From France the gay, France the prosperous, France the delightful, to Ireland the sad, Ireland the poor, Ireland the oppressed, is a tremendous jump. Contrasts are necessary, and my readers are going to have all they want of them.

Cork is a lovely city; that is, it would be a lovely city were it a city at all. Nature intended Cork for a great city, but man stepped in and thwarted Nature. It is situated on the most magnificent site for a city there is in all Europe. A wonderfully beautiful river, with water enough to float any vessel, flows through it; and at the mouth of that river, twelve miles below, is one of the great harbors of the world. Queenstown—I wonder that any Irishman ever consented to call it Queenstown—is the nearest port to the great western hemisphere, and Cork should be the center of all the trade from America.

It is twenty-four hours nearer New York than Liverpool, and should be the final landing-place of the American lines, instead of being simply a point to be touched.

Cork is a sleepy city of perhaps seventy thousand population, made up of the handsomest men and most beautiful women and children on the face of the globe. You shall see more feminine beauty on the streets of Cork in an hour than you can anywhere else in a week. Homely women there are none—beautiful women are so plenty that it really becomes monotonous. One rather gets to wishing that he could see an occasional pair of English feet, for the sake of variety.

The city itself is beautiful, as are all the cities of Ireland; but it is a sad city, as are all the cities of Ireland. It is not prosperous, and cannot be, for it is under English domination, and England will not permit prosperity in Ireland. It is only the attachment which an Irishman has for his own country that makes anybody stay there. With every natural advantage, with every facility for manufacturing, for trade and commerce, with the best harbor in the world, and the nearest point for American trade, it has no manufactures to speak of, and no trade whatever. Its population has decreased thirty thousand within fifteen years, and its trade is slowly but surely dwindling to nothingness.

The river Lea is a wonderfully beautiful stream, and Cork, which occupies both sides of it, is a wonderfully beautiful city, and would be an enjoyable city but for the feeling of sadness that comes to an American the moment he sees the empty warehouses, the empty dwellings, and the signs of decay that are everywhere.

There are churches everywhere, and churches with a history. Here is the church of Shandon, of whose chimes Father Prout wrote:

Here is climate, soil, situation—everything to make a great controlling city; here are a people with industry, intelligence, brains, and all the requisites to make a great controlling city; but, despite all these points in its favor, Cork has decreased year by year, and is to-day absolutely nothing. The city has lost population every year; its business is leaving it, its warehouses are empty, its streets are deserted, its quays are silent—it is nothing.

What is the reason for this? It is all summed up in one word—landlordism. There is no man in the world, not excepting the Frenchman, who will work longer or harder than the Irishman. There is no race of men who are better merchants or more enterprising dealers, and there is no reason, but one, why Cork should not be one of the largest and richest cities of the world. That reason is, English ownership of Irish soil.

Irish landlordism is condensed villainy. It is the very top and summit of oppression, cruelty, brutality and terror.

It was conceived in lust and greed, born of fraud, and perpetuated by force.

It does not recognize manhood, womanhood or childhood. Its cold hand is upon every cradle in Ireland. Its victims are the five millions of people in Ireland who cannot get away, and the instruments used to hold them are bayonets and ball cartridges.

It is a ghoul that would invade grave-yards were there any profit to be gotten out of grave-yards. It is the coldest-blooded, cruelest infamy that the world has ever seen, and that any race of people was ever fated to groan under.

Irish landlordism is legal brigandage—it is an organized hell.

Wesley said that African slavery was the sum of all villainies. Irish landlordism comprises all the villainies that the devil ever invented, with African slavery thrown in. Irish landlordism makes African slavery a virtue by comparison. For when a negro slave got too old to work, he was given some place in which to live, and sufficient food to keep him in some sort of life, and clothes enough to shield him from the elements.

The Irish tenant, when he becomes old and cannot work, is thrown out upon the roadside, with his wife and his children, to die and rot. He has created lands with his own hands, which he is not allowed to occupy; he has grown crops which he is not allowed to eat; he has labored as no other man in the world has labored, without being permitted to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The virtue of his wife and daughter are in the keeping of the villain, who by virtue of bayonets, controls his land. In short, to sum it all up in one word, the Irishman is a serf, a slave.

In a country that makes a boast of its freedom, he is the suffering victim of men who claim to be Christians; he is the robbed, outraged sufferer of a few men who are as unfeeling as the bayonets that keep him down, as merciless and cruel as tigers.

From the above feeble utterances my readers will, I hope, get the idea that I do not like Irish landlordism. I hope some day to get sufficient command of words to make my meaning apparent. I really would like to make it understood just how I feel about it.

To see Ireland you must not do as the regular tourist always does, follow the regular routes of tourists’ travel. You may go all over Ireland, in one way, and you will not see a particle of suffering, or any discontent. At Glengariff, for instance, the most charming spot on the earth, you are lodged in as fine a hotel as there is anywhere; the people are all well dressed and well fed, and the visitor wonders why there should be any discontent.

This is a part of the English Government’s policy. On these lines of travel, which the tourist for pleasure always takes, the misery is kept out of sight, and the mouths of the people who serve you are sealed. The American lady traveling through that country don’t like to see naked women and squalid poverty, for it would make her uncomfortable. None of it is shown her, and she wonders at the discontent of the Irish.

But just take a boat at Glengariff, leave the splendid hotel, and be rowed two miles across the bay, and you begin to see Ireland, the real Ireland. You then know why Ireland is agitated; you then see the real reason why an Englishman is hated with an intensity that would find expression in a rifle shot, if rifles were permitted to be owned and used.

We took a train for Fermoy, a distance of perhaps fifty miles from Cork. In Fermoy, a tolerably prosperous village for Ireland, the women did not only have no shoes or stockings, but they had scarcely anything else to wear.

“This is nothing,” said the wise Mr. Redpath, who was with us; “these people are fairly prosperous—for Ireland. I shall show you something worth while before night.”

It puzzled me somewhat to understand how anybody could be worse off than to be walking in cold mud without any protection whatever for the feet, but I found it at Mitchellstown, at the foot of the Galtee mountains.

The Irish jaunting-car, being the most inconvenient and detestable vehicle on earth, deserves a description. It should be known in order to be avoided. A jaunting-car is simply a two-wheeled vehicle with the body that supports the seat reversed. Instead of sitting so as to look forward, you are on the side; the seat runs the wrong way—which is characteristic of almost everything in Ireland. The driver sits looking toward the horse, the passengers sit backing each other, and the concern is so balanced that you must hold on a rail with a death-grip, or be flung off upon the road by every jolt. As detestable as it is, it is the national Irish vehicle, and you ride on the car, or go afoot.

On one of these atrocious conveyances, we left Mitchellstown at nine o’clock in the morning, in a soaking rain-storm, the cold, misty drizzle going through our heavy overcoats, and almost penetrating the very marrow. The road wound along past well cultivated fields, over picturesque streams, now up gentle declivities that gave us, or would have given us had the day been clear and fine, an admirable view of the valley that lay spread at the foot of the Galtee Mountains. But on that day the picture was not a cheering one. The sun refused to shine, the rain was cold, and the whole prospect was bleak and desolate. Then our driver was a loquacious fellow, who had at his tongue’s end hundreds of instances of the oppression of landlords and the terrible sufferings of the poor, evicted tenants. He talked fast, and, his whole heart being in the subject, he talked well, oftentimes emphasizing his stories by pointing to bare-footed, bare-legged and bare-headed women, who went trudging along the cold, wet road, with no protection from the frightful inclemency of the weather but a light shawl thrown over the ragged dress that scarcely covered their bodies. These women, whom he pointed out as evicted tenants, were not the rough, degraded-looking beggars that are commonly supposed to overrun Ireland, and make the tourist’s life one of continual annoyance. They were bright, intelligent and handsome, and, notwithstanding the horrors of their situation, comparatively cheerful. But it was an unnatural cheerfulness, for it was noticeable that there were lines about the mouth and around the eyes that told only too plainly their story of want and suffering.

Even with these living evidences, we could hardly believe the stories of cruelties committed by the landlords and their agents, which our driver kept pouring into our ears. We could not realize that they could be true. They seemed so absolutely barbarous that we utterly refused to accept them, and did not, till, having gone about nine miles from Mitchellstown, we stopped at a little roadside cabin, as they called it, although we would have more properly denominated it a hovel.

At the invitation of our guide we alighted, shook the rain off from our great coats, and entered the place to inquire for Michael Duggan, who worked the little holding back of it. He was not at home, but his wife, a comely, buxom woman of about forty years, asked us to be seated, at the same time offering a small stool on which one of the girls of the family had been sitting near the fire, taking care of an infant.

While our guide was inquiring for Mr. Duggan, we made an inspection of the house, where a man, his wife and seven children lived. There was the one principal room in which we were standing, which was about ten by twelve feet, and eight feet high. There was no floor, except the original earth. There was only one opening for a window, and that had never known a pane of glass. In one end of the room there was a dingy, smoky fireplace, around which were huddled three or four children, scantily dressed in loose cotton slips that came to just below the knee. At the other end of the room a brood of chickens disported themselves in a pile of furze, while every few minutes a huge porker would push his nose in at the open door, only to be driven away by one of the children.

The family was very interesting. The mother was tall, well formed, and of an exceedingly pleasant appearance, while the children, shy at the sight of so many strangers, were sturdy, healthful and clean. They were bright and intelligent, and under any other circumstances and mode of life would grow up to be eminently representative citizens.

On the return of Mr. Duggan from the fields, we went with him up the Galtee Mountains, he explaining on the way that he was very comfortably fixed compared with his neighbors. He said that his grandfather had taken the little holding he occupied, when it was full of stones and rocks, and was next to worthless. He paid a rent of three shillings an acre for it. During his lifetime the land was partially reclaimed, the rocks and boulders were taken out of a part of one field, and the rent was advanced to seven shillings. His father further improved it and raised some little crops, and the rent went up to twenty shillings. When the present tenant succeeded to it, it was in comparatively good shape, and with the improvements he had made, building the house, or rather hovel, the value of the land had increased enough in the mind of the landlord to justify him in placing the rent at two pounds.

That tract of land in America, if one were to go to the few districts where such abominably bad land can be found, would be thought extremely high if it were sold at a dollar, or four shillings an acre.

“Well, how in the world can you raise enough on such a holding to pay such an exorbitant rent?”

“I can’t do it. I’ve tried my best, but it is absolutely impossible.”

“Suppose you don’t pay the rent, then what?”

“I’ll be thrown out in the road, with my family and the little furniture we have gotten together.”

“In case you refuse to be thrown out of the house you have built, and off the land you and your fathers before you made from utterly worthless fields of rocks?”

“Then those fellows would come down upon me.”

As he spoke he pointed to a flying squadron of a hundred and fifty men, who were riding back to Mitchellstown after having evicted a number of tenants who had been unable to pay the back rent. They were a fine looking body of men, well mounted and well armed, each one carrying a loaded carbine, while at his side was dangling a sword bayonet.

But our business in hand was not speculating upon results so much as to see the actual conditions that led to and still sustains the agitation. So we plodded on, through the drenching rain that was coming down in torrents, up the bleak and desolate hill side.

Along the side of the road were high stone fences, from four to seven feet wide at the top, rather good fences for so poor a country.

“Why, you see,” said Mr. Duggan in reply to an inquiry as to how they found time to make such solid substantial fences, “those stones were every one taken from that field there, and having no other place to put them we made a fence, and our rent was raised on us for doing it, worse the luck.”

We looked into the field whence these stones were taken. It was as uninviting a piece of ground as can be imagined, still full of huge boulders, rocks, weeds and the never-dying heather. It was not capable of supporting a sparrow, yet for the slight improvement that had been made, the rent had been raised. Great inducement that for a man to work!

Seeing a little low, thatched cabin just off the road, we asked in all simplicity, if it had any history, for by this time it was beginning to dawn upon us that almost everything in that vicinity had some story connected with it. But we were totally unprepared for the reply.

“No, there’s no history about it. It is simply the dwelling place of a family of people who are daily expecting to be evicted because they can’t pay the rent, the father having been unable, through sickness, to work all of the season.”

The idea that human beings, made in God’s image, having the power to think, to reason and to act, could live, even exist, in such a hovel as that was so incredible that we insisted upon going over and seeing how it was done.

Wading through mud and slush coming over our shoe-tops, we bent our heads and entered. The room, if so it could, by a stretch of the imagination, be called, was so low that we could not stand erect. The cold bare earth that constituted the floor was damp and slippery as the rain came trickling down through the broken thatch and formed little pools on the ground. Near a suggestion of a fire, were huddled a woman and four children, the eldest not more than eight years of age. As we entered they all arose. We were horrified to see that they were as usual without stockings or shoes, and their clothing was so torn and ragged that it afforded no warmth whatever. The mother and her little girls were blue with cold. Their features were pinched with hunger. Their whole appearance indicated the want and suffering they had been patiently enduring for years.

Over in one corner of the room was what they called a bed. It consisted of four posts driven into the ground. On stringers were laid a few rough boards; on these boards were dried leaves and heather, covered by a few old potato sacks. There was where this family of six persons slept. There was no window in the house, the only light and ventilation being furnished by the door and the cracks in the thatched roof.

It was too horrible and we went out again into the rain—there we could at least get a breath of fresh air. We asked our guide how these people managed to keep the breath of life in them. He said they lived as their neighbors did, on potatoes and “stirabout.”

“What is ‘stirabout'?”

“It is a sort of a mush made of Indian meal and skimmed milk. They have that occasionally, for a little luxury, or when the potatoes are so scarce that they think they must husband them.”

“You don’t mean to say that these people actually live on that fare? that they have nothing else? They at least have meat with their potatoes?”

“God bless you, sir,” and the honest man’s eyes filled with tears, “they never know the taste of meat. There has not been a bit of meat in my house since last Christmas, when we were fortunate enough to get a bit of pig’s head. But up here they don’t even have that.”

Surely this must have been an exceptional case. It was impossible that even in that country there could be more than one or two instances of such utter and abject woe and misery.

But Mr. Duggan told us to the contrary. He said that the house we had just left was only a fair sample of what was to be seen all over the Galtee Mountains. To be convinced, we trudged painfully through the rain for seven long hours.

We toiled through fields that in America would not be accepted as a gift. Here, if the exorbitant rent charged for them could not be paid, the holders were evicted. We went through roads so wretchedly bad that teams could not travel over them. Yet taxes had to be paid by those who had holdings on either side. We saw fields that had been reclaimed from the original state, had been made productive, and had been the cause of the eviction of the holder because he could not pay the rent which the improvements brought upon him. He had been thrown off the land and it was rapidly going to waste again. Large patches of heather, which is worse than the American farmer’s bane, the Canada thistle, were growing over it, choking all other forms of vegetation. It would only take another season to make the land so worthless that three years of hard work would be required to put it back to the condition it was in when the holder had been compelled to leave it, after having devoted the best years of his life to reclaiming and making it productive.

After seven hours of such sights as these, which cannot be described, we were wet, weary and mad. We had seen enough for one day, and were ready to go back. All during the long drive to Mitchellstown not a word was said. The subject was too terrible to discuss.