FROM THE ARCHIVES:The tensions of 30 years of the land war caused one landlord to snap in the unlikely forum of a meeting about Enniscorthy agricultural show in 1901.
AT A public meeting in connection with the Enniscorthy Show, held last evening under the presidency of the Mayor (Mr. B. Hughes J.P.), Captain J.J. Perceval made an indignant protest against the treatment his class was subjected to. He said – “Mr. Mayor and gentlemen, I wish to say a few words about my position here. I have just come down from Dublin by the last train, and I find a card of invitation to this meeting lying on my table.
“Well, I am a landlord – only a small one – but I am nothing else but a landlord. I have nothing else to depend upon, and I have always striven to do my duty as a landlord. My position at this meeting is anomalous. The majority are Nationalists, and since this Nationalist movement was started, the word has gone around that the landlords are to be exterminated.
“And you, Mr. Mayor, are placed in precisely the same position. I suppose I should say, ‘Exterminate us if you can,’ but I hope we will meet our fate like men. However, you cannot blow hot and cold. If we are to be exterminated, why ask us to subscribe and help such projects as this?
“Let those who are to exterminate us do all the work. I have got very good tenants. I never had a bad one. I can’t see how this exterminating business is to end. All your leaders and all your papers cry out for our extermination, and then you come along and ask us to subscribe.”
Mr. Cousins said: “We have got nothing to do with that.”
Mr. J.J. Kehoe: “This is not a political meeting. It is not a Land League meeting, or anything of the kind.”
Mr. D.E. McCarthy: “What on earth has this meeting got to do with politics.”
Captain Perceval: “You have put it out of the way for landlords to subscribe to this sort of thing. I don’t want to throw cold water on this movement, and I mean to subscribe to it. But if I am to be exterminated, it is for the exterminators to carry on these movements, and not for us. If you elected me to-night at the head of the poll, I would not have acted. I hope now you understand me. I have never been afraid to speak my mind. I must say a thing when I feel it.”
Mr. D.E. McCarthy: “This has nothing whatever to say to politics. ”
Mr. Busher: “I don’t believe for a moment that the farmers want to exterminate the landlords.”
Captain Perceval: “I don’t believe they do . . .”
Mr Busher: “But they want the land for a fair rent, or to buy at a fair price.”
Mr. Cousins: “All this is out of order.”
Captain Perceval: “I only wanted to explain my position.”
Mr. Cousins: “If we all did that we would be here all night.”
The matter then dropped.
Captain Perceval handed in a subscription of £1, but said he would not become a member.
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