Disturbed Ireland : $b being the letters written during the winter of 1880-81Becker, Bernard H. (Bernard Henry)
History
Disturbed Ireland : $b being the letters written during the winter of 1880-81
Becker, Bernard H. (Bernard Henry)
Ireland -- Social conditions; Working class -- Ireland
How minute the subdivision has been may be gathered from the fact that
335 English acres, whereof some 250 are good for anything in their
present condition, are divided among 40 tenant families, whose numbers
may be safely put down at 200 souls. The land is therefore divided at
the rate of one and a quarter English acres per head, and when it is
mentioned that the most important tenant pays a rent of 17l. 10s., it
will be seen that some of the holdings are ridiculously small. Many
range from 4l. to 5l. per annum and are absolutely incapable of
providing food for a family. It has been found impossible to reduce
the number of tenants to any sensible degree without incurring the
hatred of the country side, and the old and infirm whose children are
dead or have emigrated, still cling to the miserable cabins in which
their lives have been passed.
On the opposite side of Tralee I witnessed a spectacle of a widely
different character. A smart drive from Tralee northwards through a
blinding rain landed me at Ardfert, the village in the centre of Mr.
W. Crosbie's wonderfully improved estate. Going about his work quietly
and unostentatiously, the proprietor has, in the course of forty-two
years, completely altered the conditions of existence on his land.
When it came into his possession in 1838, it was, as many Irish
estates are now, suffering from local congestion of population. Mr.
Crosbie's father had inherited from the Earl of Glendore, who had
given leases under the old penal laws. At the time only Protestants
were allowed to hold leases, and in consequence of the small number of
Protestants compared with the demand for lessees, the leases were
obtained upon very advantageous terms--a long period, a low rent, and
few conditions. The result was that the penal law, like other clumsy
devices of the kind, defeated itself; for there was nothing to prevent
the lessee from subletting the land. This had been done to an enormous
extent when Mr. Crosbie came into possession, and the lowland part of
the estate was greatly over-populated. The upper part was greatly
under-populated, and in the words of the proprietor, nothing could be
worse than the way in which the tenants held the land. "No one knew
from year to year which farm he had to till, and they used to divide
every field and divide the crops every year." Mr. Crosbie was not
deterred by the difficulty of the task before him, and undertook the
redistribution of his tenantry, on the anti-rundale system, and by
degrees succeeded in planting the surplus population of the lowlands
upon the higher ground. Moreover he anticipated the ideas of Mr.
Mitchell Henry and Canon Griffin by putting his tenants under the
direct control of a skilled agriculturist, under his own supervision.
Having thus redistributed his people on the land and taught them the
elements of agricultural science, he commenced the work of building
them suitable houses and farm buildings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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