Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
Mr. Tener is an Ulster man from the County Cavan. He went with his wife
on their bridal trip to America, and what he there saw of the peremptory
fashion in which the authorities deal with conspiracies to resist the
law seems not unnaturally to have made him a little impatient of the
dilatory, not to say dawdling, processes of the law in his own country.
He gave me a very interesting account after dinner this evening of the
situation in which he found affairs on this property, an account very
different from those which I have seen in print. He is himself the owner
of a small landed property in Cavan, and he has had a good deal of
experience as an agent for other properties. "I have a very simple
rule," he said to me, "in dealing with Irish tenants, and that is
neither to do an injustice nor to submit to one." It was only, he said,
after convincing himself that the Clanricarde tenants had no legitimate
ground of complaint against the management of the estate, not removable
upon a fair and candid discussion of all the issues involved between
them and himself, that he consented to take charge of the property. That
to do this was to run a certain personal risk, in the present state of
the country, he was quite aware.
But he takes this part of the contract very coolly, telling me that the
only real danger, he thinks, is incurred when he makes a journey of
which he has to send a notice by telegraph--a remark which recalled to
me the curious advice given me in Dublin to seal my letters, as a
protection against "the Nationalist clerks in the post-offices." The
park of Portumua Castle, which is very extensive, is patrolled by armed
policemen, and whenever Mr. Tener drives out he is followed by a police
car carrying two armed men.
"Against whom are all these precautions necessary?" I asked. "Against
the evicted tenants, or against the local agents of the League?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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