Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home RuleBuckley, Robert John
History
Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home Rule
Buckley, Robert John
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Irish question
The tenants of the Bodyke property stigmatise Colonel O'Callaghan as
the worst landlord in the world, and declare themselves totally unable
to pay the rent demanded, and even in some cases say that they cannot
pay any rent at all, a statement which is effectually contradicted by
the fact that most of them pay up when fairly out-generalled by the
dashing strategy of Mr. Stannard MacAdam, whose experience as a racing
bicyclist seems to have stood him in good stead. The country about
Bodyke has an unfertile look, a stony, boggy, barren appearance. Here
and there are patches of tolerable land, but the district cannot
fairly be called a garden of Eden. Being desirous of hearing both
sides of the question, I have conversed with several of the
complaining farmers, most of whom have very small holdings, if their
size be reckoned by the rent demanded. The farmers' homes are not
luxurious, but the rural standard of luxury is in Ireland everywhere
far below that of the English cottar, who would hold up his hands in
dismay if required to accommodate himself to such surroundings.
Briefly stated, the case of the tenants is based on an alleged
agreement on the part of Colonel O'Callaghan to make a reduction of
twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents and thirty-seven and a half
per cent. on non-judicial rents, whenever the farming season proved
unfavourable. This was duly carried out until 1891, when the question
arose as to whether that was or was not a bad year. The tenants say
that 1891 was abnormally bad for them, but that on attending to pay
their rent, believing that the reductions which had formerly been
made, and which they had come to regard as invariable, would again
take place, they were told that the customary rebate would now cease
and determine, and that therefore they were expected to pay their
rents in full. This they profess to regard as a flagrant breach of
faith, and they at once decided to pay no rent at all. The position
became a deadlock, and such it still remains. They affect to believe
that the last agent, Mr. Willis, resigned his post out of sheer
sympathy, and not because he feared sudden translation to a brighter
sphere. They complain that the Colonel's stables are too handsome, and
that they themselves live in cabins less luxurious than the lodgings
of the landlord's horses. There is no epithet too strong to express
their indignation against the devoted Colonel, who was described by
one imaginative peasant, who had worked himself up to a sort of
descriptive convulsion, as a "Rawhacious Vagabone," a fine instance of
extemporaneous word-coining of the ideo-phonetic school, which will
doubtless be greedily accepted by Nationalist Parliamentarians who,
long ago, exhausted their vocabulary of expletives in dealing with Mr.
Gladstone and each other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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