Freeborn County Standard
Albert Lea, Minnesota
July 20, 1882

AN IRISH LANDLORD
Something About the Marquis of Clanricarde and His Irish Estates.

    Most Irishmen who know anything of the personal character of the Marquis of Clanricarde will regret that if there was to be a murder like that of Thursday week the victim should not have been the landlord himself rather than his old agent and his bailiff. Lord Clanricarde is the only surviving descendant of the great orator, George Canning, Pitt's protege who married one of the three daughters of the famous gambling Scotchman, general John Scott, who pursued a regime of perfect abstinence from drink in order that he might fleece the less temperate players of that generation. General Scott accumulated a fortune large enough to give each of his daughters a million sterling, and as Canning was penniless, his marriage set him on his feet at once. Another daughter of General Scott married the Duke of Portland, father of the late eccentric bearer of title and joined her family name with that of the Bentincks, and the third heiress was captured by the Earl of Moray. George Canning's only daughter inherited all the immense fortune of her mother on the death of her brother, Viscount Canning, in 1862. She had married the father of the present Lord Clanricarde and her brother's private estate went to her second son, who, on the death of his older brother, about eight years ago, came into the title and estates. The family name of the Clanricardes is De Burgh, to which Canning was added on the marriage with the heiress. The estates lie in Galway and the seat is Portumna Castle, which exists only in name; having been long ago destroyed by fire. The father of the present Marquis planned and began the construction of a new house, and meanwhile fitted up his residence over the extensive stables, which were the pride of the West country huntsman. But when the present Marquis succeeded to the estates he decided to return from Paris, where he passes most of his time in a life of elegant bachelor loafing, and he has allowed the immense Irish estates to go practically to waste in the hands of agents and factors, whose orders have been to make the rents as large as possible. The marquis of Clanricarde has no personal interest in the Irish estates beyond the revenues, and his perpetual absence and indifference have brought the dissatisfaction of the men of Galway to the point of violent resistance to his orders. He is probably one of the worst cases of absentee landlordism in Ireland, and the evicted farmers would certainly never have murdered his agents if they could have got a shot at the Marquis himself. A man who would refuse, as he did, to make any abatements on rent in the famine year of 1870 has very little occasion to show himself in Galway in the present condition of affairs.