Note 23 — APPENDIX.

Footnote 23:

(return)

While these pages are going through the press a Scottish friend sends me the following extract from a letter published in the Scotsman of July 25:— “In the same way I, in August last, when in Wicklow, ascertained as carefully as I could the facts as to the Bodyke evictions; and being desirous to learn now if that estate was still out of cultivation, as I had found it in August, I wrote the gentleman I have referred to above. His reply is as follows:—

“‘I can answer your question as far as the Brooke estate is concerned. None of the tenants are back in their farms, nor are they likely to be. The landlord has the land partly stocked with cattle; but I may say the land is nearly waste; the gates, fences, and farmsteads partly destroyed. I was at the fair of Coolgreany about three weeks ago, and the country looked quite changed; the weeds predominating in the land that the tenantry had under cultivation when they were evicted from their farms. The landlord has done nothing to lay the land down with grass seed, consequently the land is waste. The village of Coolgreany is on the property, and there was a good monthly fair held there, but it is very much gone down since the disagreement between the landlord and tenant. The tenants, speaking generally, in allowing themselves to be evicted and not redeeming before six months, are giving up all their improvements to the landlord, no matter what they may be worth. I have got quite tired of the vexed question, and may say I have given up reading about evictions, and pity the tenant who is foolish enough to allow any party to advise him so badly as to allow himself to be evicted.’

“Those who read this testimony of a candid witness, and remember the cordial footing on which Mr. Brooke stood with his tenantry in Bodyke before Mr. Billon appeared amongst them, may well ask what good his interference did to the now impoverished tenantry of Bodyke, or to the district now deserted or laid waste.—I am, etc.,

A RADICAL UNIONIST.”