In Short, "Paddy Anywhere But At Home Is A Splendid
Man, But At Home He Is Worthless."
Mr. Smithwick deplored the present agitation among the people; deplored
it as an agitation got up, not for people's benefit, but to feather the
nests and fill the pockets of agitators.
He informed me that he himself
had to carry a pistol wherever he went. In speaking of rents Mr.
Smithwick informed me that the lands were really rented low; that the
people could pay, and were quite able to pay, were it not for the advice
of agitators; said he was getting no rent at all these years. The total
cessation of rent coming in was a great deprivation to landlords, who
depended on their rents for the means of living.
Mr. Smithwick thought emigration was the remedy for the undeniable
poverty of the country, for if the people got their farms for nothing
they could not make a living out of them, owing to their shiftless
method of farming. I objected that it would be scarcely fair to send
their people, who were so useless and helpless, over to be a burden on
us, but Mr. Smithwick thought that they would soon come in to our ways,
and help themselves, and be not a burden but a help to the community. I
found out in conversation with this gentleman that to reach Ballycroy,
where he lives, I should have come from Ballina. I seem perversely to
take the long way round.
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