On the boards of guardians the mass of the poor might expect that a majority of guardians would be prompted by national and religious feeling to sympathise with them, so that they would find in the master and matron, the doctor and the relieving officer, something like the natural tenderness which a common kindred and creed inspire.  But half the guardians are ex-officio members, as magistrates; nearly all landlords and Protestants.  They have in addition ‘property votes,’ and ‘residence votes;’ so that, with their influence over the elections, they are generally able to pack the board; and in that case the officials are almost invariably Protestants and conservatives.  I know a union in which three-fourths of the rate-payers are Roman Catholics; and yet, with the utmost efforts of the priests, they were not able to elect a single Catholic guardian.  To meet the landlord pressure, some of the rate-payers were required to sign their voting papers in presence of their pastors, yet so terrible was that pressure that they afterwards took them to the agent’s office, and, to make assurance doubly sure, tore them up before his face.  I have been told by a priest, that such is the mortal dread of eviction, or of a permanent fine in the form of increased rent, that he had known tenants who, when produced in the witness-box, denied on oath acts of oppression of which they had been bitterly complaining to himself, and which he well knew to be facts.

Thus the land-war rages at every board of guardians, in every dispensary, in every grand jury room, at every petty sessions, in every county court, in every public institution throughout the kingdom.  The land-agent is the commanding officer, his office is a garrison, dominating the surrounding district.  He is able, in most cases, to defy the confessional and the altar; because he wields an engine of terror generally more powerful over the mind of the peasantry than the terrors of the world to come.  Armed with the ’rules of the estate’ and with a notice to quit, the agent may have almost anything he demands, short of possession of the farm and the home of the tenant.  The notice to quit is like a death warrant to the family.  It makes every member of it tremble and agonise, from the grey-headed grandfather and grandmother, to the bright little children, who read the advent of some impending calamity in the gloomy countenances and bitter words of their parents.  The passion for the possession of land is the chord on which the agent plays, and at his touch it vibrates with ‘the deepest notes of woe.’  By the agent of an improving landlord it is generally touched so cunningly, that its most exquisite torture cannot easily be proved to be a grievance.  He presents an alternative to the tenant; he does less than the law allows.  He could strike a mortal blow, but he lends a helping hand.  Resistance entails ruin; compliance secures friendship.  Give up the old status, and accept a new one:  cease to stand upon right, consent to hang upon mercy, and all may be well.