This, he had reason to believe, was not an uncommon case.[12] The same man, wishing to take a grass farm which the people hoped the agent would consent to have “cut up” was asked to give two names on a promissory-note to pay the rent.  He demurred to this, and after a parley said, “Would a certificate do?” upon which he pulled out an old tobacco-box, and carefully unfolded from it a bank certificate of deposit for a hundred pounds sterling!  This tenant held eleven Irish, or more than seventeen English, acres, and his yearly rent was L11, 16s. 6d.

The people before this agitation began were generally quiet, thrifty, and industrious.  They were great sheep-raisers.  An old law of the Irish Parliament had exempted sheep, but not cattle or crops, from distraint, with an eye to encouraging the woollen interest in Ireland.

As to the sale of tenant-right in Ireland, he told me a curious story.  One woman, a widow, whom he named, owed two year’ rent on a holding in Ulster at L4 a year.  She was abundantly able to pay, but for her own reasons preferred to be evicted, and, finally, by an understanding with him, offered her tenant-right for sale.  A man who had made money in iron-mines in the County of Durham was a bidder, and finally offered L240 for the holding.  It was knocked down to him.  He then saw the agent, who told him he had paid too much.  The woman was then appealed to, and she admitted that the agent was right.  But it was shown that others had offered L200, and the woman finally agreed to take, and received, that amount in gold, being fifty years’ purchase!

CHAPTER X.

DUBLIN, Thursday, March 1.—­This has been a crowded day.  I left Portumna very early on a car with Mr. Tener, intending to visit the scene of his latest collision with the “National” government of Ireland, on my way to Loughrea.  It was a bright spring morning, more like April in Italy than like March in America, and the country is full of natural beauty.  We made our first halt at the derelict house of Martin Kenny, one of the “victims” of the famous “Woodford evictions,” so called, as I have said, because Woodford is the nearest town.[13] The eviction here took place October 21st, 1887.  The house has been dismantled by the neighbours since that time, each man carrying off a door, or a shutter, or whatever best suited him.  One of the constables who followed us as Mr. Tener’s body-guard had been present at the eviction.  He came into the house with us, and very graphically described the performance.  The house was still full of heavy stones taken into it, partly to block the entrances, and partly as ammunition; and trunks of trees used as chevaux defrise still protruded through the door and the window.  These trees had been cut down by the garrison in the woodlands here and there all over the property.  I asked if the law in Ireland punished depredations of this sort, and was informed that trees planted by tenants, if registered by them within a certain time, are the property of the tenants.  This would astonish our landlords in America, where the tenant who sticks so much as a sunflower into his garden-patch makes a present of it to his landlord.[14]