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Grenville, and the accession of those men to power aroused Ireland to new political efforts, and inspired her people with fresh hopes. The government, ostensibly Whigs, soon proved to be Liberal, amongst the most prominent evidences of which was that the suspension of habeas corpus was allowed to lapse. The Catholics, as such, again began to struggle for emancipation. The inveterate opponents of the Union-Protestants as well as Catholics-began to hope that Fox would befriend them. But Fox proved to be too much engaged to be able to give much attention to Irish affairs. He had set his mind upon making peace with France, and chiefly devoted his energies in that direction, in the midst of which, and when apparently about to crown an honourable repute with tangible success, his career was cut short. In the same year he followed the shade of his great antagonist, and on the 13th of September Fox as well as Pitt had passed away, leaving the adherents of both, with reference to Ireland as to other affairs, in hopeless consternation and perplexity.

CHAPTER XI.

THE AGRARIAN CLOUD-ABSENTEES-MIDDLEMEN

L

TITHE PROCTORS-THRESHERS.

OOKING back at the history of Ireland during the early years of

the nineteenth century, there appears amongst the political and personal troubles of the time a something too often treated as subordinate, the then already rising agrarian cloud appearing amongst the rest no bigger than a man's hand, but threatening to spread, as it has done, over the whole field of Irish affairs.

Conquest had given over immense tracts of the country to Englishmen-aliens in race, religion, and sympathies. For many reasons these new lords preferred to reside in England, either on their own separate English estates, or for the most part in London, paying only flying visits to their unhappy Irish estates-unhappy for them, unhappy for their tenants, unhappy for the whole country. Such visits as were thus paid, usually arose out of difficulties about rent, which was always precarious and often unattainable. All the circumstances naturally led to a system that has been a peculiar aggravation of Irish miseries. The absentee lords, pestered and enraged about rents, made the whole business over to agents, who have earned an unsavoury reputation as middlemen. They were not merely collectors of rent, but speculators in it. All the possible rents of the estate being made over to the middleman for a compounded lump sum, the landlord received that sum without further trouble or expense, and was usually well satisfied. The middleman was at liberty to get all the rent he could, all above the lump sum being his own, and became a speculator in the poverty and distress of the unfortunate people who were thus handed over to

his tender mercies. Landlords being usually unwilling to part with the control of their estates for prolonged periods, generally made their contracts with middlemen for only a limited number of years; and, as this deprived the middleman of any abiding interest in the estate, it was his policy to exact every farthing of rent he could while his time lasted, regardless of the future welfare of the tenants or the eventual value of the estate. It frequently happened, therefore, that while rents. went rigorously up, the material value of the estate went hopelessly down. Higher rents had to be paid for occupations of diminishing value. The life of the tenants was one of perpetual struggle and exasperation. The absentee landlord probably did not know the real truth, and the middleman did not care so as his own fleeting opportunity was served. Many landlords who were not absentees found inducements for resorting to middlemen also, and the abominable system spread until it pervaded the whole country.

The

Tithes came in with their inevitable increase of exasperation. modern tithe system is an excrescence upon any country, and the circumstances have, ever since the Reformation, been peculiarly monstrous with reference to Ireland. On the face of it, Catholics have been taxed ten per cent. of their entire produce, for the support of a Church they hated as the local embodiment of their conquerors' power. Ostensibly, the money went to support a clergy who, as shown out of the mouths of two candid witnesses in the previous chapter, had very often no church, no people, no duties to perform, no pretence of giving value for an income so infamously extorted. That was not all. In Ireland, as in England, the Church people of the middle ages—its bishops and pastors, and nameless hungry cormorants of the clerical persuasion-were permitted to commit flagrant sacrilege and spoliation of Church revenues by selling their tithes for capital sums to any one who would take the shameful speculation. Who had the capital sums, and who spent them, and how were they made away with for the personal aggrandisement of an unfaithful priesthood? To the eternal shame of past generations of statesmen, and to the discredit of modern premiers who are so lost to a sense of public decency as to look the

TITHES AND "THRESHERS."

97

facts in the face without blushing, and without attempting to undo the disgrace, those iniquitous speculations have been sanctioned, and the descendants of the speculators have been confirmed in the possession of their unholy bargains, and hence we have to bear the burden of lay impropriators of tithes. In Ireland, the owners of tithes, whether lay or clerical, have been, during all modern times, in a peculiarly invidious position, and the shame and disgrace no less than the personal trouble and peril of exacting tithes have been the means of handing tithes over to middlemen as well as rents, the tithe middlemen being known as tithe proctors.

In 1806, the year in which Pitt and Fox died-in a year when so many events filled the voluminous pages of history as to reduce to apparent insignificance the cloud that thus looks so small in the past distance, while foreign complications and court intrigues occupied the statesmen and newspapers of the time-the Irish peasants were being goaded to frenzy by the increasing exactions of middlemen and tithe proctors combined. Commutation of tithes for a sum of money was not in vogue then, and money in lieu of the visible tenth was seldom offered or accepted, so the tithe-owner, clerical or lay, principal or proctor, had to claim, and appropriate, and carry away, and stack apart, the veritable tenth of corn and other produce to which he was legally entitled. A secret confederacy, called the Threshers, was formed, and was most active in the counties of Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, and Roscommon. It was contended that in the late unprecedented rise in the tithes, beyond what had before been insisted upon, the profits of crops went almost entirely to the tithe proctor. Threatening letters, signed "Captain Thresher," were sent to lukewarm tenants, enjoining them not on any account to pay money compositions, but to leave their tithes in the fields. This had the effect of separately stacking the corn taken for tithe, and the Threshers usually assembled early in the morning and destroyed whatever tithe corn fell in their way. In the month of November succeeding the death of Fox, they took eleven stacks of tithe corn near Ballina that had been seized by a proctor, and strewed them along the road all the way into the town. They made

domiciliary visits both by night and day, at houses and cabins, for the purpose of procuring arms, which they eagerly took, but perpetrated no outrages upon unresisting persons. As the winter advanced the Threshers became so numerous and active that extraordinary exertions were made for their suppression. Large numbers were arrested and tried by a special commission-some were hanged; and so died out the ephemeral movement of the Threshers, which merely remains upon record as a graphic illustration of the perpetual character of the land grievances of the country, and a dim forecast of things to come.

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