the representative of the Clanricarde Burkes, who have been settled
upon this property for 700 years. He draws, or rather drew, a very
large income from it, and there can be little question that his
presence would encourage and sustain smaller proprietors who are
fighting a losing battle in defence of their rights. These proprietors
may fairly claim that the leading men of their order should stand by
them in the time of trial. Unfortunately, this assistance has not been
invariably, or even as a rule, rendered by the great Irish landowners.
It is, indeed, largely because they have failed in their duty that the
present troubles have come upon Irish landlords as a body. If only in
the past the great landowners had lived in Ireland and spent at least
a portion of the incomes they derived from Ireland upon their estates,
the present agitation against landlordism would never have reached the
point at which it has arrived. The absence of the landlords, and in
many cases their refusal to recognise the legitimate claims of their
districts upon them, has made it possible for the agitators who have
now the ear of the people to bring about that severance of classes,
and that embittered feeling of class against class, which is doing
Ireland more injury at the present time than all the rack-renters put
together."

Those who plead for the landlords who have been so cruelly robbed and
ruined are weak-voiced and reticent compared to the loudly crying
advocates for the peasantry. English tourists run over for a fortnight
to Ireland, talk to the jarvies, listen to the peasants themselves,
forbear to go near any educated or responsible person with knowledge
of the facts and a character to lose, and accept as gospel everything
they hear. There is no check and no verification. Pat and Tim and Mike
give their accounts of this and that, bedad! and tell their piteous
tales of want and oppression. The English tourist swallows it all