One thing I forgot to mention: Mr. Corscadden said that the
tenants might raise a couple of pigs or a heifer and pay the rent and
have all the rest to themselves.
I said, "When these bad years ending in one of positive famine have
stripped the poorer tenants bare, and pigs are so dear, where could a
poor man get thirty shillings to buy a sucking pig or buy provender to
feed it?" This is true, the first step is the difficulty. They might do
this, or this, or this, and it would be profitable, but where are the
means to take the first step? It is easy to stand afar off and say, be
economical, be industrious, and you will prosper. In the meantime pay up
the back rent or get out of this and give place to better men. They tell
me that Mr. LaTouche charges the poor creatures interest on all the back
rent. Some who have paid their rent here did not - could not - raise it on
their farms, but got it from friends in America.
Mr. Corscadden asked me in the course of our conversation what I would
consider a fair rent. I said I would consider the rent fair that was
raised on the land for which rent was paid, leaving behind enough to
live on, and something to spare, so that one bad season or two would not
reduce the tenant to beggary.
The fact of the matter is, and I would be false to my own conscience if
I hesitated to say it, these people have been kept drained bare; the
hard years reduced them to helpless poverty, and now the only remedy is
to get rid of them altogether. 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.
