The Whistler at the Plough (Volume 1); Containing Travels, Statistics, and Descriptions of Scenery and Agricultural Customs in Most Parts of England with Letters from Ireland Also "Free Trade and the League" a Biography History (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1852 Excerpt: ... kinds in less than three years, has been defeated in fourfifths of them--and though he had thirteen cases at last quarter sessions, and was defeated in all--he still triumphs. He appeals to higher courts. He does not pay the L.100 damages to Ryan. He makos an appeal which will not be settled until some time next year. Meantime, Ryan, by being in prison, and by being involved in litigation, of which this is but a mere sample--by losing his contract for the roads, having all his implements and farming stock seized and sold while in prison--was unable to cultivate his land so as to enable him to pay his last Michaelmas rent. The rent being less than L.100, which the landlord owed him in damages, it might have been supposed that this L.100 would be a set-off for the rent. But no, a letter to me on the 8th of November says--" And he (the landlord) canted John Ryan to the potatoes, and did not leave his family one bit that would eat." This John Ryan, it must be borne in mind, was a leaseholder, and never owed a farthing of rent until those proceedings were taken against him to compel him into arrears which would justify anejectment. His case, from first to last--from the time that ho was an independent man, with as happy a family around him as lived in the Queen's dominions, living in a house of his own building, with a farm-steading erected at his own expense, which are equal to any cottage or farm-steading of the same extent in England or Scotland for cleanliness, order, and substantiality--I saw them with my own eyes, and judged for myself; from the time that John Ryan was an independent man in that farm to the present, when he and his family are potatoless and penniless, and on the point of being ejected, the proceedings against him have been of the most extr...