Was deliberately shot down by the agent of the property,
expressed his regret that the other had not been also shot. Hardening
the heart I hold to be one of the very apparent effects of the land
system.
Another evil is the encouragement of unutterable meanness; a meanness
that allows rich men to manage to extract under pressure gratuitous work
out of these poor people. No one needs to be told that the Irish peasant
is worse fed, worse clothed, worse housed than any peasant in Europe,
yet gentlemen will take from these gratuitous work, and see so little to
be ashamed of in the transaction as to write about it over their own
signature, as Ernest Cochrane did in the columns of the _Witness_.
I have heard of miles of separating fence being made, in this way, of
walls being built and even of monuments being erected "in memoriam" in
the same way. I was told of a noble lord having brought a gentle
pressure to bear on his Irish tenants to cause them to subscribe over
and above their rents for the benefit of those who were suffering from
an accident in his English collieries.
I have wondered to hear gentlemen, and even clergymen, in Ireland
wishing that the people would rise in rebellion so that there might be
an opportunity of laying the cold steel to them and putting them down
effectually. I have also wondered at the refusal of the authorities to
have the riots in Limerick investigated; surely that does not look like
impartial justice. I have wondered again over the openly avowed purpose
of rooting the people out of the country.
I have looked with great concern and astonishment at the lands already
wasted and almost without inhabitants. I have read with great pain the
Lord Lieutenant's speech at Belfast, aspersing the country as disloyal
and threatening them with greater tyranny. The people are disloyal, to a
system of oppression and absolutism which neither they nor their fathers
were able to bear; but I believe from my heart that they are more loyal
to Her Majesty than their oppressors are, for the system has made them
oppressors. Only notice, from Mr. Smith's evidence at the Land Court
recently, concerning the Enniskillen estate, for which he is agent, it
is proven that even in Protestant Ulster a landlord can abolish the
Ulster custom - the root of Ulster's exceptional prosperity - at the
motion of his own will. In the trials for turbary in the Kiltyclogher
cases a rule made by a landlord in his office overrides even a lease,
and is accepted as _de facto_ law in the court.
These things have convinced me that the exterminating landlords are the
parties who are guilty of high treason against the commonwealth of
England.
