 
 throughout the country by appealing to their cupidity, 
 whilst the prospect of the power of imposing tenns 
 on the landlords being confen-ed on a Parliament in 
 which the Nationalist leaders would be predominant, 
 necessarily excited hopes that the occupier would 
 obtain the freehold for little or nothing. These hopes 
 have not yet been dissipated, and since the downfall 
 of Mr. Gladstone's Administration the exponents of 
 the policy of separation have not ceased to impress 
 upon their followers that the concession of Home 
 Rule to Ireland has become inevitable, and that the 
 Irish Parliament will take care to expropriate the 
 landlords on terms far less favourable to them than 
 Mr. Gladstone was willing to grant. Adopting the 
 language of the ex-Premier, they declare that the 
 sands in the glass have now run out, and that the 
 
74 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 landlords will speedily be at their mercy. And 
 indeed it is somewhat curious to notice the different 
 lights in which the two Irish Bills of the late 
 Government are regarded in this country and in 
 England by those who have faith in Mr. Gladstone. 
 The Nationalists here are of opinion that the Home 
 Rule policy of the late Government would not have 
 been condemned by the English constituencies if it 
 had not been weighted by the Land Purchase Bill, 
 which would have imposed a present burden of 
 ;^SO, 000,000, and a prospective burden of 
 ;£^iOO,ooo,ooo more on the British taxpayer. On 
 the contrary, in England the followers of the late 
 Prime Minister attribute his defeat exclusively to 
 his scheme of -Irish autonomy, and believe that if 
 the Land Purchase Bill had stood alone it would have 
 been accepted, as the maintenance of Imperial rule 
 in Ireland in its integrity would have furnished a 
 sufficient guarantee for the repayment of the money 
 which it was proposed to advance for the creation of 
 a tenant proprietary in that country. 
 
 I have accordingly found in the southern, the 
 western, the northern, and here in the home counties, 
 that, notwithstanding the universal eai-th-hunger 
 which exists, and which has been considerably whetted 
 by the expectations to which I have referred, there 
 has for many months past been a great unwillingness 
 on the part of tenants to come to terms with landlords 
 willing to sell their ownership, and two very weighty 
 considerations operated in deterring those whom one 
 would have expected to see coming into the market as 
 purchasers. In the first place, there was the inability 
 to value upon any normal scale rights of ownership 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 75 
 
 wKich were actually threatened with confiscation, and 
 in the second there was the terrible uncertainty about 
 the burdens which might be imposed upon land by 
 an Irish Parliament. I referred in a previous letter 
 to the immense depreciation occasioned in the value 
 of bank and railway stocks and other securities, 
 owing to the possibility of their being roughly treated 
 by an Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and for 
 precisely the same reason the value of land in Ireland 
 sensibly diminished, though the change was necessarily 
 not so striking or so obvious as in the case of shares, 
 whose varying prices are made the subject of daily 
 quotation. A new Government and a new Parliament 
 in Ireland would have to tax something, and, whether 
 rightly or wrongly, it has been assumed that the fiscal 
 burdens incidental to " property " would be largely 
 increased. Investors have no inducement to become 
 Irish landlords, with the threat of confiscation hanging 
 over their heads ; whilst tenants, independently of the 
 hopes engendered by the promised confiscation, were 
 in the dark as to the burdens they might have to 
 bear in the event of becoming freeholders. 
 
 The operation of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, 
 passed just a twelvemonth ago, may serve to illustrate 
 the remark I have just made of the direct relation 
 between the mere possibility of an Iiish Parliament 
 such as Mr. Gladstone proposed and the depreciation 
 in the value of land, not merely to the present owners, 
 but to any who might step into their places. Lord 
 Ashbourne's Act, as it is termed, provides tenants 
 facilities for purchasing their holdings which I believe 
 are without a counterpart in any country in the world. 
 I do not propose even to summarize its provisions, but 
 
76 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 I may state briefly the fundamental principles on 
 which it is based. In the event of a landlord being 
 willing to sell and a tenant being willing to bny they 
 have simply to atrange the terms of the transfer 
 between them, aljd the whole of the purchase money 
 is thereupon advanced by the Land Commission ap- 
 pointed by the Act, and the tenant is enabled to bny 
 his holding without paying any money for it. The 
 terms upon which this advance is made, so far from 
 being onerous to the tenant, are' extremely favourable, 
 and actually place him, in two very important respects 
 as regards pecuniary obligations, in a better position 
 than he was before. The repayment of the purchase- 
 money is made at the rate of 4 per cent, per annum, 
 by half-yearly instalments, extending over 49 years, 
 at the end of which period such payments cease, and 
 the tenant becomes the undisputed owner of the 
 property, subject to no burden other than that of 
 taxation. Let us suppose, for example, that the 
 tenant pays a rent of £\o^ and that the landlord 
 agrees to sell him the holding at 20 years' purchase, 
 the purchase-money will be ;£^200. On application 
 being made to the Land Commission this sum is 
 advanced— four-fifths are paid to the landlord, and 
 one-fifth is retained in the hands of the Commission, 
 bearing interest at the rate of 3 per cent., until one- 
 fifth of the annual instalments have been paid ofi" by 
 the tenant. The annual interest on £100 at 4 per 
 cent, amounts to £'&., and this sum the tenant will 
 pay instead of rent, thus making a saving of £2., or 
 one-fifth of his previous rent, whilst every year he 
 will be approaching the period when the payment of 
 the instalments will absolutely cease. Of course it is 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 77 
 
 unnecessary to say tJiat if the landlorcl and tenant 
 agree tipou a less number of years' purchase, the 
 operation of the Act is all the more favourable to the 
 tenant. If, in the example given, the holding was 
 sold to the tenant for i 5 years' purchase, the yearly 
 instalments would be £6 instead of the former rent 
 oi £\o. In making these computations it is, how- 
 ever, necessary to bear in mind that the poor rates 
 are shared at present between the landlord and the 
 tenant, and in the event of the latter purchasing his 
 holding, the entire rates would fall upon him. In 
 drawing a comparison between the instalments and 
 the previous rent the former must be increased by 
 the half of the poor rates previously paid by the 
 landlord. 
 
 Under an Act oiFering such exceptional facilities 
 for the creation of a peasant proprietary it might 
 have been supposed that the comparatively small sum 
 of ;^5,ooo,000 provided by the Act would have been 
 very speedily snapped up. But such is not the case. 
 It is in Ulster that it has been chiefly turned to 
 account, but I believe that in the four provinces 
 collectively not so much as ;f 1,500,000 has been 
 disposed of by the Land Coramission. But it is a 
 very remarkable fact that during the short jDeriod that 
 has elapsed since the last general election, and the 
 condemnation of the Home Rule policy of the late 
 Government — nay, within the past two or three weeks — 
 there has been a marked increase in the number of 
 agreements made between landlords and tenants 
 under the provisions of the Act, and on teinns not 
 altogether unfavourable to the former. In other 
 words, confidence is being restored. Tenants have 
 
78 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 come to recognize the fact that landlords hare a 
 marketable interest in the ownership of their land 
 which is worth 19, 20, and in some cases as much 
 as 23 years' jourchase of judicial rents ; and, what 
 is more significant still, they consider that it is 
 worth their while to purchase on that basis, un- 
 deterred by any apprehensions that an Irish Parlia- 
 ment will come into existence with power to tax 
 land. The first impression I formed, that in the 
 country districts the people were either averse to 
 Home Eule or cared nothing about it, is therefore 
 abundantly confirmed. 
 
 In connection with Lord Ashbourne's Act I should 
 remark that the sanction of the Land Commission 
 to the bargain made between the landlord and tenant 
 is essential, and this sanction is withheld when it is 
 considered that the property does not furnish sufficient 
 secm-ity for the sum required to be advanced, and to 
 this extent some check is imposed on the improvidence 
 or the ignorance of tenants in making their bargains. 
 But otherwise the Commission does not concern itself 
 with the nature of the arrangement made between the 
 landlord and his tenant. One of the conditions of the 
 advance being made for the purchase of the holding 
 is, that one-fifth of the amount must either be left by 
 the landlord in the hands of the Commission, or an 
 equal sum must be placed there as a guarantee deposit 
 by the tenant, or any one else who thinks proper to 
 do so, to be held as security until one-fifth of the 
 instalments have been paid off. This provision, the 
 necessity of which is apparent, has, however, the effect 
 of preventing many landlords availing themselves of 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 79 
 
 the Act who might otherwise do so. In the great 
 majority of cases this deduction is made from the 
 sum advanced, and there are many landlords who can- 
 not afford to sell on the condition that one-fifth of the 
 purchase money shall be locked up at 3 per cent, for 
 probably ten years. I have found throughout Ireland 
 a very general demand for the extension of the Act, 
 by which, I presume, is meant the creation of greater 
 facilities for its application, because the larger portion 
 of the ;£^S, 000,000 which were allotted are untouched. 
 The terms on which the advances are made are as 
 favourable as could be desired, but lands in the 
 neighbourhood of towns, which are known by the 
 appellation of " town park," are excluded from 
 the operation of the Act. The tenants of small hold- 
 ings derive but little benefit from it, ■vjhilst the land- 
 lords are greatly hampered by the provision which 
 involves a deduction of one-fifth of the purchase money. 
 These are matters which deserve the attention of the 
 Government if they contemplate extending the opera- 
 tion of the statute. 
 
 The leaders of the National League have always 
 done their utmost to prevent the tenant farmers avail- 
 ing themselves of this most beneficial statute, and for 
 the very intelligible reason that in the same proportion 
 as tenants secure a proprietary will they be opposed 
 to that agitation by which the Nationalists gain their 
 subsistence. Accordingly, the tenants have not only 
 been dissuaded from coming to terms with their land- 
 lords, but have been threatened with denunciation if 
 they did so as betrayers of the interests of their 
 fellow-tenants by giving to the landlord ownership of 
 
So NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 property a substantial value whicii it has been the 
 persistent object of the previous Land League and the 
 existing National League to reduce to a vanishing 
 point. These taclSics have proved only too successful, 
 though it is a healthy sign that within the past month 
 the tenant farmers are beginning to show symptoms of 
 independence. The value of land depends, like that 
 of other commodities, upon surrounding circumstances ; 
 but the National League have, in defiance of political 
 economy, declared that landlords should be paid no 
 more than, in accordance with their somewhat peculiar 
 ideas, they are entitled to — namely, prairie value. If 
 the League were formally installed as a Parliament on 
 College Green, no doubt the question would be dealt 
 with legislatively on this basis, but for the present 
 they somewhat arbitrarily draw a line between the 
 marketable value and the prairie value, and declare 
 that no more should . be paid by a patriotic tenant. 
 This Hue, speaking generally, is drawn at seven years' 
 purchase of the judicial rents, which is, of course, 
 a basis upon which no landlord who was not in fear 
 of immediate confiscation would think of parting with 
 his property. The doctrine is also sedulously pro- 
 mulgated, that tenant farmers are as a class too 
 ignorant and too simple-minded to be able to calcu- 
 late the true value of the property they are buying, 
 and that they are taken advantage of by the land- 
 lords and their agents. I am not prepared to say 
 that, in the competition for land, tenants do not unfre- 
 quently offer extravagant sums for tenant right, and 
 enter with a light heart into engagements to pay 
 rents which, if there is a fall in the price of pro- 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 8i 
 
 duce, become impossible. But so far cs the Land 
 Purcbase Act is concerned, the only question a tenant 
 has to determine is whether it is worth his while to 
 effect what in most cases would be a reduction of from 
 20 to 30 per cent, in his rent, and simultaneously 
 become a proprietor, with the conviction that at the 
 end of forty-nine years the property thus- acquired 
 would be released from all payments save taxes. 
 
 G 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Dublin. 
 
 Before concluding this series of " notes," which I hope 
 to do in two more letters, I am desirous of making a 
 few general remarks on one or two subjects which I 
 have not yet noticed, and of directing attention to some 
 of the \rices which underlie the existing system of 
 administrative government in Ireland. Amongst other 
 panaceas for Irish disaffection and distress, State-aided 
 emigration has been from time to time offered by 
 English statesmen as a most efficient remedy ; and it 
 must be admitted that, if only pursued with the 
 necessary thoroughness and for a sufficient length of 
 time, its success would be undeniable, because there 
 would be no people left to experience distress or to 
 manifest disaffection. But when all is said and done, 
 State-aided — that is to say, enforced — emigration is 
 the last resort of baffled statesmanship, or the only 
 door of escape which can be opened to the population 
 of an exhausted and used-up country. As, however, 
 there is no reason to suppose that Ireland, with her 
 marvellous fertility, and with industrial resources 
 which admit of considerable development, is altogether 
 played out and unable to support S, 000,000 of people, 
 though the population was half as great again some 
 forty years ago, it is impossible to accept the postulate 
 that there is no alternative for large masses of people 
 but to emigrate or staiTe. A great deal has been 
 said about the attachment of the Irish peasant to the 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND^ S3 
 
 little bit of land on which he has been born and bred, 
 and it has supplied the theme for much poetical and 
 political rhapsody. But it will be generally admitted 
 that expatriation, however advantageous the prospect 
 it opens, loses a great deal of its attractions if it is 
 enforced instead of being voluntary, and the hostility 
 felt towards England, even by those emigrants who 
 have amassed fortunes and secured positions in America 
 and elsewhere, which they -are well aware they would 
 never have secured if they had remained in Ireland, is 
 mainly prompted by the feeling that they were driven 
 from their native land by the English Government, 
 Of one fact there can be no doubt whatever — namely, 
 that the tide of Irish emigration to the West, which 
 England has done so much to assist, if not to provoke 
 and to enforce, during the past half-century, has 
 created on the opposite side of the Atlantic an entirely 
 distinct Ireland, which has become far more difficult 
 for England to deal with than the Ireland with which 
 she is so indissolubly united. It is a poor policy to 
 expend the national funds in increasing the numbers 
 of the enemies of the State. Voluntaiy emigration 
 from Ireland is sufficiently disastrous in its con- 
 sequences, because it drains the population of its bone 
 and sinew. It is always the most promising lad in a 
 family that is shipped for New York, because it is 
 known that he will be sm-e to do well, and will not 
 forget to send remittances to those whom he has left 
 behind. Nor are these hopes disappointed ; the amounts 
 annually transmitted from the United States to Ireland 
 in the form of gifts to "the old folks at home" are 
 enormous ; but the loss to Ireland in being deprived of 
 the direct services of the best of her children ia 
 
 G 2 
 
84 KOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 becoming felt in eveiy province, and has begun to 
 attract very serious attention. In many of what are 
 termed the congested districts of the North and West, 
 where the people Jiave not the means of living on their 
 miserable holdings, much less of paying rent for them, 
 there is no alternative between emigration and the 
 supply of industrial occupation ; but the efforts of the 
 State should be made in the latter direction. The 
 sentiments of the people on the subject of State-aided 
 emigration were not inaptly expressed by a departing 
 Celt on an occasion when Lord Spencer a few years 
 since personally inspected the exodus of a body of 
 emigrants : " Here's the head drover come down to 
 give the last twist to our tails " — a practice which I 
 believe is pursued when sending pigs to market. 
 
 A great deal might be said on the subject of what 
 are termed " small industries ; " that is to say, in- 
 dustries which may be pursued within the family 
 circle, which necefSsitate little or no expenditure of 
 capital, and which are sorely neglected in Ireland 
 just for want of a little example and encourage- 
 ment. It is an old story that it is the pig which 
 pays the rent, but it is perfectly true that too often 
 it is the pig which is depended upon, when, with a 
 very little expenditure of ingenuity and energy, other 
 means might be found of raising money. I cannot 
 here enter into details, but gentlemen with whom I 
 have spoken,, and who have devoted considerable atten- 
 tion to the subject, assure me that there are a great 
 variety of ways in which much energy and enterprise 
 that are now dormant might be utilized throughout 
 Ireland. The children in the country districts are 
 too often left in squalor and idleness, for the simple 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 85 
 
 reason that there is nothing for them to do, and the 
 habits thus acquired are not easily cast off when they 
 reach adult age. By the way, I have been unable to 
 make out why the growth of flax, with the consequent 
 linen industry, is almost exclusively confined to the 
 North of Ireland. Flax would, I believe, grow equally 
 well in other parts of the country, and though it 
 impoverishes the land, I presume its cultivation could 
 be made as remunerative in one province as in another. 
 But before any profitable attempts can be made to add 
 to the existing sources of Irish wealth it is indis- 
 pensable that those which are already known and 
 turned to more or less account should be invested with 
 a reasonable amount of security and protection. Until 
 men can pursue their vocations and trades, and can 
 turn to the best account their labour or their capital, 
 without the risk of illegal interference at the hands 
 of their fellow-men, it is premature to speculate on 
 the development of further forms of industry. 
 
 In my letter from Tralee I dwelt at length on the 
 lawlessness which exists in the south-west of Ireland, 
 the insecurity of life and property, the outrages com- 
 mitted with impunity by " moonlighters," who are 
 little else than banditti, and the universal terrorism 
 occasioned by the interference of the National League 
 with the commonest and most fundamental rights of 
 labour and of property. Within the past few days 
 her Majesty's Government have sent Sir Redvers 
 Buller, a distinguished General, whose laurels have 
 been gained in operations against the Zulus and the 
 Soudanese, on a special mission to Kerry, to organize 
 and employ the Royal Irish Constabulary, and if 
 necessary the military, for the purpose of suppressing 
 
S6 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 tlie more violent outrages, to whicli I have referred, in 
 that county and the county of Clare. At the time 
 that I wrote. Captain Plnnkett, in his capacity of 
 divisional magistrate, exercised jurisdiction, not only 
 magisterial but executive, in the counties of Cork, 
 Kerry, and Clare ; and, with the aid of the district 
 inspectors of constabulary, the local staff of the 
 Criminal Investigation Department, the general force 
 of constabulary, and, if circumstances demanded it, 
 the military, was responsible for the preservation of 
 the peace in his p&,rticular districts. That his efibrts 
 were unsuccessful is undeniable, but, as I pointed out 
 in my former letters, this was due to a variety of cir- 
 cumstances. " Moonlighting " can only be prevented 
 by numerous and effective patrols of the constabulary 
 in those parts of the country which are frequented 
 by the banditti ; and when outrages are actually com- 
 mitted, the culprits, if captured, which is frequently 
 easy enough, can only be detained and committed for 
 trial if there is evidence forthcoming against them. 
 But, as I stated, the constabulary force in Kerry, 
 largely as it has been increased, is, owing to the 
 drafts made upon it for special protection duty, un- 
 able to supply a snflEiciency of men for patrols ; whilst 
 on the other hand the hopelessness of bringing the 
 offenders to justice, even though there is no moral 
 doubt about their identification, has the effect of 
 demoralizing the constabulary by condemning them to 
 a succession of wild-goose chases. All this I wrote 
 three weeks ago, before General Bnller's appointment 
 was thought of. ' 
 
 As I lay no claim to information which is not in 
 the possession of the Government, I am not so vain 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND: 87 
 
 as to suppose that it was in consequence of my state- 
 ment of tlie condition of things in Kerry being a 
 disgrace to a civilized country that the Government 
 resolved something should be done. But I have no 
 hesitation whatever in saying that what has been done, 
 though I dare say in complete accordance with the 
 traditions of the Irish Office, has been done in the 
 very worst way. It is not possible for the human 
 mind to form an idea of a General without a cocked 
 hat. Wrap him up as you please, invest him with all 
 the attributes of a civil magistrate, deny him a staff, 
 and designate the military officer who would have been 
 its chief by the harmless title of private secretary ; but 
 still, if you call on him to discharge duties of a mili- 
 tary or quasi-military kind, and for the fit discharge 
 of which he has been selected on the ground of his 
 military experience, then his cocked hat will be ever 
 present to the public eye. It is not, therefore to 
 be wondered at that the Irish, whose reminis- 
 cences of martial law have never been allowed entirely 
 to fade away, should have been considerably startled 
 by the appointment of a distinguished English General 
 with carte blanche to draw upon the constabulary and 
 her Majesty's forces in Ireland for the restoration of 
 order in Kerry. And when the nomination of General 
 Buller, without any of the subsequent reservations 
 since stated, was first announced, it was the cocked 
 hat which " fetched " the English public, and elicited 
 the praises so liberally bestowed upon the Government 
 for selecting the right man for the right place. No 
 wonder, therefore, that the Irish people felt nervous at 
 the apparent imminence of a campaign in one of 
 their counties. 
 
88 NOTES ON IRELAND., 
 
 But the needless jar on the susceptibilities of the 
 people of this country was one of the least of the mis- 
 chievous effects of this appointment. My principal 
 reason for referring to it is because it illustrates in avery 
 striking manner one of the worst evils of the bureau- 
 cratic administration of government in Ireland. I had 
 frequent opportunities for some weeks past of speak- 
 ing with district inspectors of constabulary and others 
 whose duty it is to provide security for Hfe and pro- 
 perty, to preserve the peace, and to make reports upon 
 the general condition of their respective districts, and 
 I was startled and shocked at hearing the extent to 
 which the discharge of their duties was expected to 
 be subordinated to considerations of political expe- 
 diency. Surtmit pas de zele is the maxim which the 
 authorities at Dublin Castle impress opon their sub- 
 ordinates, or if there is to be an exhibition of zeal, it 
 must be manifested in doing that which will be con- 
 sidered acceptable, and making the right kind of re- 
 ports roseate or red as the situation at Dublin Castle 
 may at the moment demand. It is said that anything 
 can be proved with statistics, and it is no secret that, 
 according as the Government of the day pins its faith 
 or stakes its existence on the efficacy of the ordinary 
 law, or on the necessity of coercion, those who are re- 
 sponsible for the preservation of the peace in Ireland 
 must frame their conduct and make their reports so 
 as to justify the soundness of judgment displayed by 
 Her Majesty's advisers. 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell on the evil consequences 
 of this pernicious system. The people lose all confi- 
 dence in the good faith and honesty of those to whom 
 they look for protection, the latter become demoralized. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 89 
 
 and the general government of the country is con- 
 ducted upon principles which place in the background 
 the interests of the people governed. If I wanted 
 evidence to justify these strictures, I should call aa 
 my witnesses those who have appointed Sir Eedvers 
 Buller. Why is this distinguished officer especially 
 sent over to discharge a duty which could as efficiently 
 — I believe more efficiently — be performed by dozens 
 of men connected with the Irish magistracy and con- 
 stabulary, if they could only rely on the support of 
 their superiors ? Simply because he will be inde- 
 pendent of Dublin Castle, and will be too big a man 
 to be disavowed. In other woi-ds, having sedulously 
 done their best for years past to demoralize the Irish 
 Constabulary, and all that are connected with its 
 administration, the authorities, in apparent despair of 
 finding any one with the necessary firmness and inde- 
 pendence to act vigorously in Kerry, send over an 
 English General. It is needless to say that those who 
 are thus contemptuously treated regard the conduct of 
 the Government as adding insult to injury. The con- 
 sequent ill effects will, I fear, be more lasting aad far- 
 reaching than is generally supposed. 
 
 A few remarks may not be out of place on the 
 cognate subject of the Irish magistracy. Of the resi- 
 dent or stipendiary magistrates there is nothing to be 
 said, and I believe they not only discharge their 
 duties with ability and impartiality, but possess the 
 confidence of the great bulk of tlie people. But the 
 same can certainly not be said of the ordinary justices 
 of the peace. They are popularly supposed to be in- 
 fluenced by their religious or political convictions, and 
 cases are certainly not of infreqiient occurrence which 
 
90 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 supply considerable colour for the imputation. Justice, 
 as Bentham observed, should be apparent as well as 
 real, and the former quality is certainly wanting when 
 an unpaid justice Jiappens to decide an issue having a 
 political or religious tinge in accordance with his 
 known political ot religious predilections. Questions 
 of this kind rarely arise in England, but are of fre- 
 quent occurrence in Ireland, and in the recent magis- 
 terial inquiries necessitated by the riots in Belfast the 
 conflicts of opinion between the unpaid and resident 
 magistrates on the same state of facts were not only 
 very numerous, but in every instance the unpaid justice 
 ai;rived at conclusions such as might be expected from 
 a partisan. In the south I was told an amusing story 
 of a gentleman, who sells a commodity of universal 
 consumption, having recently been put on the Commis- 
 sion of the Peace, and finding that he gradually took 
 a great part of the custom from his rivals in the same 
 trade. Other things being equal, the consumers evi- 
 dently thought it only prudent to purchase from the 
 individual who might possibly be called upon to deal 
 with them in a magisterial capacity. 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 91 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Dublin. 
 
 It is not very creditable to the good sense, the 
 honesty, or the patriotism of the leaders of party at 
 the present day to have allowed the expression 
 " coercion," as applied to legislation, to acquire its 
 present invidious signification. Every jurist knows 
 that all legislation for the repression of crime, or 
 which in any degree, however mild, controls personal 
 liberty of action, is coercive, and that to hold such legis- 
 lation up as a fitting subject of condemnation simply 
 because it is coercive, is to strike at the foundation 
 upon which all social order depends. Of course, no 
 men of ordinary intelligence or education require to 
 be told this, but there are a very great many indeed 
 who require to be reminded of it. In Ireland the 
 expression has possessed for centuries a very sinister 
 signification, because it has been specifically applied 
 to those exceptional statutes by which the English 
 Government from time to time endeavoured to correct 
 the consequences of its own blundering, and the result 
 is, that when exceptional legislation of a repressive 
 character is demanded at the present day, the Irish 
 national susceptibilities are sorely wounded. When 
 in a previous letter I said that " coercive " legislation 
 would be unfavourably received by the bulk of the 
 people, I meant in the sense of its being an inter- 
 vention on the part of the Legislatm-e of which the 
 Irish alone would be the objects. But the Irish, who 
 
92 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 are perhaps freer from ordinary crime than any other 
 people in Europe, would not, I am convinced, object 
 to any laws to which their fellow-subjects in Great 
 Britain would equally be called upon to submit. It 
 is the invidiousness of continually passing laws which 
 exclusively affect Irish liberty which has made every 
 Administration which proposes so-called coercive legis- 
 lation for Ireland generally uniDopular in this country. 
 
 It is the most obvious and the most prising duty 
 of a Government to provide adequate protection for 
 life and liberty, and for the enjoyment of all the 
 rights incidental to civilized society. That duty, I 
 am bound to say, has been left in abeyance in Ireland 
 for upwards of twelve months. I will not recapitu- 
 late the evidence supplied in my earlier letters of the 
 general terrorism jjroduced by the National League, 
 and of the completeness by which it has superseded 
 the authority of the Queen's tribunals in Ireland. 
 The victims are not the landlord class, but for the 
 most part poor hard-working men, whose greatest 
 ambition is to earn as much as will suffice to support 
 themselves and their families, and who, living, as 
 many of them do, in ' secluded places, and unable 
 through this terrorism to count on the support of any 
 neighbours they may have, are at the complete mercy 
 of their foes. 
 
 With this state of things, which has no more to 
 do with the land question than with the recent earth- 
 quakes, the Government are bound by every dictate 
 of justice and humanity to deal as soon as they 
 address themselves to the duties of legislation. If 
 an Act of Parliament be necessary for the suppression 
 of the National League, such an Act must be passed. 
 
NOT^S ON IRELANb. 93 
 
 but it should be an imperial and not an Irish sbatnte. 
 The League has its branches in England and Scotland. 
 Scenes that are of frequent occurrence in Ireland are 
 beginning to be repeated in Wales, and the practice 
 of boycotting is not unknown on the English side of 
 St. George's Channel. I think, therefore, that the 
 Act should be imperial, not only to avoid giving it a 
 specially coercive character as regards Ireland, but 
 because I believe the time will not be far distant when 
 it will be required in all its comprehensiveness. In 
 dealing with agrarian or quasi-agrarian crime the 
 great difficulty in this country is to obtain evidence 
 against the offenders, or to secure their conviction by 
 local juries. According to the existing law, both in 
 Ireland and England, a prisoner must be tried in the 
 county where the offence was committed. This law, 
 or any one analogous to it, does not obtain in any of 
 the Continental States ; it is a relic of a past age 
 which no longer should be regarded as giving any 
 additional security to the subject, and should be 
 repealed by an impei'ial statute. It is preposterous 
 to pretend that an innocent man is prejudiced by being 
 taken to a different county to be tried, provided that 
 all necessary facilities are afforded by the Crown for 
 the transport of his witnesses. One of the provisions 
 of the recent Crimes Act enabled the Crown to change 
 the vrnMd at its pleasure, and there should be no 
 objection to investing the Crown with this power 
 throughout the United Kingdom, and making it per- 
 petual. 
 
 One of the mischiefs incidental to special criminal 
 legislation for Ireland is that the Acts must be limited 
 in duration. The effect is bad, because it holds out a 
 
94 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 whimsical inducement to law-breakers merelyto suspend 
 their operations for a prescribed time. In the case of 
 statutes obviously trenching on the liberty of the sub- 
 ject, such as thos% suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, 
 or, like Mr. Forster's Suspects Act, empowering the 
 Crown to imprison individuals without bringing them 
 to trial, it is essential that the duration should be 
 limited, because they operate as an abrogation of the 
 Constitution. Bnt Acts for the amendment of the 
 law of criminal procedure, which do not take away 
 what may justly be regarded as constitutional rights, 
 enactments which are intended to bring criminals to 
 justice whilst leaving to the innocent every safeguard 
 which an innocent man would be likely to demand, 
 ought not, in my humble opinion, to be limited in their 
 duration or in their application to any particular por- 
 tion of a presumably United Kingdom. In England 
 the Acts giving jurisdiction to the Central Criminal 
 Court over offences committed out of the county of 
 Middlesex, and consolidating diiFerent coxmties for the 
 purpose of certain assizes, have already broken through 
 the ancient rule that an offence could only be dealt 
 with in the county where it was committed ; so it 
 cannot, with plausibility, be contended that there is 
 any serious interference with constitutional usage in 
 changing the venue from one county to another. The 
 introductorj' provisions of the expired Crimes Act in 
 Ireland enabled judges to try capital felonies without 
 the intervention of juries ; and this constituted so 
 serious an abrogation of the rights of the subject that 
 the statute was, of necessity, condemned to be tem- 
 porary in its operation. The Irish judges protested 
 m masse against such legislation as of necessity tend- 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 93 
 
 ing to expose them, however conscientious in the dis- 
 charge of their duties, to obloquy ; but the then 
 Government, with a contemptuous disregard for Irish 
 susceptibilities, insisted on passing these most objec- 
 tionable and mischievous provisions. Luckily they 
 were never acted upon, and the Irish judicial bench 
 was enabled, despite the action of the Legislature, to 
 preserve that respect which, whatever professional 
 ■agitators may say to the contrary, is readily accorded 
 to it by the Irish people. I have received suggestions 
 from persons entitled to speak with authority, that 
 great benefit would flow from reducing oifences which 
 are now indictable to that class which is brought within 
 the sphere of summary jurisdiction by resident (that 
 is, stipendiary) magistrates, the punishment of course 
 being reduced to sentences of three or six months' 
 imprisonment with hard labour. In the south-west 
 of Ireland, for example, where outrage is rife, the 
 criminals secure immunity from the fact that even in 
 the presence of the most convincing evidence juries 
 refuse to convict. It is, however, the certainty of 
 fiuaishment, and not its severity, which operates most 
 strongly on the human mind, and there can be little 
 doubt that if " moonlighters " knew that they would 
 have to appear before resident magistrates instead of 
 com-ts of assize, they would be infinitely less reckless 
 than they are at present. A difficulty might, how- 
 ever, arise of making such a change in the laws unless 
 it was specially confined to Ireland, which, as I have 
 already pointed out, is objectionable. This, however, 
 might be avoided by making the Act imperial in its 
 operation, but rendering it non-effective save in those 
 counties in the United Kingdom in which the Queen, 
 
95 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 Tiot the Lord Lieutenant, by Order in Council, might 
 direct that it should be enforced. By this means 
 Ministers would be responsible to Parliament for 
 putting the Act, in operation in particular counties, 
 and it is needless to say such a power would only 
 be exercised in those districts where it was deemed 
 imperatively necessary in order to bring criininals to 
 justice. 
 
 It is now universally admitted that Lord O'Hagan's 
 Jury Act has worked badly, because it qualified men to 
 act as jurorswho have not justified the confidencereposed 
 in them. I am desirous of not being supposed to cast an 
 imputation upon the intelligence or the honesty of these 
 men, but sad experience has proved that from the veiy 
 necessities of their existence they find it impossible to 
 offer the same resistance to intimidation, direct or 
 indirect, which is shown by men in a higher social 
 position, especially when they live in different districts 
 from those in which the offences are committed which 
 come under their cognizance. The operation of Lord 
 O'Hagan's Act has notoriously brought trial by jury 
 into contempt in Ireland, and in the interests of the 
 Irish people, and more especially^ as recent experience 
 has shown, of the most helpless members of the com- 
 munity, I am firmly convinced that this statute should 
 be considerably modified. 
 
 Boycotting is an offence which stands at present 
 beyond the pale of the law, but sooner or later, and 
 the sooner the better, it must be brought within it. I 
 cannot speculate on the final perfection to which this 
 practice of depriving the landlord of the right of 
 letting his land, or the farmer of the opportunity of 
 utilizing it, the shopkeeper of the right of selling his 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 97 
 
 ■wares, or tlie labourer of the means of earning his 
 bread, may ultimately extend ; but this I know, that 
 if anything approaching the present condition of things 
 in many parts of Ireland existed in England, the 
 English people would sweep away the Government and 
 the Parliament that hesitated to deal with it. Any 
 people, whether Irish or Fijians, have a legitimate 
 ground for discontent and disaffection if they find no 
 honest and vigorous attempt made, by those who are 
 responsible for their government, to secure to them 
 the enjoyment of the commonest rights. It need 
 occasion no surprise that the number of law-breakers 
 should be increasing every day, when the law-abiding 
 are persistently driven to the wall, and can obtain no 
 redress. One would fancy, fi-om the manner in which 
 the Irish question has been dealt with on both sides of 
 the House of Commons during the past fortnight, that 
 Irish tenants were the only suiferers in this country, 
 and that in their exclusive interests laws should be 
 abrogated or commissions of inquiry instituted, I 
 have frankly stated that, owing to the depreciation in 
 the value of produce this year, the tenants are not, in 
 my opinion, able to pay their rents in full. But I 
 have also stated that, save in rare and exceptional 
 cases, landlords have met their tenants on fair terms, 
 and with reasonable concessions the rents have been 
 paid. In fact, the tenants are about the only people 
 in Ireland whose position is truly enviable. Not only 
 is such universal sympathy extended to them that they 
 must be sincerely grateful for being at length enabled 
 to discover — what they never would have found out 
 for themselves — how badly oif they are, but they alone 
 enjoy the exceptional privilege of receiving thQ 
 
 H 
 
98 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 protection of both her Majesty's Government and the 
 National League. I would venture to point out that 
 there are thousands and thousands in this country who 
 possess neither Jhe one nor the other. 
 
 It is hardly necessary that I should add anything to 
 what I have already written in connection with the 
 settlement of the land question. Matters have now 
 reached a pass that, whatever may be the ulterior 
 results, the greatest facilities should be afforded for 
 the creation of a tenant proprietary. With the main- 
 tenance of the Union, with ordinary firmness of 
 government, and with the sense of security which 
 would be thereby afforded, there should be no difficulty 
 in obtaining, in the form of instalments, the return of 
 the capital required for such an operation. But 
 unless those who will advance the money can make up 
 their minds to support a firm and consistent policy, 
 not only will the money be thrown away, but the 
 materials will be supplied for future agitation which, 
 independently of other mischievous consequences, will 
 effect the complete demoralization of the Irish people. 
 A great deal of nonsense is talked about putting an 
 end to the dual ownership in land. Does any sane 
 man suppose that this object will be achieved by the 
 simple conversion of the present race of tenants into 
 landlords ? Are these men to be compelled by Act of 
 Parliament to till the land of which they become the 
 purchasers ? Are they to be prohibited from letting 
 their farms to any persons who are willing to become 
 their tenants? But if not, how is the landlord 
 question to be eliminated from the sphere of Irish 
 politics ? Is it quite consistent with wise or patriotic 
 statesmanship to look only to the present, and to be 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 99 
 
 iiidiiferent to the legacy beqiieatlaed to our successors 
 only half a century hence? These are questions which 
 it may be politic, but which it is certainly not honest, 
 to evade. The land question, however important it 
 may be, is only used as a blind, and I venture to affirm 
 that none will more persistently oppose its settlement 
 than those who have raised it. The Government — 
 and I am not speaking of any particular Administration 
 — has certain disagreeable facts staring it in the face, 
 and in justice to the people of the three kingdoms, 
 the sooner it recognizes their immense significance the 
 better it will be. 
 
 h2 
 
too NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Dublin. 
 
 Swift remarked tiat loyalty was a foible of the Irisli 
 people, and however inapplicable such an observation 
 might appear to many at the present time, it still con- 
 tains a great deal of truth. Loyalty may manifest 
 itself in a variety of forms — to a particular individual, 
 to a particular dynasty, or to a particular form of 
 government. The Irish people have been so habitually 
 neglected by their absentee Sovereigns that it is perhaps 
 to be wondei-ed at that what may be termed " personal " 
 loyalty has survived in any form, however faint. But 
 that it does survive, and that very little indeed would 
 suffice to kindle its embers, is evidenced by the ready 
 and warm recognition accorded by the Irish to any 
 personal exhibitions of royal sympathy. The Irish are 
 notoriously sensitive and sympathetic, and when one 
 thinks of what might have been made of them, and 
 for that matter what might easily be made of them 
 still, by simply turning to account the fact that Dublin 
 is nearer to London than Edinburgh, that Ireland is 
 not Iceland, and that the developments of modem 
 science have practically annihilated St. George's 
 Channel, it is impossible to avoid regretting that it 
 has never occurred to any Government to try some 
 other panacea for Irish discontent besides legislation. 
 Laws are no doubt very good and necessaiy things in 
 their way, but it is quite possible to have too much 
 of them. It is not, as Mr. Gladstone put it, that the 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. lor 
 
 laws come from Westminster " in a foreign aspect and 
 a foreign garb," that they are distasteful to the Irish 
 people, but because they are made for Ireland as if 
 she were the Ultima Thule of civilization, inhabited 
 by people as yet scarcely reclaimed from barbarism, 
 and demanding exceptional treatment as such. A 
 State makes laws for itself, and in this respect the 
 operation of all legislation is, as the Germans would 
 •express it, subjective. But the legislation of the 
 British Parliament for Ireland has, notwithstanding 
 the Union, been always of an objective, and veiy 
 frequently of an extremely offensive, not to say 
 ■oppressive, character. It is not because the Union 
 was obtained by corruption and fraud, or that it is, in 
 the language of the ex-Premier, a paper Union, that 
 .the Irish are discontented, but because they find that 
 ; British statesmen have persistently ignored the 
 work on which they prided themselves, and have 
 ■dealt with Ireland as if her interests were distinct, 
 instead of being inseparable, from those of the United 
 Kingdom. It would be impossible for me to give an 
 idea of the bitterness which the exponents of all 
 shades of opinion in this country whom I have met 
 have manifested when speaking of the British Govern- 
 ment ; and, indeed, looking to the present condition 
 of things, I am not surprised that loyalty of the third 
 class to which I have just referred — ^that is to say, to 
 the existing form of government — is at a very low 
 ebb. Ireland, I am told on all sides, is habitually 
 .and persistently sacrificed to the party interests and 
 party rivalries of English statesmen. I have seen no 
 •evidence of any special hostility or ill-^^-ill towards 
 1;he Tories, even on the part of the Nationalists, for 
 
102 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 indeed I may say that tlie distrust and want of con- 
 fidence in Ibotli the great English parties are appor- 
 tioned with the most perfect impartiality. There is 
 & sullen despair^ arising from the deep-seated con- 
 viction that the Irish policy of any Administration 
 will be guided in the future as in the past, not by 
 the necessities of the Irish people, but by the exigencies; 
 of party in the British House of Commons. Coercion 
 or conciliation depends upon the counting of a number 
 of noses, many of which hare never even sniffed the 
 Irish air. When I venture to expostulate and to 
 place British statesmanship on a higher and more 
 unselfish basis I am met by references to the history 
 of the past twelve months. Everything has gone- 
 wrong, I am told, during that period. The Tories 
 took ofiice in the summer of last year when they knew 
 they could not attempt to renew the expiring Crimes 
 Act, and risked Ireland for the sake of present power 
 and a possible renewal of the lease at the then impend- 
 ing general election. The lease was not renewed, but 
 meanwhile Ireland suffered, and suffered heavily, by 
 the experiment. Mr. Gladstone succeeded to office,, 
 and seeing a prospect of creating a powerful Liberal 
 majority temporarily by the aid of the Irish Nation- 
 alists, and ultimately by their exclusion from West- 
 minster, proposed to hand over Ireland to a body of: 
 men whom, if he had spent half as many days in. 
 that country as he has lived years, he would have- 
 known do not command the confidence of one-fifth,. 
 m.uch less four-fifths, of the Irish people. It is this; 
 mixture of selfishness and ignorance, this alternation. 
 of kicks and halfpence, which have estranged a people 
 naturally endowed with very strong instincts of 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. loy 
 
 loyalty, and have made them the easy dupes of men 
 who have discovered that political agitation is about- 
 the only paying industry that has been left in Ireland.. 
 
 I remarked in one of my previous letters that I 
 could not place Ulster loyalty on a much higher foot-- 
 ing than that of a fag to his protector at a public 
 school. I have just seen an amusing illustration of 
 the justice of my estimate in a correspondence between 
 the Prime Minister and the Rev. Dr. Kane, Orange 
 Grand Master of Belfast. It appears that in referring' 
 to the Royal Irish Constabulary Lord Salisbury had 
 said that they were chiefly instrumental in maintain- 
 ing " English" rule in Ireland. This was putting on 
 a little too much side, and the fag expostulated.. 
 " You have no more right to speak of English rule' 
 in Ireland than I should have to speak .of Irish rule- 
 in England," wrote the indignant Orangeman. " Very 
 sorry indeed to give offence," replied the Premier ; 
 "but there is no adjective in the English language to- 
 express my meaning." Ye gods ! After the lapse- 
 of seven centuries the Ministers of the Kings and- 
 Queens of Ireland have not discovered an adjective tO' 
 describe their rule without outraging the feelings of 
 such an ultra-loyalist as an Orange Grand Master. 
 
 The Irish people, whatever their failings, are not- 
 generally credited with want of shrewdness, and 
 they know very well that they have infinitely more 
 to lose than to gain by separation, either actual or' 
 constructive, from England. This is well recognised 
 by the Nationalist leaders, and it is only at the other 
 side of the Atlantic that the metaphor of the " last 
 link " is employed. But every one knows what stands^ 
 behind ; that it was not to settle the land question that 
 
104 NOTES ON IRELAND. 
 
 Mr. Pamell took off Ms coat, and that if self-govern- 
 ment were given to Ireland it would really be exercised 
 by men who would use their powers for the purpose 
 of widening the preach between the two countries, 
 instead of cementing the union between them. By 
 the ignorant and unreflecting such a consummation 
 would be hailed with delight as the establishment of 
 Irish nationality, but by those who keep their senses 
 about them, who have anything to lose by the experi- 
 ment, and who know that Ireland does not possess the 
 necessary resources to enable her to become self- 
 -dependent, and that England would never consent to 
 her becoming practically an outlying " State " of the 
 American Republic, the mere possibility of such a 
 contingency is regarded with the keenest alarm. I 
 iave already pointed out how the results of the late 
 elections have restored to the ownership of land in 
 Ireland the value of which Mr. Gladstone's promised 
 legislation deprived it, and therefore the primary 
 duty of the Government will be to satisfy the Irish 
 people that the confidence thus manifested in the 
 resolution of England to maintain the existing con- 
 nection is not misplaced. But, on the other hand, 
 the maintenance of that connection between the two 
 countries does not imply the preservation of the 
 machinery by which it is now secured. If Great 
 Britain and Ireland are to be one, let the unity have 
 a reality which will relieve future Ministers from the 
 necessity of speaking of English rule in Ireland. At 
 present everything is systematically done, apparently 
 with the object of making the Irish feel that they 
 stand outside the confines of the United Kingdom. It 
 is only by the most perverse ingenuity that a Government 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 105 
 
 could either devise or maintain a system under which 
 a mere change in the balance of parties in the Imperial 
 Parliament should be made the occasion of popular 
 rejoicing or discontent at a pageant especially designed 
 to symbolize " English " rule. The circumstances 
 under which Lord Aberdeen quitted Ireland the other 
 day ought to seal the fate of the Vioeroyalty. I do 
 not mean because on this occasion the Queen's repre- 
 sentative formed the central figure in a procession 
 from which royal emblems were carefully excluded, 
 and where loyal airs were sedulously avoided by the 
 accompanying bands. There was, to my mind, a 
 stroke of humour about this which gave the proceed- 
 ings their only redeeming feature. But why, in the 
 name of all that is rational, should an excuse be 
 supplied for dragging the regalia through the mire, 
 and for extinguishing every spark of loyalty in the 
 Irish breast, by making "Irishmen feel that loyalty or 
 disloyalty are not only connected with, but absolutely 
 dependent upon, the ever- changing phases of party 
 government ? And yet, despite all this, I maintain 
 that Irish loyalty to the Crown still survives. 
 
 The only good purposes the Irish Viceroyalty serves 
 are to put a little money in the tills of a certain class 
 of Dublin tradesmen, and to afford to English states- 
 men the opportunity of trying their strength with the 
 Irish people with their own special weapon — blarney. 
 The first is not worth speaking about, and the second 
 has invariably resulted in the discomfiture of the 
 Viceroys. But when the viceregal blarney fails, lan- 
 guage of a sterner kind is employed, and then the 
 Viceroy has to bear personally the odium of the change 
 in the Ministerial policy. This is a matter of but 
 
ao6 NOTES ON IRELAND. ? .• 
 
 little consequence, as I suppose it is all in the way 
 •of the viceregal business ; but the mischief of it is, the 
 Crown suffers. The Lord Lieutenant is the visible 
 impersonation of tiie Sovereign, with very many of the 
 attributes, including that of remitting capital punish- 
 ment and conferring dignities other than those given 
 by patent under the Great Seal of England. The 
 effigy is so complete that before it was converted into 
 a marionette at the end of a telegraph wire, the Irish 
 people confounded it with royalty itself — a mistake all 
 -the more natural as they never saw the real thing. 
 But the results, so far as they affect the unification of 
 iihe two countries, and the common recognition in both 
 of an institution standing outside and beyond the 
 waves of party strife, have been most disastrous. The 
 Irish are made to feel by the viceregal system that 
 they stand in need of a form of government for which 
 there is no counterpart elsewhere in the United King- 
 dom, and the Crown shares the odium of which its 
 Tepresentative is so frequently the object. This was 
 made strikingly manifest by the disrespect shown by 
 the Dublin Corporation and the Nationalists generally 
 to the Prince of Wales when he visited Ireland at 
 the time when Lord Spencer's unpopularity was at its 
 height. 
 
 Until the Viceroy, with the bureaucracy which stands 
 behind him at Dublin Castle, disappears, no legislation, 
 however remedial or otherwise calculated to satisfy the 
 wants of the Irish people, will compensate for the 
 estrangment created by this anomalous and " objective " 
 form of rule. Well-meaning persons frequently sug- 
 gest that the experiment should be made of sending a 
 Royal Prince to reside in Ireland, and it would doubt- 
 
NOTES ON IRELAND. 107 
 
 less be fairly successful if the Irish were children or 
 idiots. Even a Prince, howevei', might pall upon a 
 nation after a few years, and it would then clamour 
 for some new attraction. What the. Irish crave for 
 are realities, not simulacra, and as they are constantly 
 told that they are as much self-governing as the 
 English, seeing they have a common Parliament with 
 a common Sovereign, it is not very unreasonable that 
 they should desire to see occasionally a little of the 
 one and of the other. It is competent for the Sove- 
 reign to convene Parliament in any part of the United 
 Kingdom, and I believe the Minister who has the 
 courage to select College Green as an occasional site 
 for the Legislature would finally settle the Irish ques- 
 tion, and put an end to all agitation deserving the 
 name which had for its object the repeal of the Union. 
 No doubt such a proposal would excite a storm of 
 opposition, especially in London, and would be isro- 
 ductive of considerable personal inconvenience to num- 
 bers of distinguished individuals. But there are a 
 few unpleasant facts which English statesmen must 
 face, and which cannot be got rid of by simply ignor- 
 ing their existence. The attempt recently made to 
 split up the United Kingdom, though unsuccessful, 
 was very far from being an ignominious failure. That 
 it so nearly attained success furnishes matter for 
 serious reflection. That it will be repeated, and pro- 
 bably at no distant date, is certain. The position of 
 parties in the House of Commons is not such as to 
 inspire confidence, and Demos is always unreliable. 
 Commissions of inquiry are most excellent things, but 
 they are not original, and generally lead to nothing. 
 -" Art is long, life is short ; the opportunity is brief, 
 
io8 NOTES ON IRELAND. ,. 
 
 and decision difficult." The opportunity is indeed 
 very brief, and if it is not turned to good account- 
 it may never recur. The sands are running out, 
 and no one knows whose hand may turn the glass 
 next time. Legislation by itself will not stave oif th& 
 peril. Practical concessions must be made to that 
 spirit of nationality, and, I would also add, of loyalty, 
 in Ireland which has been hitherto persistently ignored. 
 If those concessions are made in the direction I have 
 indicated, I am confident that no more will be heard 
 of Irish Home Eule, with what lies behind it — separa- 
 tion and the disruption of the United Kingdom. 
 
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