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Hegarty holds about eight hundred acres as a tenant farmer, without a lease or any guarantee against his being turned off by his landlords at any time, except the natural goodwill and joint interest of landlord and tenant.
Hegarty, even on a smaller scale, are anxious for a good, sound Land Bill. They, with all good feeling toward their present landlords, cannot avoid recognising that as the law stands the work of their lives may be taken from them by any accident of succession. Despite the Land Bill of 1870, they are harassed by a sense of insecurity.
It is a curious illustration of that difference between English and Irish farming which makes the agrarian question so difficult for Englishmen to understand, that Mr. Hegarty, who may be accepted as a type of the Irish farmer, possessed by advanced ideas, conducts his operations successfully and profitably by almost exactly reversing the proportions of tillage and pasture existing on Mr.
The most advanced Nationalists, the Fenian papers, the Catholic clergy, all concurred in blessing him. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne, Canon Hegarty, P.P., and Tim Healy spoke of him in the character of a landlord in highest terms. Sir Charles Russell, Tim Harrington, Mr. Smith-Barry must be exempted from the general condemnation of Irish landlords.
But Lord John was only too glad to praise the Scotch at our expense. Some time ago, an English gentleman, who is an Irish landlord, and one in no bad repute either, was told that, for reasons detailed to him, he ought not to continue a certain agent in his employment: he answered "I do not care for all that he gets me my rent." See Inquest on Jeremiah Hegarty, p. 263.
Morris and myself are spending part of our time in preparing reading matter and pictures for the paper, and while we are working at the printing office of the Grimes Brothers on Wednesdays, Miss Spink, Miss Ethel Costello and their assistants, Miss Mosher, Miss Isabel McCormick, Miss Falvey, Miss Hegarty, Miss McCarthy, Miss Collins, Miss Cox, Miss Johnson, Miss Gilbert, and Miss Hazel McCormick are diligently at work in the Circulation Department.
One of those deaths at Skibbereen calls for more than a passing word; it is that of Jeremiah Hegarty. As in M'Kennedy's case we have here what is seldom attainable, an account of the evidence given at the inquest upon his remains. He was a widower and lived with his married daughter, Mary Driscoll, at Licknafon. Driscoll, his son-in-law, was a small farmer.
Skilfully administered for several years past, the Wallace property is very well known in these parts for the success with which its management has been attended. One of the principal tenants of this thriving estate is Mr. Jeremiah Hegarty, whose peculiar position towards his landlords affords a curious instance of the working of the present land laws of Ireland. To begin with Mr.
Kelly, who was a big, truculent-looking man, then produced a bowie knife of alarming dimensions and challenged Chace to combat, but was quickly awed by a pistol being placed at his breast by his superior officer. He then promised to return to his duty, provided here he began to weep, that the captain did not harm Kitty Hegarty, for whom he professed an ardent attachment.
It may be thought hardly likely that any landlord would be mad enough to disestablish a tenant of eight hundred acres of land who pays his rent with commendable punctuality; but as such things, and things even more foolish, have been done during the present year, it is not agreeable to think of the risks run by an improving tenant in county Cork, and an improving tenant Mr. Hegarty assuredly is.
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