A GEM OF MISGOVERNMENT IN IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 42

A GEM OF MISGOVERNMENT IN IRELAND

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Younger earns a handsome salary as poor-law inspector for administering public relief to the Clare Islanders, while X. the Elder (they are brothers) earns a double set of fees in appropriating for the landlord the fruit of the relief thus provided. X. the Elder, in fact, officiates both as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as Lord High Executioner. As sub-Sheriff of the county he wields all the powers and terrors of the law, and is accordingly sought after far and wide in the County Mayo as land-agent. He seeks the decree for possession as land-agent, and as Sheriff is in a position to command all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men to execute it. Mr. Jackson admits he dislikes the patent double-acting apparatus, but professes that he can find no remedy for it. All the power of Britain is at hand to crush the starving peasant who boos a bailiff; but there is no power in the decrees of Venice to prevent the principal officer of the law from being principal officer of the landlord at the same time—from being, in short, according to the description in an old rhyme, 'Judge, jury, gallows, rope, and all.' Accordingly X. the Younger, having fulfilled his function as angel of charity on Clare Island, X. the Elder took the islanders in hand; and X. the land-agent, having made his arrangements for pouncing upon the peasants' relief-wages and charity-grown potato-crops for rent, X. the Sheriff ordered a competent force of Queen's riflemen to his assistance to make straight his paths.

There ensued a six months' squalid and sickening war throughout the winter between peasant and landlord for the fruit of the miserable relief administered by the British taxpayer—a war in which the blows were all upon one side, for the poor Gaelic-speaking peasants had no weapon even of speech, while the landlord's raids were backed up … continue reading »

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