Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Is Ulster Right

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Order of Hibernians, and a Trustee of the Parliamentary Fund of the United Irish League); and the Rev. D. O'Hara, a leading Clerical Nationalist of a violent type. It is needless to say that under their influence the action of the Board has been conducted on strictly Nationalist lines. One instance may suffice. In 1900, the Board, having come into the possession of the Dillon estate, wished to sell it to the tenants; and when doing so, considering the sporting rights to be a valuable asset, decided to reserve them. A considerable number of the tenants expressed their readiness to purchase their holdings subject to the reservation. The Board received an offer of 11,000 for the mansion, demesne and sporting rights over the estate. The reservation of sporting rights when, taking the whole estate, they were of pecuniary value, had been the common practice of the Board in other sales; but an agitation was at once got up (not by the tenants) against the reservation in this case, on the ground that it was not right for the Board to place any burden on the fee simple of the holdings; the offer of 11,000 was refused, and soon afterwards the Board sold the mansion and the best part of the demesne to a community of Belgian nuns for 2,100. The sporting rights, which became the property of the purchasing tenants, ceased to be of any appreciable pecuniary value, though in a few cases the tenants succeeded in selling their share of them for small sums to local agitators. When a witness before the Royal Commission of 1906 ventured to point out that the taxpayers thus lost 8,900 by the transaction, he was severely rebuked by the Clerical members of the Commission for suggesting that the presence of the Belgian nuns was not a great benefit to the neighbourhood. This Royal Commission was appointed ostensibly for the purpose of enquiring into and reporting upon the operations of the Board since its foundation. After going through a mass of evidence, the Chairman (Lord Dudley) said that the Board had tried for twenty years to develop new industries and had failed; and another member (Lord MacDonnell) said that it had only touched the fringe of the question; and, considering that in spite of all its efforts at promoting local industries, emigration continued to be greater from the district subject to its control than from any other part of Ireland, it is hard to see what other view was possible. But the large majority of the Commission were ardent Nationalists--in fact, one of them a short time before his appointment had publicly advocated an absolute, rigorous, complete and exhaustive system of boycotting; and the witness who spoke for the United Irish League told the Commission that it was the strong view of the League that the Board should be preserved. It was only natural therefore that the Commission should report that in their opinion the powers and scope of its operations should be extended and its income largely increased. This was accordingly done by the Birrell Act of 1909. One of the most important functions of the Board was the purchase of land, for which they possessed compulsory powers. The witness who had appeared before the Commission as representing the United Irish League was Mr. FitzGibbon, Chairman of the Roscommon County Council, and now a Member of Parliament. He had previously been sent to prison for inciting to the Plan of Campaign, and for criminal conspiracy. He had also taken a leading part in the cattle-driving agitation (to which I shall refer later) and had announced that his policy was "to enable the Board to get land at fag-end prices." He was therefore appointed by Mr. Birrell to be a member of the Board, as being a suitable person to decide what compensation should be paid for land taken compulsorily. He publicly stated that his object was to carry out the great work of Michael Davitt. And he certainly has been active in doing so; and now the agitators, when they want to have an estate transferred to the Board, commence by preventing its being let or used, and so compelling the owner to leave it derelict and unprofitable; then, when by every description of villainy and boycotting it has been rendered almost worthless, the Congested

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