lement many of the tenants who, when they were
all present in a body on the previous evening, had declared their
"inability" to pay the half-year's rent due down to May 1887,
individually came to Mr. Richardson unasked, and paid it, some saying
they had "borrowed the money that night," but others frankly declaring
that they dared not break the rule publicly, having been ordered by the
League only to pay to November 1886, for fear of the consequences. These
would have been injury to their cattle, or the burning of their hay, or
possibly murder.

Of the country about Kilkenny, I am told, as of the country about
Carlow, that nearly or quite seventy per cent, of the labourers are
dependent upon the landlords from November to May for such employment as
they get.

The shopkeepers, too, are in a bad way, being in many cases reduced to
the condition of mere agents of the great wholesale houses elsewhere,
and kept going by these houses mainly in the hope of recovering old
debts. There is a severe pressure of usury, too, upon the farmers. "If a
farmer," said one resident to me, "wants to borrow a small sum of the
Loan Fund Bank, he must have two securities--one of them a substantial
man good for the debt. These two indorsers must be 'treated' by the
borrower whom they back; and he must pay them a weekly sum for the
countenance they have given him, which not seldom amounts, before he
gets through with the matter, to a hundred per cent, on the original
loan."

I am assured too that the consumption of spirits all through this region
has greatly increased of late years. "The official reports will show
you," said one gentleman, "that the annual outlay upon whisky in Ireland
equals the sum saved to the tenants by the reductions in rent." This is
a proposition so remarkable that I simply record it for future
verification, as having been made by a very quiet, cool, and methodical
person, whose information on other points I have found to be correct. He
tells me too, as of his own knowledge, that in going over some financial
matters with a small farmer in his neighbourhood, he ascertained, beyond
a peradventure, that this farmer annually spent in whisky, for the use
of his family, consisting of himself, his wife and three adult children,
nearly, or quite, _seventy pounds a year_! "You won't believe this," he
said to me; "and if you print the statement nobody else will believe it;
but for all that it is the simple unexaggerated truth."