Page:The land, the people, and the coming struggle .djvu/8

 his property, except that of sucking it as dry of vitality as the law permits him. At election times, "his lieutenant, the agent, armed with notices to quit, and backed by the police, is sufficiently formidable. Threats of eviction (and more than half a million evictions have taken place in Ireland during the last thirty years), distresses, and demands for immediate payment of rent, large arrears of which are usually due," assail the voter. "It has long been the practice in Ireland for the landlords to collect together their tenants who are voters, to place them upon cars, and send them in a body under the agent to record their votes at the polling-booth. These parties of voters are frequently escorted by detachments of police and military, on the alleged ground that there is fear of their being prevented by violence from going to the polling place: it is observable that these escorts are always asked for by the landlords or their agents, never by the voters themselves." General MacMurdo, who commanded a brigade in Ireland at the 1868 election, admitted, before the House of Commons' Committee, in answer to Mr. Gathorne Hardy, that these voters are practically prisoners, one of whom would not be allowed to go away even if he desired, until he had been escorted to the polling-booth.

Under the feudal system in England, bad as it was, there were no seignorial rights without a declaration of corresponding duties—the vassals gave their services, and in return the lord apportioned them land, and gave them some sort of protection; but now the lord claims the land as his own freehold, without any admission of obligation accompanying the ownership, and regarding himself as unduly taxed if any fiscal imposition touches his pocket. In many cases, in order to relieve themselves from the burdens of supporting the poor, the great proprietors have ordered the wretched cottages of the labourers working on their lands to be destroyed. The tillers of the soil cleared out from a noble landowner's domains get shelter how they can, in hovels in bad condition and dearly priced, where they are huddled together, as the following picture, taken from the Parliamentary Blue Book, shows:—"Modesty must be an unknown virtue, decency an unimaginable thing, where, in one small chamber, with the beds lying as thickly as they can be packed, father, mother, young men, lads, grown and growing up girls—two and sometimes three generations—are herded promiscuously, where every opera-