And that's the whole truth of the matter. CHAPTER XVIII A GLANCE AT MY STEWARDSHIP Davitt called the generation after O'Connell's 'a soulless age of pitiable cowardice.' I should call the generation that was active in the early eighties 'a cowardly age of pitiless brutality.' Times had begun to mend in Ireland from 1850, and had continued to do so until the ballot made the country a prey to self-seeking political agitators. Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime. Yet this happened after Fenianism had practically died out in the early seventies. I myself heard Mr. Gladstone say that landlords had been weighed in the balance and had not been found wanting, for the bad ones were exceptional. None the less were they and their representatives delivered over to their natural opponents, who were egged on by the Land League and by its tacit or active supporters in the House of Commons. Emphatically I repeat the assertion that neither Mr. Parnell nor the Land League would have been formidable without the active help of Mr. Gladstone. Before 1870 Kerry used to be represented by gentlemen of the county. The present members in 1904 are an attorney's clerk, an assistant schoolmaster, a Dublin baker, and a fourth of about the same class. This was no more foreseen by the landlords when the ballot was introduced any more than we anticipated the way in which we were to be plundered. Many considered that the confiscation of the Irish Church, which had been established since the reign of Elizabeth, was an inroad into the rights of property very likely to be followed up by further aggressions, but we never looked for such a wholesale violation as ensued. By the Act of 1870 no tenant could be turned out without being paid a sum averaging a fourth of the fee-simple in addition to being paid for his improvements, and there the most observant of us thought the worst had been reached. When the Act of 1881 was passed, I met Lord Spencer, one of the authors of it, and said to him:-- 'This Act will have as much effect in settling Ireland as throwing a cup of dirty water into the Thames would have in creating a flood.' My words were soon proved right, for the tenants, having obtained half the landlord's property by it, thought that by well working their voting and shooting powers they would get the remainder. I have been getting away from my own experiences to give my own convictions. When you have meditated for twenty years amid the ruins of what you had been building up all your life long and know that it is due to Irish outrage and English misrule, there is a temptation to speak plainly on breaking silence. The year 1878 was a wet year and yielded a bad harvest; 1879 was worse. The prosperity of Ireland depends on its harvest, and starvation is the opportunity of the lying agitator.