Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887: Volume 1, Number 1
Philosophy
Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887: Volume 1, Number 1
Medicine -- Periodicals; Phrenology -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
"Scully is one of the chief figures among the alien proprietors of
American soil, and has introduced the meanest features of the worst
forms of Irish landlordism on his estates in this country. He has
acquired in the neighborhood of 90,000 acres of land in Illinois
alone, at a merely nominal figure--50 cents to $1 per acre, as a rule.
His career as an Irish landlord was a history of oppression and
extortion, that was appropriately finished by a bloody encounter with
his tenants. He was tried and acquitted on the charge of double
murder, but became so unpopular that in 1850 he sold most of his Irish
property, and has since devoted himself to building up a landlord
system in Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and other States. He made
entries of the public domain through the medium of the land warrants
issued to Mexican war soldiers, which he purchased at the rate of 50
cents per acre. In Logan County, Ill., alone, he has 40,000 to 45,000
acres. It is the almost universal testimony that Scully's rule in that
county has reduced 250 tenants and their families to a condition
approaching serfdom. Furthermore, Scully pays no taxes, the tenants
signing ironclad agreements to assume the same, but they are required
to pay to Scully's agents the tax money at the same time as the
rentals--the 1st of January of each year; whereas, the agent need not
turn over the taxes to the county treasurer until about June 10
following. It is suggested that Scully probably makes a handsome
percentage on the tax money remaining in his hands for five months. It
is also shown that a great deal of this alien's land entirely escapes
taxation, thus increasing the burden on other property holders; that
he takes the most extraordinary precautions to secure his rent,
executing a cast iron lease, with provisions that mortgage the
tenant's all, scarcely allowing his soul to escape, and making it
compulsory for small grain to be sold immediately after harvest, no
matter what may be the condition of the market; that grain dealers are
notified not to buy of the tenants until Scully's rent is paid; in
short, that Scully has founded a land system so exacting that it is
only paralleled in Ireland, and rules his tenantry so despotically
that few can be induced to tell the story of their wrongs, justly
feeling that it would involve ruin to them."
Much sympathy has been excited by the reports of cruel evictions in
Ireland, to gratify the merciless avarice of landlords, and for the
justice of these reports we need not depend on Irish testimony alone.
American travellers have told enough, and the London _Standard_ of
Jan. 18 says: "Some of this winter's evictions have been inhuman
spectacles, fit only for a barbarous country and a barbarous age."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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