United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There was much laughter and hearty speech, and it at once occurred to me that Cousin Egbert had been right: it would not be an assemblage of people that mattered, but rather of small tradesmen, artisans, tenant-farmers and the like with whom I could properly mingle.
Sloan, the "Russellite" Ulster tenant-farmers, and the rise of a democratic vote in Belfast regardless of the strife of sects, all serve as indications of this fact; but let it be noted that while we have evidences in these directions of the forces at work in the disintegration of the old Orange strongholds, we have no such obvious indications of the upheaval going on in the traditional Nationalist Party, save only the mere ipse dixit of the very people who assure us that they themselves are making it felt.
Caleb began riding over the county, telling the tenant-farmers and laborers that they should send from a farming community a representative who was a laboring man like themselves, instead of a land-grabbing "Colonel," a man who thought himself better than anybody else. "Has Colonel Chenault or his wife or his daughters ever been in your house? You see them often at the house on the hill.
"But I met what I supposed were your villagers," I said; "your small tradesmen, your artisans, clerks, shop-assistants, tenant-farmers, and the like, I'd no idea in the world they were your county families. Seemed quite a bit too jolly for that. And your press-chap preposterous, quite! He quizzed me rather, I admit, but he made it vastly different. Your pressmen are remarkable.
On the other hand, as expressing the views of the tenant-farmers, the paper materially influences the course taken by the landed proprietors. In country districts the mere numerical circulation of a weekly publication is no measure of its importance. The position of the subscribers is the true test. These old-established papers, in fact, represent property.
But what you want with the ballot is, that in the counties where the tenant-farmers vote, and where they live upon their land without the security of a lease, or without the security of any law to give them compensation for any improvements they may have made upon the land, the tenant-farmer feels himself always liable to injury, and sometimes to ruin, if he gets into a dispute with the agent or the landowner with regard to the manner in which he has exercised his franchise.
My poor father insists upon my listening to all he has to say; since my brother left he has had nobody else to listen to him; and to-night he was particularly tedious on his usual topics draining, and tenant-farmers, and the village people. I must take daddy to London; he gets so narrow always staying here. 'And what did you say to it all?
That was enough to excite the wrathful indignation of all the tenant-farmers round about, and without delay they began to think out means for expelling these trespassers from the common land. A tale of indignation spread through Grouville, and these golfers, of whom I remember that Mr. Brewster was one, were not at first regarded in the light of friendship.
If, as seems not improbable, it should become the fashion among our merchant princes to seek health and relaxation by applying capital and commercial principles to land, good farming will spread, by force of vaccination, over the country, and plain tenant-farmers will apply, cheaply and economically, the fruits of experience, purchased dearly, although not too dearly, by merchant farmers.
There were few trees, or none, those that would have grown in the hedges being mercilessly plashed down with the quickset by the tenant-farmers, the natural enemies of tree, bush, and brake. In the middle distance ahead of her she could see the summits of Bulbarrow and of Nettlecombe Tout, and they seemed friendly.
Word Of The Day