The Duke Of Abercorn Was Counted
A Model Landlord.
His published utterances were genial, such as a good
landlord, father and protector of his people would utter.
Some one who
thought His Grace of Abercorn was sailing under false colors, that his
public utterances and private course of action were far apart, published
an article in a Dublin paper. This article stated that the Duke had
evicted over 123 families, numbering over 1,000 souls, not for non-
payment of rent, but to create the lordly loneliness about Baronscourt.
His Grace did not like tenantry so near his residence. Those tenants who
submitted quietly got five years' rent - not as a right, but as a favor
given out of his goodness of heart. They tell here that these evictions
involved accidentally the priest of the parish and an old woman over
ninety, who lay on her death-bed. He had called upon the priest
personally and offered ground for a parochial house; he forgot his
purpose and the priest continued to live in lodgings from which he was
evicted along with the farmer with whom he lodged. Of the evicted
families 87 were Catholics and 36 Protestants. If they had been allowed
to sell their tenant right they might have got farms elsewhere. Of those
cleared off seventeen who were Protestants and six who were Catholics
got farms elsewhere from His Grace. Some sank into day laborers, some
vanished, no one knows where.
People here say that the reason why there are Fenians in America and
people inclined to Fenianism at home is owing to these large evictions -
clearances that make farmers into day laborers at the will of the lord
of the land.
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