Lord Castlerosse, the only passenger in the compartment, by way of relieving her obvious agitation, tried to calm her by telling her she could change at the next station.

'Is it me that can be aisy,' she replied, 'when it's my Pat is driving the engine, and him having a dhrop taken, and saying he'll take us a shpin round the Head?'

After all, to my mind, for sheer humour of a quiet sort, nothing beats the observation of the late Sir John Godfrey, who never got up before one in the day, and invariably breakfasted when his family were having lunch. Being asked one day to account for this rather inconvenient habit, he replied:—

'The fact is, I sleep very slow.'

I commend this to every sluggard who wants an excuse to resume his slumbers when awakened too soon.

There was a gentleman who had rather a red nose, and some one remarked that it was an expensive piece of painting, to which some one else significantly added, that it was not a water-colour.

'No,' said Sir John, 'it was done in distemper.'

One night a landlord in Kerry, who shall be nameless, though he has passed over to the great majority, went to bed without having much knowledge how he got there.

Two of his sons crept to the neighbouring town, unscrewed the sign outside the inn, and put it at the end of their parent's bed.

When he awoke, he looked at the sign for some time in a bewildered way. Then he observed aloud:—

'I thought I went to sleep in my own bed, but I'm d——d if I have not woke in the middle of the street.'

'There's a man dead in the wood.'

Sir William hastened to the spot, and having put on his glasses to get a view of the corpse, observed:—

'Come away, my boys, this man dies once a week.'

Another Kerry landlord, who was also a baronet, dealt with the National Bank, the local manager of which was an arrant snob, who loved a title, and bored everybody with his pretended intimacy with the impecunious baronet. But at last even his patience was exhausted, and he sent the squire a pretty stiff letter about the arrears due.

The other received the letter at breakfast, and showed it to his son just come down from a University, who whistled and ejaculated:—

'O tempora! O mores!'

His father instantly retorted:—

'You get me the temporary, and I'll promptly see we have more ease.'

In the bad times, an old woman came into the office at Tralee to pay her rent. Mr. Francis Denny was in a real bad humour with somebody else who had defaulted, and he was raging along in a manner qualified to display his intimate acquaintance with the florid embellishments of the language. The old woman listened with evident admiration for some time. At last she ejaculated:—

'Ah, the nate little man.'

And with that slipped out, without settling her account.

Mr. Francis Denny has the misfortune to be rather lame, and one day another old woman, who liked him, observed:—

In the bad times, one lady was left in her Kerry residence with her baby boy and a pack of maidservants, her husband having been called over to England.

She had sixty pounds of gold in her bedroom, and one night a housemaid rushed in to say a party of moonlighters were in the house.

The lady threw a sovereign and some silver on to the dressing-table, and hid the rest under her mattress.

In came the masked scoundrels asking for gold, and when she pointed to the money that was visible, one replied that it was not enough.

'Very well,' she said, 'give me your name and I'll write you a cheque.'

On that they left precipitately, to her intense relief.

All moonlighters calculated upon the terrorism their appearance would cause, and if this was apparently conspicuous by its absence they were nonplussed, because they never felt over secure in their own hearts at the best of times, and grew frightened directly others were not frightened by them.

In all moonlighting affrays no one scoundrel ever became personally conspicuous as a leader, and all the wisest leaders, such as Stephens, Tynan, and Parnell, shrouded their movements in mystery. Fenianism in Ireland since Emmett has never had one capable leader possessing the physical courage to show himself in the forefront on all occasions.

The attempts of the English Government to manufacture an English general in the South African war were a miserable fiasco. They only produced one, Sir Charles Tucker, and he did his best to atone for the accident of his English birth by marrying a Kerry lady.

I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Redvers Buller in Killarney, and after he had been there a couple of days he proceeded to describe Kerry to me, who had been managing one fifth of it for several years. His agricultural reforms would have been as drastic as they were ludicrous had any one attempted to carry them out, but when expatiating on them to me, he was not even aware that there was any difference between an English and an Irish acre. When I heard that he was taking charge of the whole army in South Africa, I mentioned that as he had been unable to command three hundred constabulary in Kerry, I was sceptical of his ability to manage the British army. He was without exception the most self-sufficient soldier I ever met, and his subsequent career has not made me change my view.

Here is a soldier story which is mighty illustrative of Irish traits.

A peasant's son in Limerick enlisted in the militia for a month's training, for which he received a bounty of three pounds. With part of this money he bought a pig and gave it to his father to feed up. When the pig was fattened, the father sold it and declined to give him the price. So the son was seen by the police to take his father by the throat, saying:—

Everywhere I like to slip into this book instances of the injuries suffered by Irish landlords, so here is another case à propos des bottes, if you will forgive it.

The Knight of Kerry let nine acres of land to a tenant for a rent of forty-five pounds. Having expended a large sum of money in roadmaking and fences, at the tenant's request, he also borrowed thirty-five pounds to build a small house for which he has to pay thirty-five shillings per annum. The commissioners cut down the rent so heavily, that it has resulted in the landlord having to pay five shillings a year for the pleasure of looking at the man in occupation of his land.

Reverting to my reminiscences—or rather to what are for myself less interesting portions, for I am a land agent by profession and an anecdotist only by habit—I remember that an Englishman subsequently a Pasha commanded the coastguard at Dingle in 1856, and then had an encounter with a local Justice of the Peace in which he came off second best.

Captain —— occupied the Grove demesne. The J.P., who had been a Scotch militia officer, had been in the habit of shooting crows over the demesne, and continued to enjoy the sport, to which the Captain strongly objected. After an angry correspondence the J.P. sent a challenge, which the other did not seem to stomach, for he sent an apology by a subordinate with full permission to continue the immolation of the birds. If a cruiser had to capitulate to this bold blockade runner, the Captain himself had to endure a similar humiliation at the hands of an indignant Kerry man, though he was very popular in Dingle.

In other cases he is very brave, especially in verbal encounters. Fighting is in his blood. That is what makes the Irish soldier the best in the world, and that was why he used to revel in the faction fights. As a paternal Government now prevents the breaking of heads, at all events on a wholesale scale, the pugnacious instincts of the nation have to be gratified by litigation, and certainly there never was such a litigious race in history as the contemporary Ireland.

I know of a case on the Callinafercy estate, where a widow spent fifty pounds 'in getting the law of' a neighbour whose donkey had browsed on her side of a hedge. She took the case to the assizes, and when the judge heard Mr. Leeson Marshall was her landlord, he said:—

'Let him decide it. He's a barrister himself, and can judge far better than I could on such a subject.'

To this there are literally hundreds of parallels every year. Readers of La Terre will remember how much of the funds went into the hands of the lawyer who thrived on the animosities of the family, and that sort of thing is constantly reduplicated in Kerry.

'I'd sell my last cow to appeal on a point of law,' I once heard a Killorgin farmer say; and that is typical of all the lower classes in the South and West.

As for the solicitors, I am not going to say a word about them, good or bad: there are men no doubt worthy of either epithet in a profession that preys on the troubles of other folk. But I will tell one very brief story on the topic.

'If you please, your honour, will you direct me to an honest attorney?'

The Liberator pushed back his wig and scratched his head.

'Well now, you beat me entirely, ma'am,' was his answer.

He had more experience than me, being one.

Talking of the Four Courts reminds me of Chief Baron Guillamore, who had as much wit as will provoke 'laughter in court,' and a trifle over that infinitesimal quantity as well.

A new Act of Parliament had been passed to prevent people from stealing timber. A stupid juryman asked if he could prosecute a man under that act for stealing turnips.

'Certainly not, unless they are very sticky,' retorted the judge.

His brother was a magistrate, and committed a barrister in petty sessions for contempt of court. An action was brought against him, but the Chief Baron raised so many legal exceptions, that it had finally to be abandoned through the fraternal law-moulding. This action was pending in the civil court, when a lawyer was very impertinent to the Chief Baron in the criminal. Instead of committing him, the Chief Baron said very quietly:—

'If you do not keep quiet, I shall send to the next Court for my brother.'

Another judge had applied for shares in a company of which a friend of his was secretary. Meeting him in Sackville Street, he stopped him to inquire what would be the paid-up capital of the concern.

The other forgot whom he was addressing, and blurted out the truth by replying:—

The judge withdrew his application by the next post, and confidently expected to see his friend in the dock. I believe in less than six months he was not disappointed.

The poorer class in Ireland do not appear to be business-like in the ordinary sense, however much they may develop commercial instincts after emigrating. It is to promote the latent capacity obviously within their power that creameries and other assisted promotions have been started in various parts of the country, sometimes with great success. Sir Horace Plunkett and others have dealt with all this in the most serious spirit. I prefer to allude to it, and add one anecdote.

A lady asked a respectable old woman how her son was getting on as manager of the creamery, and the reply came after the following fashion:—

'Whisna the poor man and all the trouble he has, and him never able to make the butter and the books scoromund,' which, being translated, is 'correspond.'

Another example I can cite of the difficulty in getting people to put their intelligence to practical use in the south is to this effect:—

There was a certain widdy woman in a neighbouring parish who was making great lamentation over her 'pitaties' to the priest, and in consequence he lent her a machine for the purpose of spraying them. She professed the profoundest gratitude as well as interest in the implement, but the task speedily became too big an effort, for she subsequently informed me that she had sprayed 'half the field to plase his Rivirence, but left the rest to God.'

And that is the kind of negative piety which is distinctly a characteristic Irish trait.

LORD-LIEUTENANTS AND CHIEF SECRETARIES

Any Irishman who has reached the shady side of threescore years and ten must remember many Lord-Lieutenants—the pompously visible symbols of much vacillating misdirection.

To analyse them would be the work of an historian, to criticise would be superfluous. They have been so many Malvolios, all alike anxious to win the favour of that capricious Lady Olivia Erin, and not one of them has succeeded, though several have merited better fortune than they met with on Irish soil.

The first Lord-Lieutenant I personally met was Lord Carlisle.

He was a gentleman, but not otherwise remarkable. He had come into the Government on the resignation of the Peelites, and his popularity in Ireland was greater than any other holder of the post in the century, possibly owing to his negative qualities, and also to a charm of manner more effusive than usual among Englishmen.

He had a habit of dropping his state, and going about Dublin, if not like Haroun Alraschid, at least with the independence of men in less august positions.

The alderman was not in either, but his wife was, and begged him to stop to lunch, which was just being served.

Lord Carlisle told her he hardly ever ate lunch, and was not in the least hungry.

But under pressure he sat down to the meal, and got on very well with it, whereat the lady remarked:—

'You see, your Excellency, eating is like scratching: when you once begin it is hard to stop.'

His predecessor, Lord Clarendon, had been in office when Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, urged on the House of Commons a bill for the abolition of the Lord-Lieutenancy. The great point that he made was that the Chief Secretary might become a mayor of the viceregal palace, a thing that has now long been the case, for the Lord-Lieutenant has to be a plutocrat of high descent, and the Chief Secretary is the virtual administrator of Ireland—a thing unknown, however, until the advent of Mr. Foster. The second reading was carried by a majority of over a hundred and fifty, but it was then dropped.

The story went that the Duke of Wellington had suggested to Prince Albert the possible diminution of respect for the Crown in Ireland without a visible representative, and the Teutonic mind could not endure such a notion.

Lord Kimberley followed Lord Carlisle. In those days he was Lord Wodehouse, and the Fenians used to issue mock proclamations, in ridicule of his, signed 'Woodlouse.' He was an experienced parliamentarian—a man who held office for many years, and worked conscientiously, according to his lights.

In Ireland he always appeared to be a naturalist, perplexed at not understanding the species among which his lot was for the time cast.

His mother was subsequently married to Mr. Crosbie Moore, and she ran away with Colonel Fitz-Gibbon, afterwards Lord Clare.

Mr. Crosbie Moore had not much sense of humour, as the following tale will show.

He was presiding at Ballyporeen Petty Sessions, when a village tailor was summoned for having his pig wandering on the road.

The fellow pleaded that it was due to great curiosity on the part of the pig, who saw some constabulary passing by, and rushed out to see what they were like.

He made this explanation in such humorous fashion that most of the magistrates were for letting him off; but Mr. Crosbie Moore said it was scandalous that they had directed the police to summon people on that very ground, and they wanted to acquit the culprit because he had made a joke.

He paid his shilling, and said:—

'I have no blame to you at all, gentlemen, except to Mr. Crosbie Moore; and, indeed, if he reflected, he should have known that no live man could keep a woman or a pig in the house when she wanted to be off.'

A subscription raised for him outside the Court realised twenty-three shillings.

Tradition goes that when Lord Kimberley, Lord Carlingford, and Lord Granville were all in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain—then at the Board of Trade—in a moment of vexation called them 'Gladstone's grannies,' and if the phrase is not his, it most certainly was apt and truthful.

Lord Kimberley was known as 'Pussy' among a gang of disrespectful subordinates. He really did as little to earn respect as he did to forfeit it; in fact he was a pre-eminently respectable mediocrity of the kind that, towards the close of the mid-Victorian period, clung like barnacles to office, and he was a Whig during the period that Whiggism was growing obsolete.

The Duke of Abercorn certainly had no tendencies towards the lavish extravagance by which a modern Lord-Lieutenant has to pay his footing. A short time before he was chosen he had claimed the Dukedom of Chatelherault in France, and was known in consequence among the malcontents as the 'French Frog.' His wife was the daughter of one Duke of Bedford, and when another came to stay at the viceregal, it was for a time called the 'Dukeries.' The A.D.C.'s, who were particularly good-looking, were at once known as the 'Duckeries.'

He came on a visit to Muckross when Sir Ivor Guest had the shooting, and I dined there to meet him. He visited Killarney on several occasions, and on each of them I had long talks with him. I always thought him a painstaking, well-meaning man.

Lord Cowper was an honest nonentity who left the country in disgust because he was not backed up by the Government. Several modern figureheads would be very much surprised at any Government expecting them to do more than 'understudy Royalty.' But Cowper thought himself a diplomatist; was fond of authoritatively laying down the law on continental affairs, as though he had the refusal of the Foreign Office in his pocket; and felt he ought to have as much support as Palmerston obtained from the various Cabinets he burdened with European embroglios.

However, Lord Spencer, on being reappointed for a second term, took up the thankless task at an especially black moment. He was as brave as a lion; and if his red beard gained him the nickname of 'Rufus,' the Red Viceroy was as fearless as though his life were absolutely secure, instead of depending wholly on the vigilance of those surrounding him.

We all admired Lord Spencer for his firmness; but this was soon discovered to be due to the fact that he absolutely followed the sage advice of Sir Edward Sullivan, the Lord Chancellor, and after the death of the latter, Lord Spencer's weakness was quite as remarkable as his previous firmness.

He was seen on one occasion with his hands pressing his back.

'I fear his Excellency has lumbago.'

'Not at all,' replied his friend; 'he is feeling for his backbone.'

The state of Westmeath was really the worst feature of the period of his rule, yet Lord Spenser was in the country all the while, and allowed matters to degenerate with his eyes open.

He rode hard to hounds, in spite of countless threats, and might have had a less uncomfortable time had the head of the Constabulary been as thoroughly capable as his subordinates.

Lord Carnarvon very nearly ruined the Government by his communications with Mr. Parnell. He meant well, and struck out a patriotic line of his own, which failed because it was made in absolute ignorance of the Irish character. But he never intended to involve his colleagues, although numbers of people chose to regard him as a Tory Home Ruler. His previous action in resigning the Secretaryship of the Colonies in Lord Derby's third administration, owing to a difference of opinion on parliamentary reform, and his subsequent resignation because he disapproved of Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern action in 1878, showed him to be a man of marked and fearless opinions. Lord Salisbury ought to have known that he was thrusting a brand into the fire when he sent him to be the official bellows-blower of the Hibernian pot.

Lord Aberdeen will always be remembered as the husband of his wife. Lady Aberdeen was a more ardent Home Ruler than even her brother, Lord Tweedmouth. On one occasion Lord Morris was next her at dinner, and she said she supposed the majority of people in Ireland were in favour of Home Rule.

'Of course, not in the Castle,' she replied with dignity; 'but in your profession, and when you are on circuit, surely you must meet a good many?'

'Occasionally—in the dock,' he drily retorted, after which she discreetly dropped the subject.

Lord Aberdeen was most exemplary during his brief tenure of office, and certainly it was not in his time that the folk christened the royal box at the theatre the 'loose box,' in allusion to the rather dubious English guests of the vivacious viceroy.

Lord Londonderry and Lord Zetland may be both briefly bracketed together as having done their duty admirably in times less out of joint than those of their predecessors. Lord Londonderry always drank Irish whisky himself, and recommended it to his guests as a capital beverage—a thing which the licensed victuallers did not mind mentioning to Paddy and Mick when they were having a drop, despite their vaunted contempt of all at 'the Castle.'

No other Lord-Lieutenant ever had such a mournful experience as Lord Houghton. Son of Monckton Milnes, the 'cool of the evening,' he needed his father's temperament to enable him to endure the boycott which Irish society inflicted on him as the representative of the Home Rule disruption policy. With no class did he go down, and on a crowded market-day in Tralee not a hat was raised to him.

One of his A.D.C.'s was subsequently on the veldt, and when asked if it was not lonely, he replied:—

'Not more than Dublin Castle, when Houghton was the king.'

Another story, which was much enjoyed in Ireland as showing the pomposity of his Excellency, may be recalled. Whether true it is now difficult to say, but there is no doubt that the tale was started among the very house-party who were at Carton at the time.

The beautiful châtelaine, the lovely Duchess of Leinster, was walking through the fields one Sunday afternoon with Lord Houghton.

They came to a gate, which he opened, but to her astonishment proceeded to walk through it first himself.

The indignant Duchess haughtily remarked:—

'The Prince of Wales would not think of passing through a gate before me.'

'That may be; but I represent the Queen,' replied Lord Houghton, with unruffled imperturbability.

Lord Cadogan and Lord Dudley come so absolutely into contemporary history that on them nothing can here be said, except that their munificence has rendered it impossible for any peer of moderate private means to hold the office.

Of Sir Robert Peel it was wittily said that when Chief Secretary he went through the country on an outside car, which made him take a one-sided view of the Irish question.

Lord Morris said to an inquiring Scottish M.P.:—

'Did you ever know a Scottish Secretary who was not Scottish, or an Irish Secretary who was Irish?'

'No,' said the Scotsman.

'Well, go home and moralise over that as a possible solution of some Irish difficulties, for may be, if an Irishman was sent over, by accident, to be Chief Secretary, the official would not fall into the mistake of trying to reconcile the irerconcilable.'

And to my mind Lord Morris had the last word in every sense.

Mr. W.E. Forster was far too honest to be the tool of Mr. Gladstone's Hibernian dishonesty. He was perfectly fearless, but, beneath his rugged exterior, deeply sensitive. He winced under 'buckshot,' and many other epithets; but abuse and danger alike never prevented him from doing what he had to do to the best of his ability. His earliest acquaintance with Ireland had been in the famine, when he was one of the deputation of succour organised by the Society of Friends, and everybody who has read Mr. Morley's Life of Cobden will remember the appreciation of their efforts by the great free-trader.

His courage in walking unarmed and without police escort in Tulla and Athenry was as great as ever was displayed by a knight-errant of old. The Nationalist papers, no longer able to taunt him with cowardice, took to declaring him to be a person notorious for ferocious brutality.

Sir Wemyss Reid said that in the House of Commons his fellow-members had literally seen his hair whiten during those two years of patriotic martyrdom in Ireland, and I always feel that the inner life of this reticent, commanding statesman would have made a wonderful human document. His capacity, if not his forbearance, has been inherited by his adopted son, Mr. Arnold Forster, the present Secretary for War, who acted as his private secretary in the latter years of his life.

Mr. Forster's predecessor, Mr. James Lowther, was an uncommonly capable man, and gifted with a fund of humour which prevented him from taking the Irish too seriously. In 1879 I heard the Irish members in the House of Commons vituperating him after a manner that subsequently became unpleasantly familiar, but was then regarded as a gross breach of the conventions of debate. 'Jim' lay back on the Treasury bench with his hat over his eyes, and to all appearance sound asleep. Never once did he show sign of hearing their verbal tornado; but eventually he sprang to his feet, and with infectious gaiety literally chaffed them to madness. I have often thought that the long-limbed Tory member for Hertford, who was then private secretary to his uncle, Lord Salisbury, must have taken note of the methods of Mr. Lowther in dealing with the Irish party, for it was absolutely on the same lines that he subsequently developed that superb flow of sarcasm which made him, Mr. A.J. Balfour, the popular idol ten years later.

It has been a practice for many years to appoint a man Chief Secretary for Ireland in order to see if he is fit for anything else. This plan turned out well in the case of Mr. A.J. Balfour, for he knew Ireland better than any other Chief Secretary, and when he came to know it properly he was removed.

There was a poem, not particularly brilliant, which may be quoted because it is not widely known:—

'If I had a Balfour who wrong would go,
Do you think I'd tolerate him?—No, no, no!
I'd give him coercion in Kilmainham jail,
And return him to Arthur, who'd laugh at his wail.'

In fact the impression prevailed that Ireland was then sacrificed to the nepotism of Lord Salisbury, who had inflicted the least capable of the House of Cecil on the distressful country.

When the Duke of York was in Ireland, he stayed with Lord Dunraven, and Mr. Gerald Balfour as Chief Secretary was one of the house-party, and the mother of the Knight of Glin was also there.

A short time before, a chemist from Cork, who had been appointed sub-confiscator, and desired to secure his own position, had heavily cut down the Fitzgerald rents.

Mr. Balfour, by way of making polite conversation, observed to Mrs. Fitzgerald:—

'I believe your son's property has been a long time in the family.'

'Yes,' she said, 'we got it in the reign of Edward I., and held it until last year, when the Government sent an apothecary from Cork to rob us of it.'

The conversation dropped.

An English journalist went down to the West, and tried to make inquiries about the popularity of the Chief Secretary.

He came to the cabin of a man who had been rescued from starvation by getting Government employment, and had thrived so well that he had become possessed of a pig.

This pig, on the appearance of the Englishman, escaped into a potato-field, and he heard the woman of the house shout to her son:—

'Mickey, look sharp and turn out Arthur Balfour before he does any mischief.'

The name of the pig showed the gratitude of the family.

When alluding to Mr. Lowther I omitted to mention that he was always of opinion that a well-planned scheme of education was the best panacea for the Irish troubles, and it certainly would have brought up a generation less keenly sensitive to the exaggerated wrongs of the country to which both sexes are so frantically attached. During his not very lengthy tenure of the office of Chief Secretary it was asserted that Sir George Trevelyan also had some such idea; but whether he went so far as to draft his plan, and it was consigned to some forgotten pigeon-hole by Mr. Gladstone, I cannot say.

When the Duke of Argyll described Sir George Trevelyan as a jelly-fish, he made a comparison which, from my personal experience, I should call particularly apt.

Ireland had very little use for such a flabby politician, and it may be added, he had very little use for Ireland.

Directly after the formation of the following Radical Government, I met an Englishman of considerable political importance in Pall Mall, and he observed:—

'The new Cabinet is quarrelling among themselves.'

'Who are fighting?' I asked.

'Chamberlain and Trevelyan,' he replied.

'What about?'

'Chamberlain says that he brought the party back into office, and he wants the Colonial Office; but Gladstone insists on his being content with the Local Government Board. Trevelyan says that, as he has for years had experience in naval affairs, he ought to be made First Lord. But Gladstone, though he cannot prevail on him to be Chief Secretary, has sent him to the India Office.'

'And may give him free lodgings in Kilmainham if he is refractory,' I chimed in. 'And so these two are like pigs with their bristles hurt, poor things. There's a pity.'

Some time later, when I heard Messrs. Chamberlain and Trevelyan were so disgusted with the Home Rule Bill that they were leaving the Government, says I to myself, 'I wonder if Mr. Gladstone in his own heart thinks if he had gratified their wishes about office he could have retained them.'

But as a matter of fact both are patriots far above such demeaning insinuations.

Mr. John Morley was a very well-meaning Chief Secretary, but a very misguided man.

I said that would be no use, for if he attempted to do his duty he would be shot, even more readily than I should.

Mr. Morley retorted:—

'He is the leader of the Irish nation.'

'I admit it,' I replied, 'and he is the only man you can make terms with.'

'How?' says he.

'You had better ask him,' says I, 'to nominate some foreign potentate to appoint commissioners who will say to Mr. Parnell, "Let Ireland pay her share of the national debt and buy out every loyal person who wishes to leave the country," and then, if Mr. Parnell says, "We are not able to do that," let them retort, "We will then disfranchise you, for this humbug has been going on long enough."'

'That's about it, according to your lights,' replied Mr. Morley.

Was I not right?

It is a singular fact that Ulster and Alsace-Lorraine have about the same acreage—5,322,334 to 3,586,560—and about the same population—1,581,357 to 1,719,470. The French and Germans are each willing to spend a hundred millions of money and half a million lives, the one to recover, the other to retain, the province, and yet Mr. Gladstone proposed, not only to abandon Ulster, but to put it under the rule of the people the Ulsterites hate most on earth.

Yet its inhabitants were to be sold as though they were African slaves, for the sole purpose of getting votes for the Liberal Government.

I was one day invited by Froude to come to his home to argue out the Irish question with Mr. Jacob Bright and Mr. John Morley.

I counted on having Mr. Froude on my side, knowing his strong views, but as host he would not interfere. However, Miss Cobbe was there, and to my mind was equal to any of the company. With her on my side, I flatter myself we were too many for the others; but the worst of all arguments is that the arguing rarely serves any purpose except to make either party more obstinate.

I knew John Bright very well.

He was far and away the most honest man of all the Liberal party, and he fully realised the fact that a visible concentration of property and universal suffrage could not exist together. He was therefore anxious to enlarge the number of proprietors, but he did not countenance it being done entirely at the expense of the English Government without the tenants having to find such a sum of money out of their own pockets as would give them an interest in paying off the Government charges.

He was a very broad-minded man, with a simplicity of character which was admirable. I liked him much, and my one complaint against him was that he would never accept my invitations to come and pay me a visit in Kerry.

Although I regret not having met Mr. Gladstone, I yet feel glad that I never shook him by the hand. I may here mention that I never met Mr. Parnell, though I have seen him in the House.

From my point of view Mr. John Morley has a dual existence. As man and as historian he is Jekyl, but as politician he is Hyde.

There is a well-known story about him, so familiar to some of us that it is possibly forgotten in England, wherefore I venture to relate it once more.

He was on a car, and asked the driver:—

'Well, Pat, you'll be having great times when you get Home Rule?'

'We will, your honour—for a week,' replied the man.

'Why only a week?' inquired the politician.

'Driving the quality to the steamers.'

GLADSTONIAN LEGISLATION

Although the exact measure of my appreciation of the Irish policy of the most dangerous Englishman of the nineteenth century has already been clearly indicated by casual remarks in previous chapters, that will not absolve me from duly setting forth some sketch of the inestimable amount of evil which resulted from the interest he unfortunately took in my unhappy land.

If Napoleon was the scourge of Europe, Mr. Gladstone was the most malevolent imp of mischief that ever ruined any one country, and I am heartily grieved that that country should have been mine.

It is so difficult to get English people to take any interest in Irish topics that I fully expect this chapter will be skipped by most of my readers east of Dublin. Yet if any will read these few pages, they will get as clear a view of the harm one man can do a whole land as by wading through hundreds of volumes, for I am giving them the concentrated knowledge I have accumulated by years devoted to profound study of the subject.

The course of history may be taken up almost on the morrow of the famine, for potatoes began to be a scarce crop again in 1850, yet the country was improving rapidly, and the relations between landlord and tenant were as cordial as in any part of the world.

Mr. Gladstone stated that he brought in the Irish Church Act to pacify the country in 1868, when the land was as peaceful as English pastures on a Sunday evening. He must really have done so to propitiate English dissenters, for no one in Ireland appeared to want it.

By this Act a resident gentleman was taken away from every parish in Ireland, whereby the evils of absentee landlordism were gravely enhanced.

Mr. Gladstone called it an act of sublime justice from England to Ireland. Previously, in virtue of ancient treaties commencing as far back as the reigns of William and Mary, the English Government was giving Presbyterians a grant—called Regium Donum—of £70,000 a year, and by a more recent arrangement was giving Maynooth a grant of £24,000, but that Whig Government actually paid them off out of the spoils of the Irish Church, thereby saving the British Exchequer £94,000 a year.

And if this be an act of justice, then Aristides can be classed among hypocritical swindlers.

It must be borne in mind that when William Pitt caused the Act of Union to be passed in Parliament, the union of the Churches was a fundamental feature, and this, indeed, was the main inducement held out to Protestants to promote the Union.

The Catholic priests who expected that their Church would be established were disappointed, while the landlords, who were generally Protestants, had henceforth to support their clergy and at the same time to pay tithes to the State.

As Irish taxation increased 50 per cent, while that of England only increased 18 per cent., the Irish people did not find Mr. Gladstone's Act soothing or profitable.

His next perpetration was the Land Act of 1870, whereby he provided that no landlord could turn out his tenant without paying him for all his improvements (even if these had been done without the knowledge or sanction of the landlord) and giving the tenant a compensation in money equal to about one-fourth of the fee-simple.

This Act might have been all right in principle, but it was useless in practice, and the compensation made to the County Court Judge for adjudicature came to far more than the amount awarded.

This is easily accounted for, thus:—

You might as well bring in an Act of Parliament to prevent people cutting off their own noses.

No sane person does such a thing, and no landlord ever turned out an improving tenant.

But the Irish tenants, having almost the sole representation of the country in their hands, returned a body of representatives pledged to the confiscation of landed property; and in order to keep his party in power by securing their votes, Mr. Gladstone brought in the Land Act of 1881.

As far as I could judge, he never even by accident let slip one word of truth.

When the Act passed, Mr. Gladstone anticipated that eight sub-commissioners would do the work. This number very soon ran up to one hundred sub-commissioners and more than twenty County Court valuers.

The result is that every tenant has been running down his land and letting it go out of cultivation, for the tenants know the commissioners value the ground as they find it, and a premium is thus, of course, put on neglecting the soil.

To show the system on which the valuation was done, many cases have been known of the commissioners arriving to value a property after three o'clock on a December afternoon.

It is a positive fact that there are professional experts who obtain substantial fees for showing tenants the speediest methods of damaging their own land.

All the same I cannot help thinking their services are a matter of supererogation, for a recalcitrant Irish tenant in the South and West needs instruction in no branch of villainy.

On one of Lord Kenmare's estates, I executed drainage works costing over £200. These were dependent upon sluices to keep out the tide at high water. A few days before the land was to be inspected, the tenants put bushes in the sluices, let the tide in and flooded the whole land.

And then a prating, mendacious local schoolmaster began comparing these villains to the patriotic Dutch who flooded their land rather than permit it to be conquered by the national foe.

Here is one.

A tenant near Blarney, in County Cork, was seen to be ploughing up a valuable water meadow.

When asked by a gentleman why he was injuring his land, he replied without hesitation that he was going to get his rent fixed, and immediately afterwards he should lay it down again as a water meadow.

It is scarcely credible how great was the amount of perjury that this Act brought into the country.

A tenant on a property to which I was agent, whose rent was £6 a year, swore he expended £395 on improvements and all that it was worth afterwards was £4, 10s. He received the implicit credit of the court.

According to the laws of the Roman Catholic Church perjury in a court of justice is a reserved sin for which absolution can only be given by a bishop or by priests specially appointed for that purpose.

One priest applied to the bishop for plenary powers, and said the bishop to him:—

'Are the people so generally bad in your parish?'

'It's the fault of the laws, my lord,' replied the priest.

'What laws?' asked the bishop.

'Firstly, under the Crimes Act, my poor people have to swear they do not know the moonlighters that come to the house, or they would be murdered.

'Secondly, under the Arrears Act, they have to swear they are worth nothing in the world or they would not get the Government money.

'So you see, my lord, the sin lies at the door of those who made the infamous laws which lead weak sinners into temptation they cannot be expected to overcome.'

The bishop said nothing, but he gave the priest all the powers he desired.

I myself heard this story from a parish priest who was present, and as I have several times told it to different people, it may have found its way into print, though I have no recollection of ever seeing it in black and white.

Allusion having just been made to the Arrears Act, it may be here opportune to point out that this was the next step in Mr. Gladstone's long sequence of Irish mismanagement. This iniquitous measure provided that no matter how great the arrears owed by the tenant, by lodging one year's rent another could be obtained from the Government, and the landlord was compelled to wipe out the balance. So that if Jack, Tom, and James were all tenants on town land, should Jack be an honest man he obtained no redress, whereas if Tom and James were hardened defaulters they obtained the complete settlement of all their arrears.

To obtain the grant of a year's rent from Government, the tenant had to swear as to his assets and also as to the selling value of his farm.

Here is an illustration which came under my own observation.

A tenant named Richard Sweeney, whose rent was £48 a year, owed three years' rent. He paid one year, the Government provided another, and the landlord had to forgive the third.

A few weeks later he served me—as agent for the landlord—with notice that he had sold his interest in the property for £630.

That is not the end of my story.

The purchaser was a man named Murphy, and a very few years afterwards, upon the ground that the rent was too dear, he took the farm for which he had paid £630 to Sweeney into the Land Courts and got the rent reduced to £36.

The absurdity of this system was well brought out before the Fry Commission, when one high-commissioner and a sub-commissioner both said that in valuing the land they took into consideration the tenant's occupation interest.

The reader will see the way this works out, if he will accept the very simple hypothetical case of two tenants holding land to the worth of £40 each, and one of them only paying £20 a year rent. When they both took their cases into the Land Court, the man paying the lower rent of £20 would obtain the larger reduction, because he had the greater occupation.

These facts will show that a Purchase Bill was an absolute necessity. Lord Dufferin truly remarked that landlord and tenant were both in the same bed, and Mr. Gladstone thought to settle their disputes by giving the tenant a larger share than he had ever had before. But the tenant considered that as he had obtained that concession by fraud and violence, if he could only give one effective kick more, he would put the landlord on the floor for the rest of the term of their national life.

In 1870, he prospectively criticised such an institution as the Land Court, which in 1881 he proposed, with its power to give a 'judicial rent.'

'But it is suggested we should establish, permanently and positively, a power in the hands of the State to reduce excessive rents. Now I should like to hear a careful argument in support of that plan. I wish at all events to retain at all times a judicial habit of not condemning a thing utterly until I have heard what is to be said for it; but I own I have not heard, I do not know, and I cannot conceive, what is to be said for the prospective power to reduce excessive rents. If I could conceive a plan more calculated than everything else, first of all, for throwing into confusion the whole economical arrangements of the country; secondly, for driving out of the field all solvent and honest men who might be bidders for farms; thirdly, for carrying widespread demoralisation throughout the whole mass of the Irish people, I must say it is this plan.'

And again:—

'We are not ready to accede to a principle of legislation by which the State shall take into its own hands the valuation of rent throughout Ireland. I say, "take into its own hands" because it is perfectly immaterial whether the thing shall be done by a State officer forming part of the Civil Service, or by an arbitration acting under State authority, or by any other person invested by the law with power to determine on what terms as to rent every holding in Ireland shall be held.'

It would certainly be both remiss of me, and altogether below the character which I trust I have acquired for honest plain speaking, if I omitted to give my views upon Mr. Wyndham's Act, for those readers who regard my book as something more than a storehouse of anecdotes—and since it is written at all, I maintain it claims to be more than that—having noticed the freedom with which I have spoken of previous English legislation for Ireland, may very naturally think I should be begging the question of the hour, if I did not offer a few observations on the latest development of the Irish question.

I must emphatically repeat what I have already asserted:—that the Acts of Mr. Gladstone rendered a Purchase Bill inevitable, and it fell to Mr. Wyndham's lot to formulate the scheme which has now become law.

Mr. Wyndham's Act is a great one for Ireland, because where a tenant previously paid £100 a year rent, all he will have to pay—even at twenty-four years' purchase—is £80 a year, and at that rate with the bonus the landlord obtains twenty-seven years' purchase. But this scale is a little halcyon in most instances.

It should prove a boon to the country, and it is the necessary outcome of the Land Act of 1881, by which rents were cut down by commissioners, whose means of living depended on the reductions they made.

So, whoever cut down the most earned the most.

A valuer in Limerick was remonstrated with for cutting down local rents so low, and he replied:—

'It is all for the good of trade, for it will bring every tenant into the Court.'

And so it actually did, for that Court very shortly afterwards was chock full of cases.

My own opinion is that the Wyndham Act would have been far more beneficial, if the Government had given the tenant a free grant of some of the purchase money, and insisted on his finding some more of it himself, whereby would have been created a deeper interest in his land than is now inspired in his breast by the mere transference of his lease from his old landlord to the Government.

I made this remark to an Englishman at the Carlton Club, and he said to me that, according to his view, England should lend whatever money was wanted but give no free grant.

I replied:—

'A poor man from Kerry came to my house in London, and asked for the loan of a pound. I declined to lend him the sovereign, but I did lend him half a crown, and as he bolted to America the very next day, I think I had the best of the bargain.'

My friend accepted the analogy and dropped the subject.

And the Act of 1881, which provided that landlord and tenant should have a lawsuit every fifteen years, brought the feeling up to boiling pitch.

Now the Government inherits all this hatred by proposing to be the sole landlord in Ireland. Therefore, England is reaping the whirlwind where Mr. Gladstone sowed the wind.

This does not appear to me to be sound statesmanship. An open hatred of the Government has been instilled into the brain of thousands of Irish children side by side with a more hypocritical hatred of the landlord. Now that these two are to be combined in one passion, and that directed against the receiver of rent, matters do not present a promising outlook.

If the Government sell up those tenants who do not pay rent in years to come, no Irish occupiers of the property will be obtainable.

If English tenants be imported, the latter had better insist on coats of mail for themselves, and on life insurance policies in favour of the nearest relatives they leave behind in England.

That reminds me of a story.

Sir Denis Fitzpatrick and his daughter were making a tour of the Kerry fjords some years ago, and the lady asked a boatman on Caragh Lake, what would happen to a tenant who took an evicted farm.

The reply was:—

'I don't think he'd do it again, Miss, leastways it's in the next world alone he'd have the chance of making such a fool of himself.'

Here is another aspect of not paying rent to Government, which would occur to no one unacquainted with Ireland, but is quite characteristic:—

Suppose twenty men were tenants on a townland; one would pay, and the other nineteen after being evicted would also squat down on his patch. Unless caretakers at a cost of about three times the rent were put in under excessive police protection, all the nineteen farms would promptly become derelict.

It would have been far better if the Government had given a free grant of one quarter of the purchase money, had compelled the tenant to himself find another quarter, and had lent the remaining half for a comparatively short term, say twenty-five years.

Then the tenant would have had genuine interest in the redemption of his own property.

But, asks the English tourist impressed by the apparent beggarliness of all he sees, how could the tenant procure a quarter of the money?

Naturally it would be alleged by the agitators that he could not. All the same you may confidently contradict any such denial as that.

It is clear that almost any tenant could get the money, if you bear in mind that though rents are so reduced, the most unimproving tenant can get from ten to twenty years' purchase for the good-will of his farm.

'Ah, for sure, he has got a situation with a farmer.'

'Well, that's a good start in life, is it not?' asked my friend, to which the woman retorted in melancholy accents:—

'That may be, but my family have always been rared (i.e. reared) on the gentry until now,' thereby expressing a feeling very prevalent in Ireland to-day.

The Home Rulers allege that these high prices which are paid for the good-will of land are attributable to two causes:—

(a) Excess of competition for land.
(b) Irish returning from America.

Both these reasons are absurd.

When the population of Ireland was nearly eight millions, these prices could not be obtainable, nor anything like them, while to-day the population is only four millions. Unless the returning emigrants thought they were obtaining good value for their money, they would hardly abandon a country—the United States—where they can get land for nothing.

The enormous increase in the Irish Savings Banks, as well as the deposits in other Irish Banks, must be almost entirely derived from the savings of the farmers. The landlords have been ruined by the Land Act; labourers have no money to spare; and traders will not leave their money idle at the small rate of interest credited.

If the farmers thought they had better means of using the money, they would withdraw it, and they are without doubt as well aware as I am how they can do the English Government in the future, for if there is any roguery unknown to them, it is infinitesimal.

One feature of this curious Act is that the Geraldines have got rid of the last of their property, and escaped all the forfeitures.

As for the sporting rights, far too much fuss has been made over them. Except where there are plantations or good fishing, they are of very little value one way or the other. The Act will not affect the hunting. Small Irish farmers like to see the hunt almost as much as the hunting set themselves like to participate in it.

Of course, too, the Act ought to be popular in Ireland, because it is taking so much money out of England.

A point I wish to emphasise is one about which there has been a great deal of misconception.

A considerable amount of capital has been made out of the depreciation of agricultural produce in Ireland as compared with England. But Ireland is a stock-producing country and not an agricultural country in the strict sense, for the cultivation of wheat in Ireland has long since ceased to exist. The true relation may be seen in the fact that in England the difficulty of getting store-cattle was a loss to farmers, whereas it has been a decided gain to farmers in Ireland—though they are not best pleased when you impress the fact on them.

Mr. Finlay Dun in Landlords and Tenants in Ireland in 1881 cites some examples which may be apt to-day when we are considering Mr. Wyndham's Act.

He writes on page 64:—

God knows we have waded knee deep in blood of men, and domestic animals since that was written, yet to-day are we any nearer the final solution of the Irish difficulties? In my opinion, certainly not.