WAIRARAPA STANDARD. SATURDAY, AFRIL, 30, 1881. ENGLISH COMFORT ON IRISH SOIL.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume 11, Issue 1302, 30 April 1881, Page 2

WAIRARAPA STANDARD. SATURDAY, AFRIL, 30, 1881. ENGLISH COMFORT ON IRISH SOIL.

Is 1623 there wan bom at fiomsey in Hampshire, a child called William Petty. He was a tradesman’s sou. Having learned all that could be taught at the local school, when 15 years of age, he went to the College at Caen in Normanby. Haying staid some time on the Continent, devoting himself to scientific and other pursuits, he returned to England, when he was appointed Professor of Anatomy in the Gresham College, Oxford, where bo remained until be went to Ireland as Physician-General to the English Army with an outfit of a cost of £IOO. He arrived in Ireland in 1654. He states in the will he left behind him at this date “ by undertaking contracts, speculating in mines, ships, timber, and living within his income,’, that he had accumulated some £15,000. Until June, 1569, his salary was 20s a day. In a few years he owned above 50,000 acres of land in Kerry, and quoting again Irom his will, we learn that at the time of his death he had in Ireland “ without the County of Kerry, iu land, reversions, and remainders, about £3IOO more.” He was the founder of the Lansdowne Estates in Ireland, and of the Lansdowne family. He died in 1687, and was buried in his native town. He left three children—Charles, who was made Lord Sheibonrne by William 111, who was succeeded by his brother Henry, who was again succeeded by his sister's son. Hence the Lans downe family. Lord Lansdowne was a member of the present Ministry, and the London Daily Telegraph thus wrote of his secession last year. “ In Lord Lansdowne the Ministry have lost a statesman of promise, whose secession is all the more important on account of its cause. Eor generations the Lansdowne estates have bad a high fame as models of management, the liberality, and the justice of the noble owners having succeeded in producing what may be called English Comfort on Irish Soil.” The management of the Irish Estates at the present time, is in the hands of Mr Townsend Trench, he having succeeded his father, Mr W. Stuart Trench. It will be interesting to

notice the English Comfort produced on this Irish Estate by the liberality and the justice of the noble owners. When the famine took place in the forties the first Mr Trench had just l taken over the control of the estate.! He was an author, this Mr Trench, and wrote a book called The Realities of Irish Lrffe.” A. portion of the , Latisdowrie estate is at Kenmare. ' This is hotv" Mr Trench, dpscn&bs English Comfortbh Irish Soil. “At least 5000 persons must have died of j sthrvatinVi within the Union of Ken« 'jiare, They died on the roads, and they died on the fields; they died in the mountains, and they died in the glens; they died at the relief works, and they died in their houses. So that while streets or villages were left almost without an inhabitant, and at last some few, despairing of help from ; the country, crawled in to the town, and died at the doors of the residents, and outside the Union walls.” Mr Irench, disliking having so many per- • sons dying on the Lansdowne estates, | organised a scheme of emigration, 1 which he thus describes. “In little more than a year 3500 paupers had left Kenmare for America, all free emigrants, without any ejectments having to be brought against them to enforce it, or the slightest pressure put upon them to go. Matters now began to right themselves. Only 50 or GO paupers remained in the House chargeable to the property, of which I had the care, and Lord Lansdowne’s estates at length breathed freely.” The details of this exodus we care not to relate. When the distress was found to be coming on again in 1879, the present Mr Trench denied its existence. In April, 1880, Mr Trench applied to the Mansion House Committee for funds to create a new emigration scheme. Some of the previous horrors would have comebackagain had not the Hun of Kenmare made wide appeals for charity. She collected some £15,000, the larger portion of which was spent in South Kerry. In her printed expression of thanks for the help she had received from the American people, dated Easter week 1880, she writes of Mr Trench in this manner :—“ Our land agent said to me that when he saw the distress coming he told bis noble master that it would be the best thing that had ever happened to the landlords, they would have their tenants at their mercy.” Bhe also says, “ These same land agents were the principle cause of the distress being denied, for clearly if the distress were admitted, to demand rents, and rack rents, would have been too gross an act of inhumanity.” Mr Charles Russell M. sf. writing on these lands where English comtort is found on Irish soil says, “Itis a noticeable fact that in one house, and in one house only, and that on this Kenmare estate did I see a piece of bacon hanging up in the kitchen. I was struck with this and with the otherwise greater comfort of the dwelling. 1 complimented the tenant on what I presumed was his greater industry or his better management. His answer was pithy End to the point. He said ‘ I could never afford that, or to live any way decent out of the laud.’ How then do you afford it ? I asked. His answer was satisfactory. He was an ex-policeman with a pension of some £4O a-year.” Twenty years ago there was a general rise in the rents on this estate of 25 per cent; since which period the “ silent system ” has been adopted. The change is made whenever a tenancry is change d, or the son putin the place of the father or mother The agent fixes the amount of the increase and the tenant has to pay or go. We must find room for one more illustration from the Lawnsdowne estate, it being, we are told, one of the models of management in Ireland. There is what is called the hanging gales of rent. Every tenant on the estate is in debt twelve months rent to the “ noble owner.” When he is evicted of course the hanging gales are claimed. These hanging gales are older in many cases than the oldest inhabitant or occupier. When the present Protestant Rector of Kenmare the Rev Mr M. Cutcheon paid his first gale of rent to the agent Mr Trench he found when he looked at his receipt that it was dated a year back. He was thus made to appear not only to be owing a years rent but to have paid rent for a time when he was not in possession. Mr Trench told him it was a mere matter of form the custom of the office. It is only for want of space that we refrain from giving other illustrations of the manner in which “The Noble House of Landsdowne have succeeded for generations in pro ducing English Comfort on Irish Soil.”