I confess it frightens me. I
stayed in a country place for a week. I boarded with a family who were
much better off than their neighbors. They were favorites at the office
of the landlord, and paid him their rent punctually. I often sat at the
kitchen hearth as neighbor after neighbor came in in the evening and
told in Irish the tale of some hard occurrence that had taken place. I
understood enough to guess the drift of the story. I understood well the
language of eye and clinched hand with which my host listened. The
people who suffered were his people; their woe was his; he felt for them
a sympathy of which the landlord never dreamed; but he never said a
word. I thought as I sat there--silent too--that I would not like to be
that landlord and, in any time of upheaval, lie at the mercy of this
favorite tenant of his.
They talk of agitators moving the people! Agitators could not move them
were it not that they gave voice to what is in the universal heart of
the tenantry.
A gentleman connected with the press said to me to-day: "The fact is
that any outrage, no matter how heart-rending, committed by a landlord
upon his tenantry is taken little notice of--none by Government--but
when a tenant commits an outrage, no matter how great the provocation,
then the whole power of the Government is up to punish.
Pages:
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156