The Reminiscences of an Irish Land AgentHussey, Samuel Murray
History
The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent
Hussey, Samuel Murray
Country life -- Ireland; Hussey, Samuel Murray, 1824-; Ireland -- History -- 1837-1901
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Killarney, Doctor Moriarty, protested
strongly against the cowardice of the Fenians, who were afraid to face
one armed man, and waited until his back was turned before they shot
him.
However, as I have indicated, the Fenian movement was very
insignificant, and was known in all its aspects to the Government, which
dealt pretty roughly with it.
It is a singular fact that in the Fenian councils Killarney should have
been selected for the outbreak.
This is a town where nearly all the landed proprietors were Roman
Catholics, where there was a Catholic Bishop, a monastery and two
convents, while one half-ruined Protestant church sufficed to
accommodate the few worshippers who sat under a dreary, inoffensive
vicar on a very small salary. All reasonable folk, moreover, know that
Killarney is the town to which, more than any other in Ireland, it is
important to attract British tourists.
It was well known that some of the promoters and instigators of the
movement betrayed it before its very inception to the Government; and
Bishop Moriarty, from his pulpit, in his sermon alluded in no measured
language to those criminals who instigated the innocent peasants to play
a part in this mock insurrection, and then betrayed them.
He concluded:--
'It may be a hard saying, but surely hell is not too hot nor eternity
too long for the punishment of such villainy.'
Yet the whole of Irish history is disfigured by the poisonous trail of
the insidious informer.
I was in Kerry at the time of the Cahirciveen fizzle, in the
neighbourhood of Dingle, and it was rumoured that the insurrection was
to be general.
That was not my opinion, for I travelled on an open car by myself, with
a large quantity of money, and no other weapon than an umbrella.
It was a very different state of affairs in the distress caused by Mr.
Gladstone's legislation, for then I never travelled without a revolver,
and occasionally was accompanied by a Winchester rifle. I used to place
my revolver as regularly beside my fork on the dinner-table, either in
my own or in anybody else's house, as I spread my napkin on my knees.
And yet it is strangely difficult to see any other cause than Mr.
Gladstone's Acts for such ill-feeling.
As my sworn evidence, on which I was cross-examined in the Parnell
Commission, showed, I had only ten evictions in six years among two
thousand tenants.
I should like to ask, in what class of life is there not more than one
in twelve hundred that gets into financial troubles in a year?
In the insurance world such a ratio of claims to premiums would make a
perfect fortune to the companies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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