The Land-Leaguers PDF

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In the year 1850 the two estates of Ballintubber and Morony were sold to Mr. Philip Jones, under the Estates Court, which had then been established.

They had been the property of two different owners, but lay conveniently so as to make one possession for one proprietor.

They were in the County Galway, and lay to the right and left of the road which runs down from the little town of Headford to Lough Corrib.

At the time when the purchase was made there was no quieter spot in all Ireland, or one in which the lawful requirements of a landlord were more readily performed by a poor and obedient tenantry.

The people were all Roman Catholics, were for the most part uneducated, and it may be said of them that not only were their souls not their own, but that they were not ambitious even of possessing their own bodies.

Circumstances have changed much with them since that date.

Not only have they in part repudiated the power of the priest as to their souls, but, in compliance with teaching which has come to them from America, they claim to be masters also of their bodies.

Never were a people less fitted to exercise such dominion without control.

Generous, kindly, impulsive, and docile, they have been willing to follow any recognised leader.

When Philip Jones bought the property that had belonged to the widow O'Dwyer - for Ballintubber had for the last hundred years been the property of the O'Dwyers - and Morony, which had been an outlying town-land belonging to the Hacketts for the last two centuries, he had at first been looked down upon as a new comer.

But all that had passed by, and Mr. Jones was as much respected as though he had been an O'Jones from the time of Queen Elizabeth.

But now the American teaching had come up, and things were different.