a person when he started from his home in the morning to say with any degree of certainty at what time he should return; and this I could corroborate from my own personal experience. However, the police thought better of it, and, just as the train was starting, they released their victim, and thrust him into a compartment where only sixteen travellers were stewing with heat. There was a good deal of singing and noise as the train moved slowly along, but I heard no vulgar language, and nothing more seditious than three cheers for the Land League, and then for the Suspects; and then, as a sort of anti-climax which caused immense amusement, for Mr. Forster. This last was given with enthusiasm.

At the first few stations on the line the train disgorged its abnormal cargo, and I arrived at Gort without any further adventure. At this place I paid a visit to a man who had been evicted from a farm and was now living in a hovel. He told me that until nine years ago he had been paying a rent of 217. for 20 acres, but that the landlord had then raised it to 40%. This he paid until the bad years came, and then he was evicted with his wife and children. As they had no shelter for the night, his wife had the audacity to break

the locks which the police had put on the door of the house, and they forthwith re-entered their old home. For this offence the man was sent to gaol for four months, and they were evicted again; but the woman remained refractory, and again broke the locks, and reimported her children; so as a last resource she was sent to gaol for a fortnight, and the children were left to shift for themselves; but she said that the neighbours were very kind to them, and that for herself she had finer times in the way of food in prison than she had ever had before. Finally, they were driven away, and now live in Gort in a miserable little hut, and are partly supported by the Ladies' Land League. No one has taken their farm, and it is not likely to find a tenant, the landlord being the notorious Mr. Lambert, who has for some time been boycotted himself.

Afterwards I heard these facts confirmed in every detail by one of the curates of the parish, who told me several stories of the rapacity of the landlords in the neighbourhood. He denounced the Land Court as utterly useless, partly from the delay in its operation, and partly from the firm belief among the tenants that the landlords had bribed the Commissioners not to reduce the rents

to a fair level. He said that the agents were paid a percentage on the amount of the rents they collected, and that therefore they did all in their power to prevent reductions, which thus entailed a loss to their own pockets. There had not been many evictions near Gort, or nothing could have saved the evictors, but they had found many ways of extortion by raising rents, and making the people pay for cutting turf on their own land. One landlord made any tenant who kept either a dog or a gun pay a pound each to him besides the licences. He said that the people were cowardly after years of oppression, and would not stand by one another when they had promised, and then came outrages to punish them for breaking faith with the others, and paying their rents.

It was now late, and I ordered a car to be ready for me in the morning to drive to Lisdoonvarna, the nearest place to the famous Moher cliffs.

85

CHAPTER VI.

THE ACT OF EDWARD III.-THE NO RENT

MANIFESTO.

NEXT morning I breakfasted with a lady who told me that at her father's death the rent of their land had been greatly raised, and her mother had been told that she must sign the new lease or leave her home. She would not mention names, for fear of getting her family into trouble for the crime of complaining; but

she gave me several facts about landlordism

which I am sorry to be obliged to suppress, since she forbade me to get the details printed, as the guilty parties would know that they were meant.'

I called on another priest, who repeated the old story, and said that the English could never become really acquainted with the facts of the Irish Land Question, and asked naïvely why we refused to let them have Home Rule, if only to save the expense of taking all bills about purely

He

local matters across the Irish sea to London. said that the landlords had tried to put a stop to the races to pay the people out for stopping the hunting, and that they made it a point of honour not to reduce rents-so much so that one landlord who had granted reductions was prevented from becoming a magistrate in consequence; but he again refused to mention any names. At the same time I heard from another quarter that the landlords were not so bad as the agents, and that in one case at least, when the tenant had insisted on obtaining an interview with his landlord, a reduction of rent which the agent had flatly refused was granted at once.

From Gort I drove to Corofin, to meet there the long cars' which run between Ennis and Lisdoonvarna, and on the way I talked to the driver, and tried to elicit his opinion about the outrages at Loughrea. He declared that, for his own part, he would rather be driven out of the country and emigrate to America than take away a man's life; but yet in the case of a man like Blake, who persisted in eviction and rackrenting in spite of repeated warnings, all he could say was that he was no loss to anybody, and that his death served him right. At Coro