As to the general effect of all this business upon the tenants, and upon himself, Mr. Ponsonby spoke most feelingly. “The tenants are ruined where they might have been thriving. My means of being useful to them or to myself are taken away. My charges, though, all remain. I have to pay tithes for Protestant Church service, of which I can’t have the benefit, the churches being closed; and the other day I had a notice that any property I had in England would be held liable for quit-rents to the Crown on my property in Ireland, of which the Government denies me practically any control or use!”
In the London Times of September 15 appears the following letter from the Land Agent whom I saw at Glenbehy, setting forth the effect of this “Glenbehy Eviction Fund” upon the morals of the tenants and the peace of the place:—
To the Editor of the Times.
“Sir,—Although nearly eighteen months have elapsed since the evictions on the Glenbehy estate, after which the above- named fund was started and largely subscribed to by the sympathetic British public, I think it only fair to throw a little light on the manner in which this fund has been expended, and the effects which are still felt in consequence of the money not yet being exhausted.
“It was generally supposed that the tenants then evicted were in such poor circumstances as to be unable to settle, whereas, as a matter of fact, they were, and are, with a few exceptions, the most well-to-do on the estate, having, for the most part, from five to fifteen head of cattle, in addition to sheep, pigs, etc.
“Among the tenants evicted at that time many had not paid rents since 1879, and had been in illegal occupation since 1884, from which latter date the landlord was responsible for taxes, provided it is proved that sufficient distress cannot be made of the lands. These tenants were offered a clear receipt to May 1, 1886, if they paid half a year’s rent, which would scarcely have paid the cost of proceedings, and the landlord would therefore have been put to actual loss. These people, though well able to settle, are given to understand that as soon as they do so their participation in the eviction fund will cease, and thus it will be seen that a direct premium is being paid to dishonesty.
“In one case a widow woman was summoned for being on the farm from which she was at that time evicted. Finding out that one of her children was ill, I applied to the magistrate at the hearing of the case only to impose a nominal fine. In consequence she was fined one penny, but sooner than pay this she went to gaol, though she had several head of cattle and, prior to her eviction, a very nice farm. The case of this woman fairly illustrates the combination which has existed to avoid the fulfilment of obligations.
“The amount of fines paid for similar offences comes, in several instances, to nearly what I require to effect a settlement. Some of the tenants actually wrote to the late agent on this estate begging him to evict them in order that they might come in for a share of the money raised for the relief of distress, and this clearly shows beyond dispute that the well-meaning subscribers to the fund will be more or less responsible for any further evictions to which it may be necessary to resort. I may mention that the parish priest is one of the trustees for the money which is thus being used for the purpose of preventing settlements and keeping the place in a continual state of turmoil.
“Judge Currane, at the January sessions held at Killarney this year, ruled in about fifty ejectment cases on this estate that tenants owing one and a half to nine years’ rent should pay half a year’s rent and costs within a week, a quarter of a year’s rent by June 1, and a quarter of a year’s rent by October 1; arrears to be cancelled. Some of these, owing to non-compliance with the Judge’s ruling, may have to be evicted, and their eviction will be what is termed the unrooting of peasants’ houses and the ejectment of overburdened tenants for not paying impossible rents.
“I confess I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Parnell’s Arrears Act would have improved matters or have averted what one of your contemporaries calls a “painful scandal.”—I am, Sirs, yours, &c.,
“D. TODD-THORNTON, J.P., Land Agent.
“Glenbehy, Killarney.”
I fear that all the “Nationalist” clergy in Ireland are not as careful as Father Keller to avoid giving occasion for this impression that Irish autonomy would be followed by a persecution of the Protestants. But a little more than three years ago, for example, the following circular was issued by the Bishop of Ossory, and affixed to the door of the churches in his diocese. Who can wonder that it should have been regarded by Protestants in that diocese as a direct stirring up of bitter religious animosities against them? Or that, emanating directly as it did from a bishop of the Church, it should be represented as emanating indirectly from the Head of the Church himself at Rome?
“Kilkenny, April 16th, 1885.
“REV. DEAR SIR,—May I ask you to read the following circular for the people at each of the Masses on Sunday, 19th April?
“The course to be adopted for the future by the Priest of the Parish to whom notice of a Mixed Marriage is given by the Minister, or the Registrar, is as follows:—he makes the following entry on the book of Parochial announcements, and reads it three consecutive Sundays from the Altar:—
“‘The Priests of the Parish have received the following notice of a marriage to be celebrated between a Catholic and a Protestant. [Here read Registrar’s notice in full.] We have now to inform you that the law of the Catholic Church regarding such marriages is: that the Catholic party contracting marriage before a Registrar or other unauthorised person is, by the very fact of so doing, Excommunicated; and the witnesses to such marriage are also Excommunicated.’
“I should be very much obliged if, as occasion may require, you would explain the effects of this Excommunication from the Altar.
“You will please take notice that the Registrar or Minister is bound legally to send the notice of marriage referred to above, and also, that in reading it out in the form, and with the accompanying remarks above, you incur no legal penalty.
“I feel sure that with your accustomed zeal you will do everything in your power to prevent abuses in regard to the Sacrament of Matrimony, which is great in Christ and the Church, and to induce the faithful to prepare for receiving it by Prayer, by works of Charity, and by approaching the Sacrament of Penance to purify their souls.—Yours faithfully in Christ,
[Image: Cross] A. BROWNRIGG.”
“MY DEAR BRETHREN,—We have been very much pained to learn, within the past month, that marriages between Catholics and non-Catholics have increased very much in this city of Kilkenny. Many evil-disposed persons, utterly unmindful of the prohibitions of the Church, and regardless of the dreadful consequences they bring on themselves, have not hesitated to enter into those unholy matrimonial alliances called “Mixed Marriages,” which the Catholic Church has always hated and detested. Those misguided Catholics, who do not deserve the name, have not blushed to go, in some instances, before the Protestant Minister, in other instances, before the Public Registrar, to ask them to assist at their marriage with a Protestant. By contracting marriage in this way, they run a great risk of bringing on themselves and on their children, should they have any, the maledictions of Heaven instead of the blessings of religion. In order to put a stop to this growing abuse, and to prevent it from spreading like a contagion to other parts of the Diocese, we beg to remind the faithful of certain regulations which, for the future, shall have force in the Diocese of Ossory in reference to the Catholics, who so far forget themselves as to contract such marriages.
“1. In the first place, any one who contracts a “Mixed Marriage” without a dispensation from the Holy See and before a Protestant Minister or a Registrar is, by the very fact, guilty of a most grievous mortal sin by violating a solemn law of the Church in a most grave matter.
“2. The Catholic who assists as witness at such marriage also commits a most grievous sin by co-operating in an unlawful act.
“3. Both the Catholic party contracting the marriage and the Catholic witnesses to it cannot be absolved by any priest in the Diocese of Ossory, unless by the Bishop or by those to whom he grants special faculties.
“4. In order more effectually to deter people from entering into those detestable marriages, the penalty of Excommunication is hereby attached to that sin both for the Catholic contracting party as also for the Catholic witnesses to such marriage.
“5. The notice which the Protestant Rector or the Registrar is legally bound in such cases to send to the Parish Priest of the Catholic party, will be read from the Altar for three consecutive Sundays, and thus the crime of the offending party brought out into open light before his or her fellow-parishioners.
“6. For the rest, we hope the sense of decency and religion of the Catholic people and their Pastors shall be no more hurt by any Catholic entering into those marriages, so full of, misery and evil of every kind for themselves, their children, and society at large.—Yours faithfully in Christ,
[Image: Cross] ABRAHAM, Bishop of Ossory.
Since the first edition of this book was published certain “evictions” mentioned in it as impending on the Clanricarde estates have been carried out. I have no reason to suppose that there was more or less reason for carrying out these evictions than there usually is, not in Ireland only, but all over the civilised world, for a resort by the legal owners of property to legal means of recovering the possession of it from persons who fail to comply with the terms on which it was put into their keeping. Whether this failure results from dishonesty or from misfortune is a consideration not often allowed, I think, to affect the right of the legal owner of the property concerned to his legal remedy in any other country but Ireland, nor even in Ireland in the case of any property other than property in land. But as what I learned on the spot touching the general condition of the Clanricarde tenants, and touching the conduct and character of Lord Clanricarde’s agent, Mr. Tener, led me to take a special interest in these evictions, I asked him to send me some account of them. In reply he gave me a number of interesting details.
The only serious attempt at resisting the execution of the law was made by “Dr.” Tully, one of the leading local “agitators,” to the tendency of whose harangues judicial reference was made during the investigation into the case of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Tully had a holding of seventeen acres at a rent of £2, 10s., the Government valuation being £4. He earned a good livelihood as a boat-builder, and he had put up a slated house on his holding. But in November 1884 he chose to stop paying the very low rent at which he held his place, and he has paid no rent since that time. As is stated in a footnote on page 153, vol. ii. of this book, a decree was granted against Tully by Judge Henn for three years’ rent due in May 1887, and his equity of redemption having expired July 9, 1888, this recourse was had to the law against him.
As the leading spirit of the agitation, Tully had put a garrison into his house of twelve men and two women. He had dug a ditch around it, taken out the window-sashes, filled up the casements and the doorways with stones and trunks of trees. Portholes had been pierced under the roof, through which the defenders might thrust red-hot pikes, pitchforks, and other weapons, and empty pails of boiling water upon the assailants. A brief parley took place. Tully refused to make any offer of a settlement unless the agent would agree to reinstate all the evicted tenants, to which Mr. Tener replied that he would recognise no “combination,” but was ready to deal with every tenant fairly and individually. Finally the Sheriff ordered his men to take the place. Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman testudo, worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the roof and began to break in from above. In their excitement the garrison helped this forward by breaking holes through the roof themselves to get at the attacking party, and in about twenty minutes the fortress was captured, and the inmates were prisoners. Two constables were burned by the red-hot pikes, the gun of another was broken to pieces by a huge stone, and a fourth was slightly wounded by a fork. One of the defenders got a sword-cut; and Tully was brought forth as one too severely wounded to walk. Upon investigation, however, the surgeon refused to certify that he was unable to undergo the ordinary imprisonment in such cases made and provided.
The collapse of the resistance at this central point was followed by a general surrender.
After the capture of Tully’s house, Mr. Tener writes to me, “I found it being gutted by his family, who would have carried it away piecemeal. They had already taken away the flooring of one of the rooms.” Thereupon Mr. Tener had the house pulled down, with the result of seeing a statement made in a leading Nationalist paper that he was “evicting the tenants and pulling down their houses.”
“Yesterday,” Mr. Tener writes to me on the 9th of September, “I walked twenty-five miles, visiting thirty farms about Portumna. Except in two or three cases, the tenants have ample means, and part of the live stock alone on the farms, exclusive of the crops, would suffice to pay all the rents I had demanded. On the farms recently ‘evicted,’ I found treble the amount of the rent due in live stock alone.”
As to one case of these recent evictions, I found it stated in an Irish journal that a young man, who had been ill of consumption for two years, the son of a tenant, was removed from the house, the local physician refusing to certify that he was unfit for removal, and that he died a few days afterwards. The implication was obvious, and I asked Mr. Tener for the facts.
He replied, “This young man, John Fahey, was in consumption, but did not appear to be in any danger. Dr. Carte, an Army surgeon, examined him, and said there was no immediate danger. The day was fine and he walked about wrapped in a comfortable coat, and talked with me and others. His father, a respectable man, made no attempt to defend his house; and at his request, after the crowd had gone away, my man in charge permitted the invalid and the family to reoccupy the house temporarily because of his illness. There was no inquest, and no need of any, after his death. His father, Patrick Fahey, had means to pay, but told me he ‘could not,’ which meant he ‘dared not.’ I went to him personally twice, and sent him many messages. But the terror of the League was upon the poor man.
“An interesting case is that of Michael Fahey, of Dooras. In 1883 his rent was judicially reduced about 5 per cent., from £33 to £31, 5s. His house and all about it is substantial and comfortable. His father, about thirty years ago, fought for a whole night and bravely beat off a party of ‘Terry-Alts,’ the ‘Moonlighters’ of that day. For his courage the Government presented him with a gun, of which the son is very proud. Pity he did not inherit the pluck with the gun of his parent!
“I had been privately told that this tenant would pay; but that he would first produce a doctor’s certificate that his old mother could not be moved. He did give the Sheriff a carefully worded document to show this, but it was so vague that I objected to its being received by the Sheriff. Upon this (not before! mark the craft of even a well-disposed Irish tenant in those evil days), I was asked to go into the house. I went in and entered the parlour. There the tenant told me he would pay the year’s rent and the costs, amounting to £50. He had risen from his seat to fetch the money, when, lo! Father Egan (the priest upon whose head the widow of the murdered Finlay called down the curse of God in the open street of Woodford) appeared in the doorway. He had come in on a pretence of seeing the old mother of the tenant, who had (for that occasion) taken to her bed. The bedroom lay beyond the parlour, and was entered from it. The tenant actually shook with fear as Father Egan passed through, and I thought all hope of a settlement gone, when suddenly the officer of the police came in, passed into the bedroom, and told Father Egan he must withdraw. This Father Egan refused to do, whereupon the officer said very quietly, ‘I shall remove you forthwith if you do not go out quietly.’ Upon this Father Egan hastily left. The tenant then went into the bedroom and soon reappeared with the £50 in bank-notes, which he paid me. All this was dramatic enough. But the comedy was next performed in front of the house, where all could see it, of handing to the Sheriff the alleged doctor’s certificate, and of my saying aloud that ‘in the circumstances’ I had no objection to his receiving it! After this all the forces proceeded to take their luncheon on the green bank sloping down to the Shannon in front of the farm-house. There is a fine orchard on the place, and it recalled to me some of the farms I saw in Virginia.
“I had gone into the house again, and was standing near the fire in the kitchen, where some of my escort were taking their luncheon. It is a large kitchen, and perhaps a dozen people were in it, when in came Father Egan again and called to the tenant Fahey, ‘Put out those policemen, and do not suffer one of them to remain.’
“The sergeant instantly said, ‘We are here on duty, Father Egan, and if you dare to try to intimidate this tenant, I shall either put you out or arrest you.’
“‘Yes,’ I interposed, looking at the sergeant, ‘you are certainly here on duty, and in the name of the law, and it is sad to see a clergyman here in the interest of an illegal, criminal, and rebellious movement, and of the immoral Plan of Campaign.’
“‘Oh!’ exclaimed Father Egan, ‘the opinion of the agent of the Marquis of Clanricarde is valuable, truly!’
“‘I give you,’ I said, ‘not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Healy and Dr. O’Dwyer, bishops of your Church, and men worthy of all respect and reverence. And I am sorry to know that some ecclesiastics deserve no respect, but that at their doors lies the main responsibility for the misery and the crime which afflict our unhappy country. I feel sure a just God will punish them in due time.’
“Father Egan made no reply, but paused a moment, and then walked out of the house.
“At the next house, that of Dennis Fahey, we found a still better dwelling. Here we had another mock certificate, but we received the rent with the costs.”
The following official account sent to me (July 24) of an affair in Donegal, the result of the gospel of “Boycotting” taught in that region, needs and will bear no comment.
Patrick Cavanagh came to reside at Clonmany, County Donegal, about two months ago, as caretaker on some evicted farms. He died on Wednesday evening, June 20th, having received the full rites of the Roman Catholic Church. The people had displayed no ill-will towards him during his brief residence at Clonmany, and on the evening of his death his body was washed and laid out by some women. On Thursday two townsmen dug his grave, where pointed out by Father Doherty, P.P.
The first symptom of change of feeling was that on Thursday every carpenter applied to had some excuse for not making a coffin for the body of deceased. On Friday morning the grave was found to be filled with stones, and a deputation waited on Father Doherty to protest against Cavanagh’s burial in the chapel graveyard. He told them to go home and mind their business. About 10.30 A.M. on Friday the chapel bell was rung—not tolled or rung as for service, but faster. The local sergeant of police went to the cemetery; when he arrived there the tolling ceased. He then went to Father Doherty, who told those present that their conduct was such as to render them unfit for residence anywhere but in a savage country. He told them to go to their homes, and advised them to allow the corpse to be buried in the grave he had marked out. After Father Doherty had left, the people condemned his interference, and said they would not allow any stranger to be buried in the graveyard. When Constable Brady put it to those present that their real objection did not lie in the fact that Cavanagh had been a stranger, he was not contradicted.
The body was ultimately buried at Carndonagh on Saturday, several people remaining in the graveyard at Clonmany all through the night (Friday) till the body was taken to Carndonagh for burial.
At Carndonagh Petty Sessions, on the 18th July 1888, Con. Doherty and Owen Doherty, with five others, were prosecuted for unlawful assembly on the occasion above referred to. The first two named, who were the ringleaders, were convicted, and sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment each with hard labour; the charges against the remainder were dismissed.
As the Post-Office Savings Banks represent the smaller depositors, and command special confidence among them even in the disturbed districts, I print here an official statement showing the balances due to depositors in the undermentioned offices, situated in certain of the most disturbed regions I visited, on the 31st December of the years 1880 and 1887 respectively:—
| OFFICE | 1880 | 1887 |
| £ s. d. | £ s. d. | |
| Bunbeg | 1,270 6 7 | 1,206 18 2 |
| Falcarragh | 62 15 10 | 494 10 8 |
| Gorey | 3,690 14 4 | 5,099 5 7 |
| Inch | [A] 8 11 0 | 209 7 5 |
| Killorglin | 282 15 9 | 1,299 2 6 |
| Loughrea | 5,500 19 9 | 6,311 4 11 |
| Mitchelstown | 1,387 13 2 | 2,846 9 3 |
| Portumna | 2,539 10 11 | 3,376 5 4 |
| Sixmilebridge | 382 17 10 | 934 13 4 |
| Stradbally | 1,812 14 8 | 2,178 18 2 |
| Woodford | 259 14 6 | 1,350 17 11 |
| Youghal | 3,031 0 7 | 7,038 7 2 |
[A] This Office was not opened for Savings Bank business until the year 1881, the amount shown being balance due on the 31st December 1882.
It appears from this table that the deposits in these Savings Banks increased in the aggregate from £20,329, 15s. 11d. in 1880 to £32,347, 9s. 7d. in 1887, or almost 60 per cent, in seven years. They fell off in only one case, at Bunbeg, and there only to a nominal amount. At Youghal they much more than doubled, increasing about 133 per cent. Yet in all these places the Plan of Campaign has been invoked “because the people were penniless and could not pay their debts!”
Captain Hamilton sends me the following graphic account of this affair at Coolgreany:—
In the Freeman’s Journal of the 16th December 1886, it is reported that a meeting of the Brooke tenantry, the Rev. P. O’Neill in the chair, was held at Coolgreany on the Sunday previous to the 15th December 1886, the date on which the “Plan of Campaign” was adopted on the estate, at which it was resolved that if I refused the terms offered they would join the “Plan.”
I had no conference at Freeman’s house or anywhere else at any time with two parish priests. On the 15th December 1886, when seated in Freeman’s house waiting to receive the rents, four priests, a reporter of the Freeman’s Journal, some local reporters, and four of the tenants rushed into the room; and the priests in the rudest possible manner (the Rev. P. Farrelly, one of them, calling me “Francy Hyne’s hangman,” and other terms of abuse) informed me that unless I re-instated a former Roman Catholic tenant in a farm which he had previously held, and which was then let to a Protestant, and gave an abatement of 30 per cent., no rent would be paid me that day. Dr. Dillon, C.C., was not present on this occasion, or, if so, I do not remember seeing him.
On my asking if I had no alternative but to concede to their demand, the Rev. Mr. Dunphy, parish priest, replied, “None other; do not think, sir, we have come here to-day to do honour to you.”
The Rev. P. O’Neill spoke as he always does, in a more gentlemanly and conciliatory manner, and I therefore, as the confusion in the room was great, offered to discuss the matter with him, the Rev. O’Donel, C.C., and the tenants, if the other priests, who were strangers to me, and the reporters would leave the room. This the Rev. Mr. Dunphy declared they would not do, and I accordingly refused further to discuss the matter.
After they left the house, one of the tenants, Mick Darcy, stepped forward and said, “Settle with us, Captain.” I replied, “Certainly, if you come back with me into the house.” The Rev. Mr. Dunphy took him by the collar of his coat and threw him against the wall of the house, then turning to me with his hand raised said, “You shall not do so; we, who claim the temporal as well as spiritual power over you as well as these poor creatures, will settle this matter with you.”
The tenants were then taken down to the League rooms, where two M.P.s, Sir Thomas Esmonde and Mr. Mayne, were waiting to receive the rents, which, one by one, they were ordered in to pay into the war-chest of the “Plan of Campaign.”
I have I fear written too much of this commencement of the war on the estate which has since led to over seventy of the tenants and their families being ejected, and has brought ruin on nearly all who joined it. I have considerable experience as a land agent, but I know of no estate where the tenants were more respectable, better housed, or, as a body, in better circumstances than on the Brooke estate. They had a kind, indulgent landlord, and they knew it; and nothing but the belief that, led by their clergy, they were foremost in a battle fighting for their country and religion, would have induced them to put up with the great hardships and loss they have undoubtedly had to suffer.
The following entry I take from the Expense-Book of the Duke of Ormond, under date of August 23, 1711:—
In the first edition of this book I credited Mr. O’Leary with making this pungent remark about figs and grapes, because I found it jotted down in my original memoranda as coming from him. In a private note he assures me that he does not think it was made by him, and though this does not agree with my own recollection, I defer, of course, to his impression. And this I do the more readily that it affords me an opportunity for printing the following very characteristic and interesting letter sent to me by him for publication should I think fit to use it.
As the most important support given by the Irish in America to the Nationalists is solicited by their agents on the express ground that they are really labouring to establish an Irish Republic, this outspoken declaration of Mr. O’Leary, that he does not believe they “expect or desire” the establishment of an Irish Republic, will be of interest on my side of the water:—
“DUBLIN, Sept. 9, ’88.
“My Dear Sir,—I am giving more bother about what you make me say in your book than the thing is probably worth, especially seeing that what you say about me and my present attitude towards men and things here is almost entirely correct.
“It is proverbially hard to prove a negative, and my main reason for believing I did not say the thing about figs and grapes is that I never could remember the whole of any proverb in conversation; but I am absolutely certain I never said that ‘some of them (the National Leaguers) expect to found an Irish republic on robbery, and to administer it by falsehood. We don’t.’ Most certainly I do not expect to found anything on robbery, or administer anything by falsehood, but I do not in the least believe that the National League either expects or desires to found an Irish republic at all! Neither do I believe that the Leaguers will long retain the administration of such small measure of Home Rule, as I now (since the late utterances of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone) believe we are going to get. My fault with the present people is not that they are looking, or mean to look, for too much, but that they may be induced, by pressure from their English Radical allies, to be content with too little. It is only a large and liberal measure of Home Rule which will ever satisfy the Irish people, and I fear that, if the smaller fry of Radical M.P.’s are allowed to have a strong voice in a matter of which they know next to nothing, the settlement of the Irish question will be indefinitely postponed.—I remain, faithfully yours,
“JOHN O’LEARY.”
This case of Mr. Taylor is worth preserving in extenso as an illustration of that spirit in the Irish journalism of the day, against which Mr. Rolleston and his friends protest as fatal to independence, manliness, and truth. I simply cite the original attack made upon Mr. Taylor, the replies made by himself and his friends, and the comments made upon those replies by the journal which assailed him. They all tell their own story.
(UNITED IRELAND, JUNE 16.)
Mr. John F. Taylor owes everything he has or is to the Irish National Party; nor is he slow to confess it where the acknowledgment will serve his personal interests. His sneers are all anonymous, and, like Mr. Fagg, the grateful and deferential valet in The Rivals, “it hurts his conscience to be found out.” There is no honesty or sincerity in the man. His covert gibes are the spiteful emanation of personal disappointment; his lofty morality is a cloak for unscrupulous self-seeking. He has always shown himself ready to say anything or do anything that may serve his own interests. In the general election of 1885 he made frantic efforts to get into Parliament as a member of the Irish Party. He ghosted every member of the party whose influence he thought might help him—notably the two men, Mr. Dillon and Mr. O’Brien, at whom he now sneers, as he fondly believes, in the safe seclusion of an anonymous letter of an English newspaper. During the period of probation his hand was incessant on Mr. Dillon’s door-knocker. The most earnest supplications were not spared. All in vain. Either his character or his ability failed to satisfy the Irish leader, and his claim was summarily rejected. Since then his wounded vanity has found vent in spiteful calumny of almost every member of the Irish Party—whenever he found malice a luxury that could be safely indulged in.
“His next step was a startling one. We have absolute reason to know, when the last Coercion Act was in full swing, this pure-souled and disinterested patriot begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion Government. As was wittily said at the time, he sold his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that stirred the mess. Strong pressure was brought to bear on him, and he was induced for his own sake, after many protests and with much reluctance, to publicly refuse the office he had already privately accepted. Mr. Taylor professes to model himself on Robert Emmet and Thomas Davis; it is hard to realise Thomas Davis or Robert Emmet as a Coercion Crown Prosecutor in the pay of Dublin Castle. Since then there has been no more persistent caviller at the Irish policy and the Irish Party in company where he believed such cavilling paid. When Home Rule was proposed by Mr. Gladstone, he had a thousand foolish sneers for the measure and its author. When the Bill was defeated, he elected Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. T.W. Russell as the gods of his idolatry. Such a nature needs a patron, and Mr. Webb, Q.C., the Tory County Court Judge who doubled the sentence on Father M‘Fadden, was the patron to be selected. It is shrewdly suspected that he supplied most of the misguiding information for Dr. Webb’s coercion pamphlet, and it is probable that Dr. Webb gives him a lift with his weekly letter to the Manchester Guardian.
(UNITED IRELAND, JUNE 23.)
MR. JOHN F. TAYLOR.
To the Editor of “United Ireland.”
Sir,—You would not, I am sure, allow intentional misstatements to appear in your columns, and I ask you to allow me space to correct three erroneous observations made about myself in your current issue—
1. The first statement is to the effect that I owe everything I have, or that I am, to the Irish National Party. I owe absolutely nothing to the Irish Party, except an attempt to boycott me on my circuit, which, fortunately for me, has failed.
2. The second is to the effect that I made “frantic efforts” (these are the words, I think) to enter Parliament, and besieged Mr. Dillon’s house during the time when candidates were being chosen. I saw Mr. Dillon exactly twice, both occasions at Mr. Davitt’s request. Mr. Davitt urged me to allow my name to go forward as a candidate, and it was at his wish and solicitation that I saw Mr. Dillon.
3. It is further said that I begged a Crown Prosecutorship. Fortunately, Mr. Walker and The M‘Dermot are living men, and they know this to be absolutely untrue. I was offered such an appointment, and, contrary to my own judgment, I allowed myself to be guided by Mr. Davitt, who thought the matter would be misunderstood in the state of things then existing. I believe I am the only person that ever declined such an offer.
As to general statements, these are of no importance, and I shall not trouble you about them.—Yours very truly,
JOHN F. TAYLOR.
P.S.—The introduction of Dr. Webb’s name was a gratuitous outrage, Dr. Webb and I never assisted each other in anything except in the defence of P.N. Fitzgerald. J.F.T.
To the Editor of “United Ireland.”
Dear Sir,—As my name has been introduced into the controversy between yourself and Mr. Taylor, I feel called upon to substantiate the two statements wherein my name occurs in Mr. Taylor’s letter of last week. It was at my request that he called upon Mr. John Dillon, M.P. I think I accompanied him on the occasion, and unless my memory is very much at fault, Mr. Dillon was not unfriendly to Mr. Taylor’s proposed candidature. This visit occurred some three months after Mr. Taylor had, on my advice, declined the Crown Prosecutorship for King’s County, a post afterwards applied for by and granted to a near relative of one of the most prominent members of the Irish Party. With Mr. Taylor’s general views on the present situation, or opinions upon parties or men, I have no concern. But, in so far as the circumstances related above are dealt with in your issue of last week, I think an unjust imputation has been made against him, and in the interests of truth and fair play I feel called upon to adduce the testimony of facts as they occurred.—Yours truly,
MICHAEL DAVITT.
Ballybrack, Co. Dublin,
June 19, 1888.
To the Editor of “United Ireland.”
Sir,—As this is, I believe, the first time I have sought to intrude upon your columns, I hope you will allow me some slight space in the interests of fair-play and freedom of speech. Those interests seem to me to have been quite set at naught in the attack, or rather series of attacks, upon Mr. Taylor in your last issue. Mr. Taylor’s views upon many matters are not mine. He is far more democratic in his opinions than I see any sufficient reason for being, and he is very much more of what is called a land reformer than I am; but on an acquaintance of some years I have ever found him an honourable and high-minded gentleman, and as good a Nationalist, from my point of view, as most of the members of the Irish Parliamentary Party whom I either know or know of. Of some of the charges made against Mr. Taylor, such as the seeking for Crown Prosecutorships and the like, I am in no position to speak, save from my knowledge of his character, but I understand Mr. Davitt knows all about these things, and I suppose he will tell what he knows. But of the main matter, and I think the chief cause of your ire, I am quite in a position to speak. I have read at least a score of Mr. Taylor’s letters to the Manchester Guardian, and I have always found them very intelligently written, and invariably characterised by a spirit of fairness and moderation; indeed, the chief fault I found with them was that they took too favourable a view of the motives, if not the acts, of many of our public men, but notably of Messrs. Dillon and O’Brien. You may, of course, fairly say that I am not the best judge of either the acts or the motives of these gentlemen, and I freely grant you that I may not, for my way of looking upon the Irish question is quite other than theirs; but what I must be excused for holding is that both I and Mr. Taylor have quite as good a right to our opinions as either of these gentlemen, or as any other member of the Irish Parliamentary Party. But this is the very last right that people are inclined to grant to each other in Ireland just now. Personally I care very little for this, but for Ireland’s sake I care much. Some twenty years ago or so I was sent into penal servitude with the almost entire approval, expressed or implied, of the Irish Press. Some short time after the same Press found out that I and my friends had not sinned so grievously in striving to free Ireland. But men and times and things may change again, and, though I am growing old, I hope still to live long enough to be forgiven for my imperfect appreciation of the blessings of Boycotting, and the Plan of Campaign, and many similar blessings. It matters little indeed how or when I die, so that Ireland lives, but her life can only be a living death if Irishmen are not free to say what they believe, and to act as they deem right.—Your obedient servant,
JOHN O’LEARY.
June 18, 1888.
To the Editor of “United Ireland.”
Dear Sir,—I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutorship in 1885. I happen to know the precise facts. Mr. Taylor was offered the Crown Prosecutorship of the King’s County, and some of us strongly advised him to accept it. There were no political prosecutions impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act. I know that a similar view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, and many others. However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until Mr. Davitt was consulted. I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in Ireland. This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who now holds it.—Faithfully yours,
JAMES A. POOLE.
29 Harcourt Street.
EDITORIAL NOTE.
“United Ireland,” June 23.
We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently organised defence of Mr. J.F. Taylor and his friends, and we are quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our comments. When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the enthusiasm of the Liarish Times, it was high time to intimate to the Manchester Guardian the source from which its Irish information is derived. The case against Mr. Taylor as a criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by Mr. John O’Leary. The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. O’Leary’s querulous complaints as an homme incompris. So far as we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and things savours of neglect. His idea of toleration with respect to others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable service in the Irish cause.
The following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the Irish Times of February 27, 1888.
“In the Court of Queen’s Bench, on Saturday, the Lord Chief-Justice (Sir Michael Morris, Bart.), Mr. Justice O’Brien, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. Justice Gibson presiding, judgment was delivered in the case of Ellen Gaffney. The original motion was to quash the verdict of a coroner’s jury held at Philipstown on August 27th and September 1st last, on the body of a child named Mary Anne Gaffney.
“The Lord Chief-Justice said it appeared that Mary Anne Gaffney, the child on whose body the inquest was held, was born on the 23d July, and that she died on the 25th August, 1887. A Dr. Clarke, who had been very much referred to in the course of the proceedings, called upon the local sergeant of the police, and directed his attention to the body, but the sergeant having inspected the body, came to the conclusion that there was no need for an inquest. The doctor considered differently, and the sergeant communicated with the Coroner on the 26th August, and on the next day that gentleman arrived in Philipstown. He had a conference there with Dr. Clarke and with a reverend gentleman named Father Bergin, and subsequently proceeded to hold an inquest upon the child in a public-house—a most appropriate place apparently for the transactions which afterwards occurred there. The investigation, if it might be so called, was proceeded with upon that 27th of August. Very strong affidavits had been made on the part of Mrs. Gaffney—who applied to have the inquisition quashed—her husband, and some of the constabulary authorities as to the line of conduct pursued upon that occasion. Ellen Gaffney and her husband were taken into custody on the day the inquest opened by the verbal direction of the Coroner, who refused to complete the depositions given by the former on the ground that she was not sworn. That did not take him out of the difficulty, for if she was not sworn she had a right to be sworn, and the Coroner had no right to prevent her. The inquest was resumed on the 1st September in the court-house at Philipstown—the proper place—and a curious letter was read from the Coroner, the effect of which was that he did not consider that there was any ground for detaining the man Gaffney in custody, but the woman was brought before a justice of the peace and committed for trial. She was in prison from August 27th until the month of December, when the lucky accident of a winter assize occurred, else she might be there still. At the adjourned inquest the Coroner proceeded to read over the depositions taken on the former day, and it was sworn by four witnesses, whom he (the Lord Chief-Justice) entirely credited, that the Coroner read these depositions as if they were originals, whereas an unprecedented transaction had occurred. The Coroner had given the original depositions out of his own custody, and given them to a reverend gentleman who was rather careless of them, as was shown by the evidence of a witness named Greene, who deposed that he saw a car on the road upon which sat two clergymen, and he found on the road the original depositions which, presumably, one of the clergymen had dropped. The depositions were handed to a magistrate and afterwards returned to the police at Philipstown, who had possession of them on the resumption of the inquest. If the case stood alone there it was difficult to understand how a Coroner could come into court and appear by counsel to resist the quashing of an inquisition in regard to which at the very door such gross personal misconduct was demonstrated. No doubt, he said, he did not read them as originals but as copies, and it was strange, that being so, that he did not inform the jury of what had become of them, and he complained now of not being told by the police of their recovery—not told of his own misconduct. On the 1st September, Ellen Gaffney applied by a solicitor—Mr. Disdall, and as a set-off the Coroner permitted a gentleman named O’Kearney Whyte to appear—for whom? Was it for the constituted authorities or for the next-of-kin? No, but for the Rev. Father Bergin, who was described as president of the local branch of the National League, and the Coroner (Mr. Gowing) alleged as the reason why he allowed him to appear and cross-examine the witnesses and address the jury and give him the right of reply like Crown counsel was, that Ellen Gaffney stated that she had been so much annoyed by Father Bergin that she attributed the loss of her child to him—that it was he who had murdered the child. It was asserted that Father Bergin sat on the bench with the Coroner and interfered during the conduct of the inquest, and having to give some explanation of that Mr. Gowing’s version was certainly a most amusing one. He said it was the habit to invite to a seat on the bench people of a respectable position in life—which, of course, a clergyman should be in—and that he asked Father Bergin to sit beside him in that capacity. But see the dilemma the Coroner put himself in. According to his own statement he had previously allowed this reverend gentleman to interfere, and to be represented by a solicitor because he was incriminated, inculpated, or accused, and it certainly was not customary to invite any one so situated to occupy a seat on the bench. He (the Lord Chief Baron) did not believe that Father Bergin was incriminated in any way, but that was the Coroner’s allegation, and such was his peculiar action thereafter. The Coroner further stated that no matter whether he read the originals or the copies of the first day’s depositions, it was on the evidence of September 1st that the jury acted. If that was so he placed himself in a further dilemma, for there was no evidence before the jury at all on the second day upon which they could bring a verdict against Ellen Gaffney. In regard to the recording and announcing of the verdict it appeared that the jury were 19 in number, and after their deliberations the foreman declared that 13 were for finding a verdict one way and 6 for another; that Mr. Whyte dictated the verdict to the Coroner, and the Coroner asked the 13 men if that was what they agreed to. Mr. Whyte’s statement was that the jury, through the foreman, stated what their verdict was; that he wrote it down, and that the Coroner asked him for what he had written, and used it himself. But in addition to that, when the jury came in the Coroner and Mr. Whyte divided them—placed them apart while the verdict was being written—and then said to the 13 men, “Is that what you agree to?” Such apparent misconduct it was hardly possible to conceive in anybody occupying a judicial position as did the Coroner, and especially a Coroner who had an inquisition quashed before. What he had mentioned was sufficient to call forth the emphatic decision of the court quashing the proceedings, which, however, were also impeached on the grounds of its insufficiency and irregularity, and of the character of the finding itself. It was not until the Coroner had been threatened with the consequences of his contempt that he made a return to the visit of certiorari, and it was then found that out of ten so-called depositions only one contained any signature—that of Dr. Clarke’s, which was one of those lost by the clergyman, and not before the jury on the 1st September. He (the Lord Chief-Justice) had tried to read the documents, but in vain—they were of such a scrawling and scribbling character, but, as he had said, all were incomplete and utterly worthless except the one which was not properly before the jury. Then, what was the finding on this inquisition, which should have been substantially as perfect as an indictment? “That Mary Anne Gaffney came by her death, and that the mother of this child, Ellen Gaffney, is guilty of wilful neglect by not supplying the necessary food and care to sustain the life of this child.” Upon what charge could the woman have been implicated on that vague finding? He (his Lordship) could understand its being contended that that amounted argumentatively to a verdict of manslaughter; but the Coroner issued his warrant and sent this woman to prison as being guilty of murder, and she remained in custody, as he had already remarked, until discharged by the learned judge who went the Winter Assizes in December. Upon all of these grounds they were clearly of opinion that this inquisition should be quashed, and Mr. Coroner Gowing having had the self-possession to come there to show cause against the conditional order, under such circumstances, must bear the costs of that argument.
Mr. Fred. Moorhead, who, instructed by Mr. O’Kearney Whyte, appeared for the Coroner, asked whether the Court would require, as was usual when costs were awarded against a magistrate, an undertaking from the other side—
The Lord Chief-Justice.—That is not to bring an action against the Coroner, you mean?
Mr. Moorhead.—Yes, my Lord. I think it is a usual undertaking when costs are awarded in such a case. I think you ought—
The Lord Chief-Justice.—Well, I don’t know that we ought, but we most certainly will not. (Laughter.)
Mr. David Sherlock, who (instructed by Mr. Archibald W. Disdall) appeared for Ellen Gaffney.—Rest assured, we certainly will bring an action.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
Footnote 1: (return)I have the authority of Mr. Hennessey, “the best living Irish scholar, and a Kerryman to boot,” for this spelling. I am quite right, he says, in stating that the people there pronounce the names of Glenbeigh and Rossbeigh as Glenbéhy and Rossbéhy in three syllables. “Bethe,” pronounced “behy,” is the genitive of “beith,” the birch, of which there were formerly large woods in Ireland. Glenbehy and Rossbehy mean the “Glen,” and the “Ross” or “wooded point” of the birch.
Footnote 2: (return)A letter received by me from a Protestant Irish gentleman, long an ardent Nationalist, seems to confirm this. He writes to me (June 15),
“There is a noble river here, with a convenient line of quays for unloading merchandise. But every sack that is landed must be carried out of the ship on men’s backs. The quay labourers won’t allow a steam crane to be set up. If it is tried there is a riot and a tumult, and no Limerick tradesman can purchase anything from a vessel that uses it, on pain of being boycotted. The result is that the labourers are masters of the situation, and when they catch a vessel with a cargo which it is imperative to land quickly, they wait till the work is half done, and then strike for 8s. a day! If other labourers are imported, they are boycotted for ‘grabbing work,’ and any one who sells provisions to them is boycotted.”
Footnote 5: (return)The name of this blacksmith’s son learned in the Law of the League is given in Lord Cowper’s Report (2. 18,370) as Michael Healy. While these pages are in the printer’s hands the London papers chronicle (May 25, 1888) the arrest of a person described to me as this magistrate’s brother, Jeremiah Healy, on a charge of robbing and setting fire to the Protestant church at Killarney!
Footnote 6: (return)Mr. Colomb sends me, June 30, the following interesting note:—The letter of which I gave you a copy was produced in evidence at Kerry Summer Assizes, 1867. J. D. Sheehan, Esq., M.P., is the same man who was arrested on the 12th February 1867, and to whom the foregoing letter, ordering the rising in Killarney, is addressed. He was kept in custody for some time, and eventually released, it is believed, on the understanding that he was to keep out of Ireland. He came back in 1873 or 1874 and married the proprietress of a Hotel at Killarney. His connection with the Glenbehy evictions is referred to on page 10, and in Note F of the Appendix I give an interesting account, furnished me by Mr. Colomb, of his activity in connection with the case of the Misses Curtin at Firies.
Footnote 7: (return)In the time of Henry VIII. these cities waged actual war with each other, like Florence and Pisa, by sea and land. Limerick was then called “Little London.”
Footnote 8: (return)It was on the 17th October 1886 that Mr. Dillon first promulgated the Plan of Campaign at all at Portumna.
Footnote 10: (return)As to the ability of these tenants to pay their way, one fact which I have since ascertained sufficiently supports Mr. Tener’s contention. The deposits in the Postal Savings Banks of the three purely agricultural towns of Portumna, Woodford, and Loughrea, which in 1880, throwing off the shillings and pence, were respectively, £2539, £259, and £5500, rose in 1887 to £3376, £1350, and £6311, an increase of nearly £3000.
Footnote 11: (return)Mr. Tener, to whom I sent proofs of these pages, writes to me (July 18): “I shall soon execute the decree of the County-Court Judge Henn against Father Coen for £5, 5s., being two and a half year’s rent.”
Footnote 12: (return)At a hearing of cases before Judge Henn some time after I left Portumna, the Judge was reported in the papers as “severely” commenting upon the carelessness with which the estate-books were kept, tenants who were proceeded against for arrears producing “receipts” in court. I wrote to Mr. Tener on this subject. Under date of June 5th he replied to me: “Judge Henn did not use the severe language reported. There was no reporter present but a local man, and I have reason to believe the report in the Freeman’s Journal came from the lawyer of the tenants, who is on the staff of that journal. But the tenants are drilled not to show the receipts they hold, and to take advantage of every little error which they might at once get corrected by calling at the estate office. In no case, however, did any wrong occur to any tenant.”
Footnote 13: (return)The town and estate proper of Woodford belong to Sir Henry Burke, Bart. The nearest point to Woodford of Lord Clamicarde’s property is distant one mile from the town. And on the so-called Woodford estate there are not “316 tenants,” as stated in publications I have seen, but 260.
Footnote 14: (return)Martin Kenny, the “victim” of this eviction, is the tenant to whom the Rev. Mr. Crawford (vide page 118) gave £50 for certain cattle, in order that he (Kenny) might pay his rent But, although he got the £50, he nevertheless suffered himself to be evicted; no doubt fearing the vengeance of the League should he pay.
Footnote 15: (return)The valuation for taxes of this holding is £7, 15s. for the land, and £5 for the presbytery house. The church is exempt.
Footnote 16: (return)Of “Dr.” Tully Mr. Tener wrote to me (July 18): “Tully has the holding at £2, 10s. a year, being 50 per cent, under the valuation of the land for taxes, which is £3, 15s. As the total valuation with the house (built by him) is only £4, he pays no poor-rates. He was in arrears May 1, 1887, of three years for £7, 10s. Lord Clanricarde offered him, with others, 20 per cent, abatement, making for him 70 per cent, under the valuation—and he refused!” Since then (on Saturday Sept. 1), Tully has been evicted after a dramatic “resistance,” of which, with instructive incidents attending it, Mr. Tener sends me an account, to be found in the Appendix, Note H.
Footnote 18: (return)Mr. Tener writes to me (July 18): “At Allendarragh, near the scene of Finlay’s murder, Thomas Noonan, who lately was brave enough to accept the post of process-server vacated by that murder, was shot at on the 13th instant. It was on the highway. He heard a heavy stone fall from a wall on the road and turned to see what caused it. He distinctly saw two men behind the wall with guns, and saw them fire. One shot struck a stone in the road very near him—the other went wide. His idea is that one gun dislodged the stone on which it had been laid for an aim, and that its fall disturbed the aim and saved him. He fully identifies one of the men as Henry Bowles, a nephew of ‘Dr.’ Tully, who lives with Tully, and Bowles, after being arrested and examined at Woodford, has been remanded, bail being refused, to Galway Jail. Before this shooting Noonan had served a notice from me upon Tully, against whom I have Judge Henn’s decree for three years’ rent, and whose equity of redemption expired July 9th.”
Footnote 19: (return)I have since learned that my jarvey was well informed. Sir Henry Burke actually paid Mr. Dillon £160 for the maintenance of his tenants while out of their farms. This, two other landlords, Lords Dunsandle and Westmeath, refused to do, but, like Sir Henry, they both paid all the costs, and accepted a “League” reduction of 5s. 6d. and 6s. in the pound (June 9, 1888).
Footnote 20: (return)Down to the date at which I write this note (June 9), Mr. Seigne has kindly, but without results, endeavoured to get for me some authentic return made by a small tenant-farmer of his incomings and outgoings.
Footnote 23: (return)While these pages are going through the press a Scottish friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the Scotsman of July 25:— “In the same way I, in August last, when in Wicklow, ascertained as carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke evictions; and being desirous to learn now if that estate was still out of cultivation, as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I have referred to above. His reply is as follows:—
“‘I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is concerned. None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor are they likely to be. The landlord has the land partly stocked with cattle; but I may say the land is nearly waste; the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly destroyed. I was at the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and the country looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were evicted from their farms. The landlord has done nothing to lay the land down with grass seed, consequently the land is waste. The village of Coolgreany is on the property, and there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is very much gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing themselves to be evicted and not redeeming before six months, are giving up all their improvements to the landlord, no matter what they may be worth. I have got quite tired of the vexed question, and may say I have given up reading about evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to allow any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be evicted.’
“Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and remember the cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with his tenantry in Bodyke before Mr. Billon appeared amongst them, may well ask what good his interference did to the now impoverished tenantry of Bodyke, or to the district now deserted or laid waste.—I am, etc.,
A RADICAL UNIONIST.”
Footnote 24: (return)In curious confirmation of this opinion expressed to me by a man of the country in March, I find in the Dublin Express of July 19th this official news from the Athy Vice-Guardians:
“At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that the two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, had been evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not now in possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor relief to the extent of £1 a week each on the ground of destitution. The Auditor continued: ‘The Collector tells me that they both possess other lands, and have money in bank. The Collector is satisfied that they are as good, if not better, securities for the amount of his bond now than at the time they became sureties for him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in this opinion.’
“It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board.”
Footnote 25: (return)Explanatory Note attached to First Edition.—After this chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for these poor men from the local tyrants.
I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal “coercion” established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my compliance with my friend’s request. What can be said for the freedom of a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it to be “dangerous” for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests?
Footnote 26: (return)It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr. O’Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt, when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement to the Irish-American organisers in America and satisfaction to Mr. Rossa himself. I remember that when a question arose of excluding Mr. Rossa from an important Irish-American convention at Philadelphia, as not being the delegate of any recognised Irish-American body, Mr. Sullivan told me that he should recommend the admission of Mr. Rossa to the floor without a right to deliberative action, expressly because his presence, when reported, would be a cause of terror to Sir William Harcourt.