1836 Evictions in Carlow
Father James Maher was the subject of a lecture
delivered by Prof. Donal McCartney in 1994. The lecture was
published by Michael Purcell in "Carlow Past and Present" 1995
edition.
The following extract from "The Letters of Father James
Maher" County Carlow at this time suffered considerably from the
depopulating mania of the Landlords, a terrible evil which soon
after, spread to many other parts of the kingdom. Father Maher
was from the first its open and unflinching assailant. His
letter to the Carlow Sentinal of May the 4th, 1836, unmasks the
barbarous unfeeling cruelty of this fell system, and will be
found not devoid of instruction even at the present day:
SIR, You have called the attention of the public not long
since to the expulsion of the peasantry from the townland of
Slyguff. Would to Heaven that the cruel depopulating system were
confined to one property, or one parish only in this ill-treated
county. The extent to which the system has been carried, is a
subject upon which the Government and the public ought to be
well informed. Permit me, therefore, to publish, through the
columns of your journal, some afflicting details of the working
of the system upon a small estate in the parish of Milford and
Ballinabranagh, in this county.
From the townland of Crawn, the following families are in a
few days to be turned to the road;
| The widow Henesy and her four
children, |
. . . . 5 |
| The widow Brien, about 80 years old,
bed -ridden for several years, and her daughter, |
. . . . 2 |
| James Hughes, wife, and three infant
children, |
. . . . 5 |
| Pat Brien and four children
|
. . . . 5 |
| John Brien and four children, |
. . . . 5 |
| |
. . . . 22 |
What will become of these poor creatures when thrown upon a
county where there is no provision made, even for the poorest of
poverty 's children? Where will the aged widow Brien, when
driven from her home, lay her weary head? With whom will she
pass her few remaining days? - with her children? Alas! no, her
sons, Pat and John Brien, her only sons, with their eight
motherless children, all under fourteen years of age, are
themselves in a few days to be reduced to the condition of less
wanderers.
Her daughter, the wife of James Hughes, with her
infant children, have been a week or ten days since driven to
the road; and her sister-in-law, the widow Henesy, is also in
the number of the proscribed. Oh sir, it is I fear, reserved for
the wretched widow, in her eightieth year, to see herself and
every one that bears her name, her whole race driven from the
habitations of men, expelled without offence, un-convicted, nay.
I cursed of a crime. I publish her wrongs to the world with a
view to prepaie aWous public to make some provision for her.
When the notice to quit shall have been carried into effect, I
will again appeal to the public on her behalf, if the hand of
death, in mercy, do not, in the mean time, rescue her from her
sufferings. May Providence, who tempers the blast foe horn
sheep, grant her relief. Her fellow-man in the exercise , of the
legal rights has set his face against her. From the same estate,
within the last ten years, have been ejected :
- Thomas Timmin, wife and family
- Pat Freeny
- James Nolan
- Michael NoIan
- James Byrne
- William Brophy
- Edward Cannon
- James Cannon
- Widow Murphy s family
- William Curran
- Ellen Commons
- Widow Mahon
Total 75 people
It is not here asserted that bona fide arrears were not due
by some of these families, or that their landlord had not a
legal right to eject them I bare fact of their being turned to
the road, is alone stated. Some oft since they have been driven
from their homes, worn out by misery, hi gone to their grave.
One died in an hospital in Dublin; another was sent to the
Carlow Lunatic Asylum; others have contrived, by begging through
the country, to protract a wretched existence. Some have built
temporary huts within the views of their former residences, or
made dykes of ditches, where they have lived for months in
misery, which it is impossible to describe. Amongst those driven
from their home, is Ellen Commons, ejected for non-title, after
having paid her rent for about thirty-seven years.
During her occupation, she built a house, which cost her £14,
for which, on quitting the premises, she received £1, and for
giving peaceable possession, 2. Her poor sister, who lived with
her, has been for eight years mostly confined to her bed,
labouring under both bodily and mental in firmity. The loss of
her home (for she was not insensible of what occurred), so
increased her malady, that she has been since considered a fit
subject for a lunatic asylum, in which, as stated above, she at
length found refuge.
Besides the ejected and those noticed to quit, twenty two
electors on the same estate, most unfortunately for their own
interests, have had the virtue, in those evil days, to support a
Liberal Government by their votes at the hustings. For such an
offence a most harassing war of citations, latitats, and
subpoenas, &c., has been carried on against them, and has
brought many of them to the verge of ruin.
Their petition lately
presented to the House of Commons, by Mr. Wallace of Greenock,
will give some idea of the extent of their sufferings. This
document eminently deserves the public attention it shows how
far the people, for daring to advocate Reform, can be legally
persecuted how they may be teased, and goaded, and robbed of
their property, under the sanction of law.
The spirit in which
this war has been conducted is best collected from the tone and
manner in which hostilities were proclaimed. In open court the
landlord solemnly swore, with uplifted hand to Heaven, before me
and others, that he would exterminate his tenants who opposed
Toryism, were twenty years necessary to effect his purpose. The
war has since proceeded, as appears from the petition referred
to, in a manner every way worthy of the spirit in which it was
undertaken.
- To sum up all in a few words:
- 12 families ejected within
the last two years . . . . 74
- 5 noticed to quit . . . . 22
- 22 electors, allowing six to each family . . . . 132
- Total 228
It is impossible to estimate the extent and intensity of the
sufferings which these 228 individuals, on one small estate,
have endured within the short period of two years. Oh! it is
monstrous; it is a crying sin a sin that might bring down the
vengeance of Heaven on a nation that landlords should have the
power, as in Carlow and other places, of sending the wretched
occupiers of the acre to starve. The oppression of the people in
this country has very nearly passed the limit of human
endurance.
The cup of bitterness is filled to overflowing. The
landlord, churchman, and attorney, united together in an unholy
league, have sorely tried the peoples patience. Acting upon the
advice of that clergyman (the Rev. M. Beresford), they not only
assert their right to rent and tithe, but they seek the
expulsion of the peasantry from the lands of their birth lands
which they cultivated before their oppressors had a single acre
in the country. "I trust (said the patriotic and reverend
gentleman, Marcus Beresford) that every good and faithful
minister of God would sooner have potatoes and salt surrounded
with Protestants, than live like princes surrounded by Papists.
"I quote his words from the Evening Mail.
This oppression, ere long, will produce its natural fruits.
The hunted cottier will turn when too hard pressed, and revenge
himself on his ruthless pursuers. Sheridan has expressed the
idea "wherever the heel of oppression is raised, trodden misery
springs up, and glares around for vengeance. "But a few days
since a fine athletic fellow, but worn by sharp misery to the
bones, said to a neighbouring parish priest, don t blame me,
sir, if I do wrong, for I am starving. My own misery I could
perhaps bear, but I cannot bear to see my wife and children
famishing. Their cries tear my very heart. I know not what I
shall do.
The law, it is said, is the protection of the subject. What
law, I should be glad to learn, protects or recognises the
rights of the poor? "If I obey the law." said an oppressed
tenant, "I will be turned out to starve, by violating it, I will
obtain a jail allowance and a roof to shelter me." The country is
made to feel and know that other classes of men have their
rights. All the courts of law; judges, lawyers, attorneys,
proctors; all the disposable troops of the kingdom horse, foot,
and dragoons (what servants of the apostles of Christ!) seem at
present to exist for the sole purpose of vindicating the rights
of sinecure churchmen, a third part of which rights are
notoriously composed of the wrongs of the poor. On the other
hand, the protection of the poor mans right seems to be no ones
business.
Now and then the priest raises his solitary voice to protest
before God and man against the oppression of his
fellow-creatures. But it is Vox Et Praeterea nihil, whilst the
whole business of the government is compelled to stand still
until the church is gorged with the tenth of every man's
possession. Teaching others to despise the things of this world,
she claims the full tenth of the peasants estate the inheritance
which he has in the labour of his hands, and the sweat of his
brow - the tenth of his potato pit, the only barrier between the
poor man and starvation. What will the Legislature do to save us
from impending evils? Are the constituted authorities armed with
no power to save from starvation a quiet and suffering people?
Have landed proprietors a clear right to condemn to any degree
of misery or destitution they think fit the labouring
population?
We have seen, and every day see, power wielded in full might,
and with all its resources, in the cause of church exaction,
against a half-naked, half-starved peasantry. When shall we see
the might of the government put forth in defence of an
oppressed, a cruelly neglected people? The exertion of the
Catholic clergy to preserve the peace, and suppression of
outrage, will not, I greatly fear, be much longer successful.
Oppression in this county has very nearly reached the point
which makes the wise man mad. Hundreds amongst us are literally
famishing. It would be vain to attempt describing their misery.
On one morning of last week ninety six persons applied,
personally, to me, for relief. I have taken their names, and
will, with your leave, publish them, at a future day, in the
Poit. The number of applicants was not unusually large. The
farmers, who alone seem to have any bowels of compassion for the
poor, harassed by the exaction of rent on the day it becomes
due, and plundered in the name of religion by the Lay
Association, have no longer the means of relieving them.
Outrages, the commission of which both the oppressed and
oppressors will have to deplore, will be the result of this
cruel treatment of the people. Veniet dies irse, calamitatis et
miseriae, dies magna et amara.
Well as you know the Catholic clergy, yet you can scarcely
imagine what efforts we have made and are making to keep society
together.
Denounced though I have been a thousand times as an agitator,
yet I am every day employed in exhorting men to have patience. I
will not be suspected of admitting the justice of the sinecure
parson s claim to the tenth of the farmer s industry. The
peasant, says Grattan, is born without an estate: he is born
with hands, and no man has a natural right to the labor of those
hands, unless he pays him.
Holding, as I do, this doctrine, yet
for the sake of peace, and to save honest men from utter ruin. I
have paid, within the last month, the full amount of the parson
s claim on four Catholic farmers. They were unable to pay it
themselves. The parson insisted on the full amount of his bond
the attorneys and Lay Association were already prowling about
for their prey, and were the poor farmers as friendless as they
were pennyless, they should have gone to the road.
This, sir, is an unnatural state of things. The Catholic
priest, who has a large flock to attend who has many and
laborious duties to perform who is every day at the bed-side of
disease, much of which is brought on by want is obliged to give
what he receives for himself and the relief of the distressed,
to the non-resident and sinecure parson, who renders nothing to
the Catholic, save offence, for the wages he receives, to which,
before God, he has no right, and in consenting to receive which
he is guilty even of great wrong.
- This letter, I regret, has already become too long.
- I have the honour to be, yours, in Christ
- "JAMES MAHER."
