according to law.”  But suppose he were proceeded against and evicted, as in America he certainly would be, who can doubt that he would instantly be paraded, before the world, on both sides of the Atlantic as a “martyr,” suffering for the holy cause of an oppressed and down-trodden people, at the hands of a “most vile” Marquis, and of a remorse-less and blood-thirsty agent?[11] Mr. Crawford, a tall, fine-looking man, talked very fully and freely about the situation here.  He came to Portumna about eight years ago; one of his reasons for accepting the position here offered him being that he wished to take over a piece of property near Woodford from his brother-in-law, who found he could not manage it.  As a practical farmer, and a straightforward capable man of business, he has gradually acquired the general confidence of the tenants here.  That they are, as a rule, quite able to pay the rents which they have been “coerced” into refusing to pay, he fully believes.  He told me of cases in which Catholic tenants of Lord Clanricarde came to him when the agitation began about the Plan of Campaign, and begged him privately to take the money for their rents, and hold it for them till the time should come for a settlement.

The reason for this was that they did not wish to be obliged to give over the money into the “Trust” created by the Campaigners, and wanted it to be safely put beyond the reach of these obliging “friends.”  One very shrewd tenant came to him and begged him to buy some beasts, in order that he might pay his rent out of the proceeds.  The man owed L15 to the Clanricarde property.  Mr. Crawford did not particularly want to buy his beasts, but eventually agreed to do so, and gave him L50 for them.  The man went off with the money, but he never paid the rent!  Mr. Crawford discovering this called him to account, and refused to grant him some further favour which he asked.  The result is that the “distressed tenant” now cuts Mr. Crawford when he meets him, and is the prosperous owner of quite a small herd of cattle.

Mr. Crawford’s opinion of the mischief done by the methods and spirit of the National League in this place is quite in accord with the opinions of the Bishop-Coadjutor.  Power without responsibility, which made the Caeesars madmen, easily turns the heads of village tyrants, and there is something positively grotesque in the excesses of this subterranean “Home Rule.”  Mr. Crawford told me of a case here, in which a tenant farmer, whom he named, came to him in great wrath, not unmingled with terror, to say that the League had ordered him, on pain of being boycotted, to give up his holding to the heirs of a woman from whom, twenty years ago, he had bought, for L100 in cash, the tenant-right of her deceased husband!  There was no question of refunding the L100.  He was merely to consider himself a “land-grabber,” and evict himself for the benefit of those heirs who had never done a stroke of work on the property for twenty years, and who had no shadow of a legal or moral claim on it, except that the oldest of them was an active member of the local League!