ARE THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS KNAVES?

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 81

ARE THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS KNAVES?

« previous page | book contents | start of this chapter | next page »

Lansdowne's judicial tenants at Luggacurran in 1886 claimed a reduction of 15 per cent. Lord Lansdowne, like Lord Salisbury, swore by all his gods that autumn that he would not abate judicial rents by one farthing. The Land Act of the following year declared that the judicial rents must be abated nevertheless, and 13 per cent. was the reduction which the law compulsorily made in that very Luggacurran division. The Act of Parliament, therefore, established that the tenants were right and Lord Lansdowne wrong. Had the tenants been admitted honestly to their 13 per cent. the struggle in Luggacurran would have been over five years ago. When the Act passed, however, the tenants were under notice of eviction. The whole estate has since been cleared of its population, and Lord Lansdowne is at present invoking the aid of the House of Lords to pull down the wooden huts in which his homeless tenantry have found shelter. It was so all over the country. To proscribe the Campaign tenants as hostes humani generis, to hunt them down, wild-game fashion, by way of warning to the Irish tenantry of the unforgivable sin of combination and of Mr. Balfour's prowess as a coercionist, became the settled policy of Mr. Balfour and his landlord confederates. 'If I were an Irish landlord I should rather beg my bread than yield to the Plan of Campaign,' said Mr. Balfour in the House of Commons. Mr. Smith-Barry organised a syndicate of wealthy Englishmen to 'make an example' of the Ponsonby tenantry. The Irish people, for their part, knew that the Campaign tenants, if they were pedantically speaking wrong, were in truth and substance right. They determined they would not tamely submit to see these men exterminated. There followed five years of police terrorism, of cruel evictions, of all those … continue reading »

« previous page | book contents | start of this chapter | next page »