"The
Beginning Of Strife Is Like The Letting Out Of Water; Therefore, Leave
Off Contention Before It Be Meddled With."
After I had listened to the farmer's wrongs and heard of others who also
had a complaint to make, I was obliged to think that their case was not
yet so hard as the case of those who suffered from the
_eccentricities_ of Lord Leitrim.
Still, it is a hard case when we
consider that the man's whole life and so much money also sunk in rent,
purchase, improvements, and when unable to pay a rent raised beyond the
possibility of paying, to lose all and begin life again without money or
youth and hope, at sixty years of age. People with exasperated minds are
driven to join the Land League, in hope that union will be strength, and
that ears deaf to petition of right will grant concessions to agitation.
I began to feel afraid that I was hearing too much on one side and too
little on the other, and I requested to be introduced to some who had
ranged themselves on the side of the landlords. I was, as a consequence,
introduced to several gentlemen at different times, but I got no light
on the subject from any of them. They were so very sure that everything
was just as it should be, and nothing short of treason would induce any
one to find fault. Still when the question was asked squarely, "Are
there no reasons for wishing for reform of the land laws?" the answer
was, "We would not go quite so far as that?" There was a vague
acknowledgment that, generally speaking, some reform was needed, and yet
every particular thing was defended as all right on the whole, or not
very far wrong.
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