The sale took place; all the stock I have described was put up, together with a saddle and winkers. The Government agent bid £75. The friend of the farmer who writes this letter said: "I bid £75 and 5/-." The sheriff's officer said: "I will not accept that bid. I knock down all to the Government agent for £75." Then the friends of the farmer gathered around and said: "Well, this is an unsatisfactory sale. To make an end of the business we will offer to pay his debt for him to the sheriff, and give those goods back to the man." The Government agent, however, said: "I will not give back the goods. I bought them for £75, and I am going to stick to them." In his letter the man says:—
"Surely, it is downright robbery to deprive me of practically the whole of my means for the sum of £75, and the case is made very much worse by the refusal of the Government agent to return the stock to me when it was made possible by my neighbours for me to meet the demand. To make the position worse, there were three of my children sick in bed, the eldest being 9 years, and the youngest 2 years. My wife was under the doctor's care, and the visit of the squad gave her such a shock that she is now in a state of prostration."
He then goes on to deal with the general condition of the country, and so forth.
The case I want to make to the Minister is this: Those are all law-abiding men, who, for generations, have been the backbone of the country. They are honest men. They are men whose credit has always been good. They are the type of men who never defaulted on their legitimate commitments at any time. This is a family man, with a young growing family. He is apparently hard-working. He has horses, sheep and cattle. He tries his hand at everything. He is anxious to pay his way. In another part of the letter he says:—
"I paid £112 in rates, and I had to leave my family without many essentials in order to provide that money. I sold 12 cattle at the last fair in Mitchelstown at a very bad price."
He then goes on to explain that there was a tariff of £6 on each of the cattle, and that that interfered with the price. He was not a man who tried to run away from his obligations. He was ready to tighten his belt, and not only to do that but to deprive his family of what he felt they were entitled to have, in order to find money to pay his rates. That man had not got the money to pay the land annuities. He was willing to take out and sell his stock at a sacrifice, and he did sell it a sacrifice in order to try and raise the money, but here he was with cattle, calves, sheep and horses, and he could not sell any of them. The calves were not worth taking out. If he did take them out he would be left there with all the cattle and the milk; you cannot sell butter now without a licence and there is a 4d. levy on it. The man could not possibly raise the money in any way to meet his commitment.
The sheriff's officer comes out. He does not take a modest and reasonable proportion of the man's stock; he takes everything. He leaves that man in the condition that he will not only be unable to meet his commitments this year, but that he will never be able to meet his commitments again; his entire stock-in-trade is gone. That is not all. He brings all that stock into the pound. All the stock which I have described to the House here to-day was worth, on a conservative estimate, £800 or £900. Probably, if this man's valuation of his five horses was a fair one, his property was worth £1,200. Let us take an average figure, and say that all that stock together, prudently sold, would be worth £1,000. £1,000 worth of stock —the entire stock-in-trade and means of livelihood of a man who has got a wife and young family—is taken from him, and sold to a bailiff for £75, the bid of his friend for £75 5s. being refused. The man is left destitute, with his wife and children to provide for.
