He is the agent of Mr. Mathews, who lives between Woodford and Portumna.  Mr. Mathews is a resident landlord, he says, who has constantly employed and has lived on friendly terms with his tenants, numbering twenty, who hold now under judicial rents.  On these judicial rents two years ago they were allowed a further reduction of 15 per cent.  Last year they were allowed 20 per cent.  This year he offered them a reduction of 25 per cent., which they rejected, demanding 35 per cent.

This demand Mr. Lavan considers to be unreasonable in the extreme, and he attributes it to the influence of the National Leaguers here, whose representatives among the local guardians constantly vote away the money of the ratepayers in “relief to evicted tenants who have ample means and can in no respect be called destitute.”  In his opinion the effect of the Nationalist agitation here has been to upset all ideas of right and wrong in the minds of the people where any question arises between tenants and landlords.  He told a story, confirmed by Mr. Tener, of a bailiff, whom he named, on the Clanricarde property here, who was compelled two years ago to resign his place in order to prevent the “boycotting” of his mother who keeps a shop on the farm.  He was familiar, too, with the details of a story told me by one of the Clanricarde tenants, a farmer near Loughrea who holds a farm at L90 a year.  This man was forced to subscribe to the Plan of Campaign.  The agent proceeded against him for the rent due, and he incurred costs of L10.  His sheep and crop were then seized.

He begged the local leaders to “permit” him to pay his rent, as he was able to do it without drawing out the funds in their hands!  They refused, and so compelled him to allow his property to be publicly sold, and to incur further costs of L10.  “His farm lies so near the town that he did not dare to risk the vengeance of the local ruffians.”

Mr. Lavan gave me the name also of another man who is now actually under a “boycott,” because he has ventured to resist the modest demand made by the son of a man whose tenant-right he bought, paying him L100 for it, twenty years ago, that he shall give up his farm without being reimbursed for his outlay made to purchase it!  In other words, after twenty years’ peaceable possession of a piece of property, bought and paid for, this tenant-farmer is treated as a “land-grabber” by the self-installed “Nationalist” government of Ireland, because he will not submit to be robbed both of the money which he paid for his tenant-right, and of his tenant-right!

Obviously in such a case as this the “war against landlordism” is simply a war against property and against private rights.  Priests of the Catholic Church who not only countenance but aid and abet such proceedings certainly go even beyond Dr. M’Glynn.  Dr. M’Glynn, so far as I know, stops at the confiscation of all private property in rent by the State for the State.  But here is simply a confiscation of the property of A for the benefit of B, such as might happen if B, being armed and meeting A unarmed in a forest, should confiscate the watch and chain of A, bought by A of B’s lamented but unthrifty father twenty years before!