NOTE G.

THE PONSONBY PROPERTY.

(Vol. ii. pp. 59-66.)

The account which the Rev. Canon Keller gave me of “The Struggle for Life on the Ponsonby Estate,” in a tract bearing that title, and authorised by him to be published by the National League, is so circumstantial and elaborate that, after reading it carefully, I took unusual pains to obtain some reply to it from the representatives of the landlord implicated.  These finally led to a visit from Mr. Ponsonby himself, who was so kind as to call upon me in London on the 15th of May, with papers and documents.  I give in the following colloquy the results of this interview, putting together with the allegations of Canon Keller the answers of Mr. Ponsonby, and leave the matter in this form to the judgment of my readers.

Q.  Canon Keller, I see, describes you, Mr. Ponsonby, as “a retired navy officer, and an absentee Irish landlord.”  He says your estate is now “universally known as the famous Ponsonby Estate,” and that it is occupied “by from 300 to 400 tenants, holding farms varying in extent from an acre and a half to over two hundred acres.”  Are these statements correct?

A.  I am a retired navy officer certainly, and perhaps I may be called an “absentee Irish landlord.”  I lived on my property for some time, and I have always attended to it.  I succeeded to the estate in 1868, and almost my first act was to borrow L2000 of the Board of Works for drainage purposes—­the tenants agreeing to pay half the interest.  As a matter of fact some never paid at all, and I afterwards wiped out the claims against them.  There are about 300 tenants on the property, and the average holdings are of about 36 acres, at an average rental of L30 a holding.  There are, however, not a few large farms.

Q.  Canon Keller says that “in the memory of living witnesses, and far beyond it, the Ponsonby tenants have been notoriously rack-rented and oppressed”; and that they have been committed to the “tender mercies of agents, seeing little or nothing of their landlord, and experiencing no practical sympathy from that quarter.”  How is this?

A.  I wish to believe Canon Keller truthful when he knows the truth.  He certainly does not know the truth here.  He is a newcomer at Youghal, having come there in November 1885, and hardly so much of an authority about “the memory of living witnesses and far beyond it” as the tenants on the estate, who, when I went there first with my wife, presented to me, May 25, 1868, an address of welcome, referring in very different terms to the history of the estate and of my family connection with it.  Here is the original address, and a copy of it—­the latter being quite at your service.

This original address is very handsomely engrossed, and is signed by fifty tenants.  Among the names I observed those of Martin Loughlin, Peter McDonough, Michael Gould, William Forrest, and John Heaphey, all of whom are cited by Canon Keller in his tract as conspicuous victims of the oppression and rack-renting which he says have prevailed upon the Ponsonby estates time out of mind.  It was rather surprising, therefore, to find them joining with more than forty other tenants to sign an address, of which I here print the text:—­