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Updated: June 22, 2025
"What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and the vacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last man that speaks to him, Father M'Fadden has had it all his own way. Captain Hill's claim was for £1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and £400 of costs. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobody knows but Father M'Fadden.
I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in the olden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents and then did not pay them but I asked him how this could be said when the tenant clearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. "Oh!" said Father M'Fadden, "that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he was coerced.
"Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and other people's money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of the League to 'protect' it! They give it the kind of 'protection' that Oliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, they never let go!" I submitted that at Gweedore Father M'Fadden had paid over to Captain Hill the funds confided to him.
He is a typical Celt in appearance, a M'Fadden Roe, sanguine by temperament, with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexible persuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of the agents. "Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord.
He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he is a Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fair stenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M'Fadden made his speech. "I speak Irish quite as well as he does," said the Sergeant quietly, "and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what I heard said in Irish.
But if the rent be a rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding does not produce the rent, then I don't think that is a strict obligation in conscience." In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory of Father M'Fadden.
And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himself walks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks less of him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shilling piece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I've known Father M'Fadden, sir, to take in as much as £15 in a week in that way."
Before he left Baron's Court he promised to make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived. Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good "devil's advocate" at the canonization of Father M'Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, one thing would seem to be tolerably clear.
After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there on Father M'Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to call there for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimed bogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles of turf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very neatly kept.
This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublin that the "Plan of Campaign" was originally suggested by Father M'Fadden. He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to this aspect of the matter. "I have been living here for fifteen years, and they listen to me as to nobody else."
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