An Object Lesson for Englishmen

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 38, 18 September 1902, Page 2

An Object Lesson for Englishmen

It is little wonder indeed that what he saw should have turned the Unionist M.P. into a burning Radical for the scenes to be witnessed on the De Freyne* estate during the present eviction campaign would move the heart of anyone who is endowed with even a small share of the ordinary feelings of humanity. A ' Casual Visitor ' from England contributes to the Irish People of July 19 a giaphic account of what he saw on the estate, and his description exceeds in power and pathos even the well-known picture from Luke Dehnege. He says : 1 1 had never seen an Irish eviction. I never want to see one again. It was Tuesday, and the rain fell — cold and pitiless rain, as if the elements were resolved to play their part in the foul work that was being done. In good truth the 11 clearances " on the De Freyne estate would have been very inappropriately carried out under God's blessed sunshine. Better the rain that poured down on the miserable " sticks " of furniture cast into the roadway by none-too-tender hands. Better the rain falling on the sweet wee face of the eightmonths' old infant removed from the house of Martin Doherty. Better the rain chilling the thin, trembling limbs of the poor little children who waited around beside their weeping mothers while the dying peat embers were being carried out of the doors, and while the doors were being barred and fastened to the satisfaction of Mr. Woulfe Flanagan. ' Beyond, more fitting than gladsome sunshine and the song of birds, were the loweiing skies arid the sleet-clouds slanting across the dismal bogs when poor eld Col-nnn slowly and painfully dragged his paralysed limbs over the threshold of the cabin wherein he had lived for 60 years. He is now 84, and for six years past Ins not b^en able to lift his paralysed hand to his mouth. Is the Saxon cold-hearted ? Perhaps so; but as I saw this poor wreck, tottering, shaking all over his wasted and out-worn frame, planting his stick on the water-sodden ground with a ierk, and painfully moving towards the group on the roadside, now and again *l->wly turning back to look at the thatched cabin, and anon mumbling to himself in Irish and broken Knghsh, I telt that evtn I, a stranger, could weep at the sight were it not that around me were Celts of the Celts whose laces were stolid as the brown rocks of their bogs. But I caught an occa-ional fitry gleam in the eyes of these people ; and a l^an, grey-haired m in, standing beside me turned away his head and muttered, wholly to himself — " If this work's going to be c irried on, wait till the boys come back ! " '

Here is another picture— a fair specimen of the way in which the tenant who is unable to pay the rent is treated . ' Poor Mrs Madden ! Her husband is away somewhere in Great Britain, earning- the price of the maize whit h Sir Michael Hicks- Beach has taxed. O>ven Madden has not been able to come home during the past two \rars and the hapless mother struggled as best she could ' to keep the life m ' lier young family of six, the eldest being twtlve v,ears and the youngest four. Here it was no case ul refusing to pay — it was absolute inability. Mrs Maddfti occupied a miserable cabin — cleaner, indeed, than most ol us neighbor*-, but still po >r beyond all telling. Nine acres of bog were her portion of this great estate, and the yearly rent was £8 i(>-, Within a ue. k before the advent of Mr Woulfe Flanagan, his bailiffs, and protecting police, all the unfortunate worn m's h\e stock— a bullock and two pigs — had died, hhe actually owed a \ ear and a half's rent (£l3 4-J, but no 01 ding to practice, the agent added that hideous ' lunging halt-gale, 1 ai d <-ued lor a debt of £lj I2S. And, in oidi rto rtcover tins urju-t amount, proceedings were taken, as in a'l ti e other c is- s, in the Dublin Courts; and the costs of thrse prc(t<diig-, le.irlud y,4<> ' Thus, the stricken woman, with a hu-b i'id to; wig in Knyl.md, with a helpless young famil>,and with mi-f mint's nowdmo thickly upon her, was asked to meet a dem md toi £^j 12^ — the original arrears of a horrible raekrent auiouiitm h> lie 11 remembered, to 4s.

' " Pay up ! " Mrs Madden ! Mr Wyndham said so to you in the House of Commons — Mr Wyndham whose £4500 a year is free of all charges. " Pay up ! " echoed the Dublin Courts. " Pay up ! " said Mr Woulfe Flanagan on Monday. But Canon White, the P.P., whom I did not mcct — perhaps his heart was sickened by Monday's scenes — intervened. He joined his plea to Mrs Maddens appeal for mercy. The agent could do nothing. He referred the suppliants to Lord De Freyne. And that Monday evening the poor woman — a weary-looking, heart-broken woman who must have been a parish belle years ago — set off on foot to plead with the Catholic — the pious Catholic lord of the soil in his stately mansion of Frenchpark, ten miles away. Ten miles of a trudge — ten Irish miles, which measure nearly thirteen of our English miles — over stony roads and hills — out of the bogs, and on through the lord's smiling demesne, until, in the night-time, she reached the door, and knocked tremblingly and pleaded as a mother only can plead for the horne — for the lives of her children. It was all in vain — the weary journey, the pitiful cry for mercy. • Pay up ! ' And back again, with burning brain and a heart heavier than lead, walked Mrs Madden, through the stony moorland road in the fallen shadows of the night — back, footsore, hopeless, helpless, to the little cabin where waited the shivering children for the message of despair. The sequel was in keeping with the black-hearted cruelty which had been displayed towards this unfortunate woman from the first. Her wretcheed 'scraps' of bedding and ricketty bits of furniture were rudely flung out by the evillooking gang from Dublin, and the unfortunate woman and her helpless little ones were turned heartlessly adrift in the pelting rain.

The impression made by such sights on one who saw them for the first time was naturally a very deep one. ' Long as I have studied Ireland/ writes this visitor, ' earnestly as I have striven to understand her and her " problems," intimate as has been my acquaintance with Irishmen in every walk of life— l learned more in a day than in 12 years. As my mind dwells again on the baby of eight months and the the old man of 84 with the shadows of the grave hovering almost visibly over his snowy head — as I think of the children who cried aloud in their agony, of the careworn pilgrim to Frenchpark whose 26 miles' walk was an effort worse than wasted — on all the misery and sorrow and despair brought by one Irish landlord into the depths of these barren bogs, I wonder no longer at Irish ' discontent.' And if the English opponents of Home Rule who are often kind-hearted and well-meaning men could only get a similar glimpse of what coercion really means in Ireland they would not only cease to be surprised at Irish discontent but they would be filled with a very genuine astonishment that the Irish people hive borne such galling tyranny and injustice with such wonderful patience and self-restraint.