Whatever “landlordism” may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enough that in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference between savage squalor and civilisation.

Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which the Land League began its operations.  He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, by whom the management of it has been left to agents.  After Lord George’s death two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed imported sheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite a considerable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, and sheep.

Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made by Lord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way.  Father M’Fadden, combining the position of President of the National League with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdings to accommodate an increasing population.  A flood which in August 1880 damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him an opportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of the people in a letter to the London Times, which elicited a very generous response, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to him from London alone.  Large contributions of relief were also made to Gweedore from the Duchess of Marlborough’s Fund, and Gweedore became a standing butt of British benevolence.  Two results seem to have followed, naturally enough,—­a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants to pay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights.  With the National League standing between them and the landlord, with the British Parliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant and against the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready to respond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants at Gweedore naturally became a privileged class.  In no other way at least can I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore have been sold, according to Lord Cowper’s Blue-book of 1886, during the period of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years’ purchase of the landlord’s rent!

In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M’Fadden appears as receiving no less than L115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the head rent of which is L1, 2s. 6d. a year.  The worst enemy of Father M’Fadden will hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from a tenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches.[13]