The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent. Samuel Murray Hussey
say you have cleaned your nails?'
Though he was an out-and-out Fenian, Ronayne was as honest a man as I ever met, and he was considered one of the most amusing men in the House of Commons.
The attorneys in Cork at one time formed quite a small coterie, who divided all the business until it grew too much for them, one, Mr. Paul Wallace, being especially harassed with briefs.
At length a barrister named Graves came down from Dublin, and was introduced to Wallace by another attorney with the remark:—
'Counsel are very necessary.'
'Yes,' said Wallace; 'as a matter of fact, we are all being driven to our graves.'
At Kanturk Sessions, Mr. Philip O'Connell was consulted by a client about the recovery of a debt. He at once saw that the defence would be a pleading of the statute of limitations, so he told his client that if he could get a man to swear that the debtor had admitted the debt within the last six years, he would succeed, but not otherwise.
O'Connell went off to take the chair at a Bar dinner to a new County Court judge.
As the dessert was being set on the table, a loud knock came at the door, which was immediately behind the chairman.
'What is it?' cried O'Connell.
A head appeared, and the voice from it explained:—
'I'm Tim Flaherty, your honour, as was consulting you outside, and I want you to come this way for a while.'
'Don't you see I am engaged and cannot come?'
'But it's pressing and important.'
'I tell you I won't come.'
Then at the top of his voice Tim yelled:—
'Will a small woman do as well, your honour?'
The members of the Bar present, quite unaware of the previous conversation, exploded in a shout of laughter, and it was long before O'Connell heard the last of the invidious construction they put on the affair.
One of the interesting people I came across in the vicinity of Cork was Mr. Jeffreys, who up to his death in 1862 was the most enterprising and experimental landed proprietor in the county. He imported Scottish stewards, and people from far and near came to see his farms.
I should say that in the fifties he did more for agriculture than any other one man who could be named in Ireland.
He often said to me:—
'The system of small farms will not last long in Ireland, for the occupiers are sure to strike against rents.'
He did not live to see the fulfilment of his prophecy, but its effects were felt by his grandson, Sir George Colthurst, who inherited his property.
Most of his stories were very improper, but their wit excused them.
In the Kildare Street Club one day he saw a very pompous individual, and asked who he was.
'That's So-and-So, and the odd thing is he is the youngest of four brothers, who are all married without having a child between them.'
'Ah, that accounts for his importance—he is the last of the Barons.'
Finding him very meditative in the County Club at Cork one Friday, I asked him what was the matter.
'I am making my soul,' said he. 'I began my dinner with turbot and ended with scollops.'
CHAPTER VI
FAMINE AND FEVER
It is now necessary to revert to that terrible page of Irish history, the famine, which culminated in what is still known as 'the black forty-seven.'
I have often been asked, 'How is it that Ireland could formerly support a population of eight millions as compared with only five now?'
The answer is simple: Eight millions could still exist if the potato crop were a certainty, and if the people were now content to exist as they did then. But to the then existing population—living at best in a light-hearted and hopeful, hand-to-mouth contentment—there was a terrible awakening.
The mysterious blight, which had affected the potato in America in 1844, had not been felt in Ireland, where the harvest for 1845 promised to be singularly abundant. Suddenly, almost without warning, the later crop shrivelled and wasted.
The poor had a terribly hard winter, and the farmers borrowed heavily to have means to till a larger amount of land in 1846.
Once more the early prospects were admirable, and then in a single night whole districts were blighted.
This is how Mr. Steuart Trench described the catastrophe:—
'On August 1, 1846, I was startled by a sudden and strange rumour that all the potato fields in the district were blighted, and that a stench had arisen emanating from their decaying stalk. The report was true, the stalks being withered; and a new, strange stench was to be noticed which became a well-known feature in 'the blight' for years after. On being dug up it was found that the potato was rapidly blackening and melting away. The stench generally was the first indication, the withered leaf following in a day or two.'
The terrible sufferings which ensued were complicated by some blunders of British statesmen.
In 1845 Sir Robert Peel was Prime Minister. He imported Indian meal, and established depots in the country, where it was sold to the people at the lowest possible price, thus putting a complete check on private enterprise.
In 1846 Lord John Russell was Premier. He declined to follow the example of Sir Robert Peel, because he considered that it interfered with Free Trade, and, reversing the policy of his predecessor, announced that he left the importation of meal to private enterprise.
But capitalists having been alarmed, meal was not imported in sufficient quantities, with the result that Indian corn rose to eighteen pounds a ton, when it might have been laid in at the rate of eight pounds a ton.
Had Lord John Russell's policy come first, and that of Sir Robert Peel subsequently, the result would have been very different.
The fight over the Corn Law question in England at the time was decidedly an injury to Ireland, because the Protectionists minimised the danger of famine in the winter of 1845 for fear of the calamity being made a pretext for Free Trade.
Dealing with an unforeseen calamity of such stupendous magnitude at long range from Downing Street entailed delay; and public relief, waiting until official investigation had tardily reported the hardships, suffered in the truly distressful country.
The state of things round Bantry, of which I had accurate knowledge, was appalling. I knew of twenty-three deaths in the poorhouse in twenty-four hours. Again, on a relief road, two hours after I had passed, on my ride home I saw three of the poor fellows stretched corpses on the stones they had been breaking.
The Registrar-General for Ireland, Mr. William Donelly, officially stated that five hundred thousand one-roomed cabins had disappeared between the census before the famine and the one after it.
Whole families used to starve in their cabins without their plight being discovered until the stench of their decaying corpses attracted notice.
Some superstition also prevented even the children from eating the myriads of blackberries which ripened on the bushes.
Directly the calamity was comprehended, the English poured money into the country with unbounded generosity, but the management was bad.
The relief works organised by the Government took the form of draining and road-making. This entailed delay, owing to the preliminary surveying, and when employment could be given, the people were too emaciated and