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 Dromore, who, without acquiring the name of an "exterminator" or a "tyrant," has succeeded in shaking off the load of teeming population and the abomination of "duty work" by degrees, and has now a magnificent farm of his own which might bear the inspection of Mr. Clare Read himself, and of all Norfolk to boot. Mr. Crowe, too, has not gone through the ordeal of being shot at like Colonel Barnard, and if not specially loved by the people, has no kind of quarrel with them. Mr. Burton, of Carnelly, who owns 9,669 acres in Clare, has been fortunate in getting some rent, mainly in consequence of his tact in driving round one day to collect it himself and taking his tenants by surprise. But Mr. Burton is an exception, both in tact and fortune, to the majority of landlords of the second rank. Colonel Vandeleur has been very unfortunate, like all landholders encumbered with what would be called small farmers in England. The few really large farmers in Clare, as a rule, have paid up either openly or privately, and in sentiment are quite with the landlord class. The lesser landlords are talking of nothing but Dublin writs, and declare that the so-called peace of the county is only unbroken because no attempt is made to execute the law.