"The _Times_ Commissioner" has fallen into a great error in attributing the disturbances in Leitrim to evictions and non-resident landlords. He asserts--"There are no resident landlords in the neighbourhood of Balnamory," where the direct contrary is the truth, all the proprietors to any considerable extent being resident Irish landlords. Again he writes--"Nearly the same thing may be said of the parish of Cloone, the headquarters of Molly Maguire. In the Appendix to the Report of the Land Commission, Part II., page 90, _Henry Smith, of Kells, in this county_, swears to ejectments served on twenty-eight families, consisting of one hundred and fifty. He swears to seven families being ejected there in 1843, and of sixty-four people being ejected out of Irishtown, who owed no rent and received no compensation." Now Kells, where those evictions _were said_ to have taken place, is in the county Meath, about fifty Irish miles from Cloone, where the commissioner states they occurred. We have only to refer our readers to the evidence of Mr Sergeant, the agent of the Marquis of Headfort, to show how unfounded the charge was, that so many people were ejected even there. The evidence of this gentleman was before the commissioner, and he should have attended to it.
The Gerrard case, of which we heard so much, ought to be a caution to those who put faith in the statements of the Repeal press, or of the Irish agitators. Yet the explanation given by Mr Gerrard does not seem to satisfy the _Times_. That journal indignantly asks, "Why did he suffer beggars to be bred upon his estate?" How could he prevent it? "He remonstrated; but because the people held under a lease, (or a written agreement, which was of equal value,) he could do no more." But suppose he had power to prevent "this propagation of beggars," how could he exercise it in the present state of Ireland? The same system of abuse and execration would have met him at every step he took. If his tenants were tenants-at-will, with the utmost vigilance, squatters would most likely have been admitted on his land, and have been living under the same roof with the holder of the farm, long before he was able to discover it; and when he did, his only resource would have been to serve notice to quit, and eject. He must then put out all parties; and the cry of extermination would have been then raised as loudly as it is now, and the Punishment of Death would, if there were but an opportunity to execute it, as inevitably have followed. Having granted a lease, the only power Mr Gerrard could exercise he did. If Irish landowners give leases, they cannot prevent "the propagation of beggars;" and if they refuse to do so, for the very purpose of guarding against this evil, they are denounced as men who keep their tenantry in dread of being dispossessed, and who effectually prevent the improvement of the country, by not giving to the tillers of the soil security of tenure. To talk of clauses against subletting is sheer nonsense. How are such clauses to be enforced? The penalties can only be levied by distress. No man can make distress available for the recovery of rent, much less so for a penalty inflicted on an occupier, because he gave one-third of his farm to a son, another to a married daughter, and thus planted three families on that portion of his estate which the landlord designed for the comfortable support of one.