I am more than astonished to find not one intelligent
person to defend the Land laws. There is no possibility of understanding
previous apathy from an American standpoint unless we think of the
thoughtlessness with which the Indians have been treated. The
thoughtless landlord has looked upon his own needs according to the
requirements of his station, not thinking whether the tenant could pay
so much or not, and, whether, if the rent was raised, it left the means
of existence behind. I met with very estimable people, who were taking a
very high rent; higher than any man could honestly pay, and at the same
time laughing at the poverty-stricken devices of their tenants. They did
not think.
It must be borne in mind that there was a famine in the land but a short
time ago, that these thousands and thousands of people who are under
eviction now have no money and no place to go to but the ditch-back, or
the workhouse. The workhouse means the parting with wife and children.
These things must be taken into consideration, to understand the
exasperation of mind which is seething through the whole country.
I do not think the people here, generally speaking, have any idea of the
amount or intensity of hidden feeling. I confess it frightens me. I
stayed in a country place for a week. I boarded with a family who were
much better off than their neighbors. They were favorites at the office
of the landlord, and paid him their rent punctually. I often sat at the
kitchen hearth as neighbor after neighbor came in in the evening and
told in Irish the tale of some hard occurrence that had taken place. I
understood enough to guess the drift of the story. I understood well the
language of eye and clinched hand with which my host listened. The
people who suffered were his people; their woe was his; he felt for them
a sympathy of which the landlord never dreamed; but he never said a
word. I thought as I sat there - silent too - that I would not like to be
that landlord and, in any time of upheaval, lie at the mercy of this
favorite tenant of his.
They talk of agitators moving the people! Agitators could not move them
were it not that they gave voice to what is in the universal heart of
the tenantry.
A gentleman connected with the press said to me to-day: "The fact is
that any outrage, no matter how heart-rending, committed by a landlord
upon his tenantry is taken little notice of - none by Government - but
when a tenant commits an outrage, no matter how great the provocation,
then the whole power of the Government is up to punish."
One great trouble among the people is, they cannot read much, and they
feel intensely; reading matter is too dear, and they are too poor to
educate themselves by reading.
