The Price Of These Military And Police,
The Price Of These Special Services Rendered To Unpopular Landlords To
Aid Them In Grinding Down These Wretched People, Spent To Help Them
Would Go Far To Make Prosperity Possible To Them Once More.
If they had
a rent they could pay and live, the millstone of arrears taken from
about their necks, I believe they would become both loyal and contented.
Empty stomachs, bare clothing, lying hard and cold at night through
poverty is trying to loyalty.
The turbary nuisance is the great oppression of all. Want of food is
bad, but want of fuel added to it! Forty years ago renting land meant
getting a bit of bog in with the land. When there is a special charge
for the privilege of cutting turf and the times so hard there is much
additional suffering.
In the famine time people getting relief had to travel for the ticket,
travel to get the meal, and then go to gather whins or heather on the
hills to cook it, and the hungry children waiting all the time. A
respectable person said to me the famine was worst on respectable
people, for looking for the red ticket and carrying it to get meal by it
was like the pains of death.
Wherever I went through Leitrim I saw people, scattered here and there,
gathering twigs for fuel or coming toward home with their burden of
twigs on their backs. I declare I thought often of the Israelites
scattered through the fields of Egypt gathering stubble instead of
straw.
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