ARE THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS KNAVES?
From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893
Page 84
ARE THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS KNAVES?
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where the organised embezzlement lies here, or as to what strait-waistcoat less elastic than a British Act of Parliament will restrain a man of the mental turn of the Most Noble the Marquis of Clanricarde from keeping half a county plunged in misery?
The circumstances of the Ponsonby struggle, and of Mr. Smith-Barry's evil apparition on the scene, are not yet so well understood in England. One of the advantages of the Commission of Inquiry will be to publish those circumstances far and wide in a manner that cannot be disposed of by vapourings upon Primrose platforms. There is a congenital eccentricity to be pleaded for Lord Clanricarde. It will be curious to see what better excuse than ambition for an extinct family title Mr. Smith-Barry will be able to offer for his interposition at the very moment of an amicable settlement on the Ponsonby estate —an estate with which he was wholly unconnected, and whose tenantry his own agent declared to be grossly rack-rented. The proofs to that effect can be piled heaven-high. The tenantry, although they toiled like slaves on their wretched plots, were so poor that years before the present struggle they had to be saved from famine by public relief. Through the agency of Sir John Arnott, landlord and tenants had come so near a settlement that, in the words of the landlord's representative, Mr. Brunker, 'I had hoped to effect such modifications in the tenants' offer as would enable me to recommend it as a full and fair one,' when, all of a sudden, Mr. Smith-Barry announced, in a banquet speech, that he had organised a syndicate of opulent aristocrats to take over the estate bodily from the landlord, and 'make an example of the refractory tenantry. He did so. He has evicted two hundred and forty-one out of two hundred and forty-six tenants—practically the entire … continue reading »
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