r "taboo," and whose oats no man dare buy, and the similar case of
a draper who had sold some material to a man working on the
"Boycotted" farm, and was compelled to take it back. "There is nothing
now," added another informant, "but to touch your hat to tenants, for
they have left off doing so to you. And it is folly to talk of
reprisals, or of persevering in hunting and going armed to the meet.
Suppose an affray occurred and I shot a tenant, I should be most
assuredly identified, tried, convicted, and severely punished, if not
hanged. But if a tenant shot me it would be difficult to identify him,
more difficult to arrest him, and downright impossible to convict him.
Since Lord O'Hagan's Jury Act it is quite impossible to get
convictions against the lower orders--witness the memorable instance
of Mr. Creagh, when the assassin's gun burst and blew his finger off.
The prisoner and his finger were both in court, there was no manner of
doubt, and yet the jury acquitted him."

Thus far the greater landowner or his agents. The tone is one of
patient, if not amused, endurance, mingled, of course, with profound
contempt for the _personnel_ of the Land League. But the smaller and
resident landlord is of much more inflammable stuff. A strike against
rent-paying signifies to him an end of all supplies. Whether he have
two thousand or five thousand a year in land--for I omit the little
"squireen" class as of no importance on either side of the
question--he has almost certainly settlements and probably mortgages
on his estate. Now, mortgagees in Dublin or London are not at all
ready to take into account the difficulty of collecting rents in
Connaught, and insist on being paid.

Even their rancour, however, has moderated slightly just of late, for
they are as afraid to foreclose on unsaleable property as the
mortgagor is of losing his claim on it for ever. But the settlements
must be paid, and as no rents are coming in, dowagers are obdurate,
and the landlord lives well up to his means, times are hard just now
in county Clare.

It is not exactly "tyranny" which inclines the lesser landlord to get
the rent out of his tenant, but his own need, which drives him to
extreme measures. In bitterness of spirit he bewails his dulness in
not following the example of some of his peers in getting rid of their
tenantry and farming their land themselves, like Colonel Barnard in
King's County. He also envies the lot of Mr. "Tom" Crowe, of Dromo