Ireland Under Coercion - vol. 2 | Page 4

deposits at Six-Mile Bridge rose from
£382, 17s. 10d. in 1880 to £934, 13s. 4d. in 1887.
After breakfast we took a car and drove rapidly about the city for an
hour. With its noble river flowing through the very heart of the place,
and broadening soon into an estuary of the Atlantic, Limerick ought
long ago to have taken its place in the front rank of British ports
dealing with the New World. In the seventeenth century it was the
fourth city of Ireland, Boate putting it then next after Dublin, Galway,
and Waterford. Belfast at that time, he describes as a place hardly
comparable "to a small market-town in England." To-day Limerick has
a population of some forty thousand, and Belfast a population of more
than two hundred thousand souls. This change cannot be attributed
solely, if at all, to the "Protestant ascendency," nor yet to the alleged
superiority of the Northern over the Southern Irish in energy and thrift,

For in the seventeenth century Limerick was more important than Cork,
whereas it had so far fallen behind its Southern competitor in the
eighteenth century that it contained in 1781 but 3859 houses, while
Cork contained 5295. To-day its population is about half as large as
that of Cork. It is a very well built city, its main thoroughfare, George
Street, being at least a mile in length, and a picturesque city also,
thanks to the island site of its most ancient quarter, the English Town,
and to the hills of Clare and Killaloe, which close the prospect of the
surrounding country. But the streets, though many of them are
handsome, have a neglected look, as have also the quays and bridges.
One of my companions, to whom I spoke of this, replied, "if they look
neglected, it's because they are neglected. Politics are the death of the
place, and the life of its publics."[2]
As we approached the shores of the Atlantic from Limerick, the
scenery became very grand and beautiful. On the right of the railway
the country rolled and undulated away towards the Stacks, amid the
spurs and slopes of which, in the wood of Clonlish, Sanders, the
Nuncio sent over to organise Catholic Ireland against Elizabeth,
miserably perished of want and disease six years before the advent of
the great Armada. To the south-west rose the grand outlines of the
Macgillicuddy's Reeks, the highest points, I believe, in the South of
Ireland. We established ourselves at the County Kerry Club on our
arrival in Tralee, which I found to be a brisk prosperous-looking town,
and quite well built. A Nationalist member once gave me a gloomy
notion of Tralee, by telling me, when I asked him whether he looked
forward with longing to a seat in the Parliament of Ireland, that "when
he was in Dublin now he always thought of London, just as when he
used to be in Tralee he always thought of Dublin." But he did less than
justice to the town upon the Lee. We left it at half-past four in the train
for Killorglin. The little station there was full of policemen and soldiers,
and knots of country people stood about the platform discussing the
morrow. There had been some notion that the car-drivers at Killorglin
might "boycott" the authorities. But they were only anxious to turn an
honest penny by bringing us on to this lonely but extremely neat and
comfortable hostelry in the hills.

We left the Sheriff and the escort to find their way as best they could
after us.
Mrs. Shee, the landlady here, ushered us into a very pretty room hung
with little landscapes of the country, and made cheery by a roaring fire.
Two or three officers of the soldiers sent on here to prevent any serious
uproar to-morrow dined with us.
The constabulary are in force, but in great good humour. They have no
belief that there will be any trouble, though all sorts of wild tales were
flying about Tralee before we left, of English members of Parliament
coming down to denounce the "Coercion" law, and of risings in the
hills, and I know not what besides. The agent of the Winn property, or
of Mr. Head of Reigate in Surrey, the mortgagee of the estate, who
holds a power of attorney from Mr. Winn, is here, a quiet, intelligent
young man, who has given me the case in a nut-shell.
The tenant to be evicted, James Griffin, is the son and heir of one Mrs.
Griffin, who on the 5th of April 1854 took a lease of the lands known
as West Lettur from the then Lord Headley and the Hon. R. Winn, at
the annual rent of £32, 10s. This rent has since been reduced by a
judicial process to £26.