First, the Government, who administered the
country in a fitful manner, now petting, now coercing, while they should
keep the country steadily under coercion, for alternately petting and
coercing sets parties against one another more than ever. Second,
landlords and agents, who rented land too high and raised the rent on
the tenant's own invested improvements. Third, the priests, who could
repress outrage and reveal crime if they chose to do so. Fourth,
Catholic tenants who took the law into their own hands instead of
patiently waiting for redress by law.
According to this gentleman, the only innocent persons in Ireland were
the Protestant tenantry; so to root out the Catholics and replace them
by Protestants was the only possible way to have peace in the country.
Boycotting he referred to especially as a dangerous thing, which
paralyzed all industry and turned the country into a place governed by
the worst kind of mob law.
Another gentleman of position and experience said that a strike against
paying rent led easily into a strike against paying anything at all;
that society had really become disorganized. Many held back their rents,
which they were well able to pay - had the money by them. The Land League
had done a great deal of harm. At the same time this gentleman confirmed
the Athleague gentleman's statement that rents were raised past the
possibility of the tenant's paying, that eviction was cruel and
persistent, the belief being that large grass farms were the only paying
form of letting land. In fact, he said, he himself had evicted the
tenants on his property on pain of being evicted himself. He held land,
but at such a rent that if living by farming alone he would not be able
to pay it.
He gave some instances of boycotting. One was that travelling in the
neighboring county of Longford he had occasion to get a smith to look at
his horse's shoes, and was asked for his Land League ticket. On saying
he had none, the smith refused to attend to the horse's shoes. Roscommon
had boycotted a Longford man who had taken willow rods to sell because
he had not a Land League ticket, and a Longford smith in reprisal would
not set the shoe on the horse of a Roscommon man unless he had a Land
League ticket. When the gentleman explained that he had bought five
hundred of those same rods from that same man the smith attended to the
horse, and the boycotting was over.
I heard of other cases of boycotting. It is not by any means a new
device, although it has come so prominently before the public lately.
From Roscommon I crossed country past Clara and Tullamore, across King's
county into Portarlington on the borders of Queen's county.
Portarlington is the centre of a beautiful country full of cultivated
farms as well as shut-up and walled-in gentlemen's seats.
