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That they should clearly only pay at the rate of Griffith's valuation, which, a few years ago, they themselves asserted was fifty percent below the selling value, and which valuation was taken when wheat, oats, barley, butter, beef, mutton and pork were much below the present value. Landlords have not raised their rents in proportion.
He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and he is fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old 'landlord' methods that came to him with his mother's milk that is rightly speaking, I should say, with his father's," and here he burst out laughing at his own bull "for his mother, poor lady, she was an American." "Thank you," I said. "Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her?
He suffered indeed, for rents that he had reduced to a figure fixed by the tenants' own arbitrators were withheld from him. Yet he knew clearly that it was necessary for the country, and not more necessary than just, to secure the tenants in their holdings. No one disputes now that he was right. But the last thing he desired was to abolish the landlords.
Had the landlords of Ireland paid attention to these and other matters that directly involve their own welfare and independence, as well as those of their neglected tenantry, they would not be, as they now are, a class of men, some absolutely bankrupt, and more on the very eve of it; and all this, to use a commercial phrase painfully appropriate, because they neglect their business.
And, in consequence, it began to be freely conversed, that there would be a great comfort in having the sides of the streets paved with flags, like the plainstones of Glasgow, and that an obligation should be laid on the landlords, to put up ronns to kepp the rain, and to conduct the water down in pipes by the sides of the houses; all which furnished Mr Hickery with fresh topics for his fasherie about the lamps, and was, as he said, proof and demonstration of that most impolitic, corrupt, and short-sighted job, the consequences of which would reach, in the shape of some new tax, every ramification of society; with divers other American argumentatives to the same effect.
And this was said with that obsequiousness of manners, so full of meaning with landlords, which means, "Make yourself perfectly easy, monsieur: we know with whom we have to do, and you will be treated accordingly." These words, and their accompanying gesture, Malicorne had thought very friendly, but rather obscure.
When he got a little more of this world's goods he set up a one-horse buggy, a very sorry and shabby-looking affair which he generally used when the weather promised to be bad. The other lawyers were always glad to see him, and landlords hailed his coming with pleasure; but he was one of those gentle, uncomplaining men whom they would put off with indifferent accommodations.
The tenants took violent measures to assert the claims of their respective landlords, and much litigation ensued. The bishop, by his haughty behaviour, offended both the courts and the king, to whom he appealed; and at last he was constrained to escape to Avignon, then the seat of the pope.
The tenants' representatives presented a concise list of their own essential requirements as drafted by Mr O'Brien. It was as follows: For landlords, net second-term income, less all outgoings. For occupiers, reduction of not less than 20 per cent. in second-term rents or first-term correspondingly reduced. Decennial reductions to be retained.
Thus the broader democratic classes of the country, the workmen and peasants, were represented in the somewhat popular institutions that had developed under the old regime. But the actual control was in the hands of the less democratic elements the landlords, the manufacturers, men of the liberal professions, and of the so-called Intelligentsia class.
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