On this place, too, it seems that Mr. Staples's grandfather put up many houses for the tenants; a thing worth noting, as one of not a few instances I have come upon to show that it will not do to accept without examination the sweeping statements so familiar to us in America, that improvements have never been made by the landlord upon Irish estates.
My companion had meant to put me down at the railway station of Attanagh, there to catch a good train to Kilkenny.
But we had a capital nag, and reached Attanagh so early that we determined to drive on to Ballyragget.
From Attanagh to Ballyragget the road ran along a plateau which commanded the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nore and of the finely wooded country beyond. Ballyragget itself is a brisk little market town, the American influence showing itself here, as in so many other places, in such trifles as the signs on the shops which describe them as "stores." My salmon-fishing companion put me down at the station and went off to the river, which flows through the town, and is here a swift and not inconsiderable stream.
An hour in the train took me to Kilkenny, where I met by appointment several persons whom I had been unable to see during my previous visit in March.
These gentlemen, experienced agents, gave me a good deal of information as to the effect of the present state of things upon the "_moral_" of the tenantry in different parts of Ireland. On one estate, for example, in the county of Longford, a tenant has been doing battle for the cause of Ireland in the following extraordinary fashion.
He held certain lands at a rental of £23, 4s. Being, to use the picturesque language of the agent, a "little good for tenant," he fell into arrears, and on the 1st of May 1885 owed nearly three years' rent, or £63, 12s., in addition to a sum of £150 which he had borrowed of his amiable landlord three or four years before to enable him to work his farm. Of this total sum of £213, 12s. he positively refused to pay one penny. Proceedings were accordingly taken against him, and he was evicted. By this eviction his title to the tenancy was broken. The landlord nevertheless, for the sake of peace and quiet, offered to allow him to sell, to a man who wished to take the place, any interest he might have had in the holding, and to forgive both the arrears of the rent and the £150 which had been borrowed by him. The ex-tenant flatly refused to accept this offer, became a weekly pensioner upon the National League, and declared war. The landlord was forced to get a caretaker for the place from the Property Defence Association at a cost of £1 per week, to provide a house for a police protection party, and to defray the expenses of that party upon fuel and lights. Nor was this all. The landlord found himself further obliged to employ men from the same Property Defence Association to cut and save the hay-crop on the land, and when this had been done no one could be found to buy the crop. The crop and the lands were "boycotted." It was only in May last that a purchaser could be found for the hay cut and saved two years ago--this purchaser being himself a "boycotted" man on an adjoining property. He bought the hay, paying for it a price which did not quite cover one-half the cost of sowing it!
