“I hope,” said Mr. Burke, “that we may as reasonably say that your

cousin lived too early as that she lived too late. The time will come,

trust me, when there will be end of the system under which she has

suffered. It cannot always be that the law will snatch the bread from

the industrious to give it to the idle, and turn labour from its natural

channel, and defraud it of its due reward, and authorise the selfish and

dissolute to mock at those who prize independence, and who bind

themselves to self-denial that they may practise charity. The time will

come, depend upon it, when the nation will effectually take to heart

such injustice as this. There is much to undo, much to rectify, before

the labours of the poor, in their prime, shall secure to them a serene

old age; but the time will come, though by that day yonder grave may be

level with the turf beside it, and there may be none to remember or

speak of Cousin Marshall.”

_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._

In a society composed of a natural gradation of ranks, some must be

poor; _i.e._ have nothing more than the means of present subsistence.

Any suspension of these means of subsistence, whether through disaster,

sickness, or decrepitude, converts the poor into the indigent.

Since indigence occasions misery, and disposes to vice, the welfare of

society requires the greatest possible reduction of the number of the

indigent.

Charity, public and private, or an arbitrary distribution of the

subsistence-fund, has hitherto failed to effect this object; the

proportion of the indigent to the rest of the population having

increased from age to age.

This is not surprising, since an arbitrary distribution of the

subsistence-fund, besides rendering consumption unproductive, and

encouraging a multiplication of consumers, does not meet the difficulty

arising from a disproportion of numbers to the means of subsistence.

The small unproductive consumption occasioned by the relief of sudden

accidents and rare infirmities is necessary, and may be justifiably

provided for by charity, since such charity does not tend to the

increase of numbers; but, with this exception, all arbitrary

distribution of the necessaries of life is injurious to society, whether

in the form of private almsgiving, public charitable institutions, or a

legal pauper-system.

The tendency of all such modes of distribution having been found to be

to encourage improvidence with all its attendant evils,—to injure the

good while relieving the bad,—to extinguish the spirit of independence

on one side,—and of charity on the other,—to encourage peculation,

tyranny, and fraud,—and to increase perpetually the evil they are meant

to remedy,—but one plea is now commonly urged in favour of a legal

provision for the indigent.

This plea is that every individual born into a state has a right to

subsistence from the state.

This plea, in its general application, is grounded on a false analogy

between a state and its members, and a parent and his family.

A parent has a considerable influence over the subsistence-fund of his

family, and an absolute control over the numbers to be supported by that

fund; whereas the rulers of a state, from whom a legal provision

emanates, have little influence over its subsistence-fund, and no

control whatever over the number of its members.

If the plea of right to subsistence be grounded on the faults of

national institutions, the right ought rather to be superseded by the

rectification of those institutions, than admitted at the cost of

perpetuating an institution more hurtful than all the others combined.

What, then, must be done to lessen the number of the indigent, now so

frightfully increasing?

The subsistence-fund must be employed productively, and capital and

labour be allowed to take their natural course; _i.e._ the pauper system

must, by some means or other, be extinguished.

The number of consumers must be proportioned to the subsistence-fund. To

this end, all encouragements to the increase of population should be

withdrawn, and every sanction given to the preventive check; _i.e._

charity must be directed to the enlightenment of the mind, instead of to

the relief of bodily wants.

If not adopted speedily, all measures will be too late to prevent the

universal prevalence of poverty in this kingdom, the legal provision for

the indigent now operating the extinction of our national resources at a

perpetually increasing rate.

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PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, STAMFORD-STREET.

Ireland

PREFACE.

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Though it is my business to treat of the permanent rather than of the

transient causes of the distress of Ireland,—of her economy rather than

her politics,—I have been perplexed by some of the difficulties which at

present beset all who would communicate with the public on her behalf.

It is impossible to foresee while writing what may have happened, before

our thoughts are printed, to change the aspect of affairs, and modify

the counsel we would offer. No pains have been spared to ascertain the

correctness of the data on which my story is constructed; yet I have

felt through the whole course of it that I might finally resolve to keep

it back as useless, there being a strong probability that it might, a

few weeks hence, appear antiquated in comparison with the treatises

which may then be wanted. I cannot but trust, however, that leisure will

soon be spared from the consideration of emergencies for an

investigation into the long subsisting causes of Irish distress; that

the painful labour of punishing crime may give place to the more hopeful

task of superseding it; and that the government may ere long turn from

enforcing obnoxious laws to fostering the resources of the country.

Many will think with me that the title of this story is too grand for

its contents; and more may be disappointed on finding how few are my

personages, and how little I have dealt with the horrors of the

time.—The purpose of my title is to direct the work into the hands of

those whom it most concerns; and my personages are few because it is my

object to show, in a confined space, how long a series of evils may

befall individuals in a society conducted like that of Ireland, and by

what a repetition of grievances its members are driven into disaffection

and violence. As for the incidents of the tale, my choice was influenced

by the consideration, not of what would best suit the purposes of

fiction, but of what would most serve the cause of the Irish poor. A

much more thrilling and moving story might have been made of conspiracy,

rebellion, and slaughter by weapon and by gibbet; but these scenes want

no further development than may be found in our daily newspapers; while

the silent miseries of the cottier, the unpitied grievances of the

spirit-broken labourer cannot have been sufficiently made known, since

they still subsist. These miseries, protracted from generation to

generation, are the origin of the more lively horrors of which everybody

hears. Let them be superseded, and there will be an end of the rebellion

and slaughter which spring from them.

Now that it is the fashion with a certain portion of society to denounce

every exposition of state impolicy as inflammatory, I may be exposed to

the common charge of attempting to excite the disaffection, some of

whose causes I have attempted to expose. Since it is no longer a secret,

however, that Ireland has been and is misgoverned, and since the

readiest method of winning back the discontented to their allegiance is

to allow those things to be grievances which are felt to be so, and to

show a disposition to afford redress, I cannot but hold the part of true

loyalty to be to expose abuses fearlessly and temperately, and to

stimulate the government to the reparation of past errors and the

improvement of its principles of policy. Such should be my loyalty if I

had access to the councils of the state; and such it is now that I can

speak only as a wellwisher to Ireland, and an indignant witness of her

wrongs.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE

1. Irish Economy 1

2. Irish Liabilities 15

3. Irish Adventure 34

4. Irish Crime 61

5. Irish Retribution 74

6. Irish Responsibility 91

7. Irish Impolicy 104

8. Irish Fatality 119

9. Irish Disaffection 127

IRELAND.

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CHAPTER I.

IRISH ECONOMY.

The Glen of the Echoes,—a title which conveys more to an English ear

than its Irish counterpart, is one of the most obscure districts of a

remote county of the Green Island, of which little is heard on this side

the Channel except during the periodical returns of famine, when the

sole dependence of its miserable population is on public benevolence.

This glen probably owes its name to its vicinity to the sea, whose

boisterous waves, keeping up a perpetual assault, have worn the coast

into deep bays from the North Cape to Mizen-head, and whose hoarse music

is chaunted day and night, summer and winter, from steep to steep along

the shore. It is a rare thing for a traveller in the western counties of

Ireland to behold a calm sea. Whatever the features of the land may

be,—whether he passes through meadows and oat-fields, with villages and

towns in the distance, or over black mountains and across shaking bogs,

where a mud cabin here and there is the only vestige of human

habitation,—the Atlantic is still swelling and lashing the cliffs, as if

bringing its mighty force to a perpetual war against the everlasting

hills. Such a traveller would have pronounced that the Glen of the

Echoes was designed for no other purpose than to give perpetual tidings

of this warfare; for no place could be more wild in aspect, or less

apparently improved by being inhabited. It was a tract lying between the

cliffs and the mountains, consisting partly of bog, and partly of

cultivated patches of land, divided one from another by ditches, and

here and there by a turf bank, which was the best kind of fence used

within many miles, except on the grounds belonging to one or two

mansions within sight and reach. Scarce a tree or a shrub was to be seen

within the bounds of the glen, though tradition related that a vast

forest had once extended along the sides of the mountains; which

tradition was confirmed by the circumstance that trees were easily found

in the bog as often as the inhabitants were at a loss how to pass a

ditch or drain, and there happened to be hands enough near to make a

half-buried trunk into a temporary bridge, for the advantage of a short

cut to any given spot. A resident proprietor, Mr. Rosso, had surrounded

his house with young plantations; but as these were intercepted from

view by the shoulder of the mountain, they did not relieve the bleakness

of the glen itself. The woods of another proprietor, Mr. Tracey, who had

been for some years on the continent with his family, had been so

effectually thinned by his agent, that little of them remained, and, in

consequence, his mansion, Woodland Lodge, might now have better borne

the name of a lodge in the wilderness. Woodland Lodge was about half a

mile distant from Mr. Rosso’s dwelling, and the contrast between the two

was remarkable. The riding, driving, shooting, and fishing parties, in

which the young Rossos were perpetually engaged, gave an appearance of

bustle to the neighbourhood of their residence; and the fine growth of

the plantations, the entireness of the stone fences, and the verdant

crops of the surrounding fields, betokened good management: whereas the

shutters of the Lodge were for ever closed; grass flourished on the

door-steps, and moss on the window-sills; lean cattle were seen lying

about in the woods, or rubbing themselves against the bark-bound trees;

and goats, the most inveterate of destroyers, browsed among the ruins,

which alone remained to mark the boundaries between corn-land and

pasture, plantation and bog. The traveller’s greatest perplexity was as

to where the people dwelt whom he saw scattered in the fields or lying

about on the only visible track by which he could traverse the glen, or

assembled around the Lodge chapel, if it chanced to be a holiday. It was

only by close observation that he could perceive any other erections

than the little school-house, built by Mr. Rosso, and the farm-house,

where a tenant of the better sort lived, and where the priest boarded.

To the accustomed eye, however, a number of huts were visible on the

mountain side, which were more like tufts of black turf than human

dwellings. An occasional wreath of smoke, the neighbourhood of goats,

pigs, or a starved cow, marked them as the abodes of the tenantry of the

glen,—a tenantry neither better nor worse off than that of many a

district in the island.

The school-house just mentioned had been built by Mr. Rosso, who, though

himself a Protestant, wished his poor neighbours to have such an

education as they were willing to receive, though it was mixed with much

that appeared to him very baneful superstition. To the astonishment,

first, of the objects of his bounty, and, next, of his Protestant

visitors, he appointed a Catholic teacher to this school, and interfered

no further in its management than to see that the teacher was diligent,

and that the school was kept open to as many children as chose to

attend. The reasons he gave were, that there were none but Catholics

within five miles, out of his own house, and that as his neighbours

would at all events be Catholics, he saw no harm in giving them reading,

writing, and arithmetic, in addition to that instruction, of a different

kind, which their zealous priest, Father Glenny, took care that they

should not be without. These reasons, whether sound or not, had no

weight with his Protestant friends, who might, as they said, have

forgiven him, if he had had the good of a tenantry of his own in view,

but who began to doubt the goodness of his religion, morals, and

politics, when they considered that he had no tenantry but a farmer’s

family or two, who did not need his assistance; and that he was,

therefore, gratuitously offering support to the most damnable faith in

religion, and the most iniquitous creed in politics, that had ever

deserved the wrath of God in heaven and of man upon earth. Mr. Rosso

very quietly went on, holding an occasional conference with Father

Glenny on the state of the school, and stepping in sometimes as he

passed, to hear how the spelling improved, and whether the children

could be induced to give attention to something besides arithmetic,

which is, almost universally, the favourite accomplishment of the Irish

who have had the advantage of any schooling at all. Father Glenny, and

the young schoolmaster whom he had trained, always appeared glad to see

Mr. Rosso, and even asked him occasionally to address the children,

which he always took care to do so as to convey to them some useful

information, or moral impression, which Protestant and Catholic would

equally allow to be good. Thus, as the parties concerned wrought their

benevolent work without jostling or jarring, it mattered little what any

one else had to say about it. When importuned upon the subject, Mr.

Rosso endeavoured to appease the inquirer by an acknowledgment that he

might have found some difficulty if Protestant children had been brought

to learn with Catholics, within so small a space, and with so few

resources in the way of instruction; but he never could admit the doubt

of its being right to supply a Catholic education to a purely Catholic

population.

It was a much easier matter to the neighbouring cottiers to spare their

children to the school, than it would have been if they had enjoyed a

more prosperous condition. An English labourer employs his boys and

girls as soon as they are strong enough for work; or, at least, has the

excuse that he may do so: but an Irish cottier finds his business

finished when he has dug and planted his potato-field, and lounges about

till harvest; or, if he hires himself out to labour, does not find out

that there is anything for his girl to do but to milk the cow and boil

the pot; or for his boy but to feed the pig. This leisure, joined with

the eagerness for learning which subsists among the Irish poor, kept Mr.

Rosso’s school always full, and might, under good management, have

wrought a material improvement upon the rising generation: but it is too

much the way with Irish “scholards” to be always reading, never

learning; to be listening to legends, when they should be gaining

knowledge; and invoking the holy blood of Abel, instead of improving the

powers which God has given to each of them for a far more natural and

effectual dependence. The real advancement of the young folks of the

glen was, therefore, much less than it ought to have been, in return for

the time bestowed; and though some came out ready readers, and most

fluent story-tellers, there was but little knowledge even among the

oldest of them.

Dora Sullivan was one of the most promising of the troop, and the master

praised the prudence of her parents, and her own docility, for coming to

the school as regularly as ever when she was past sixteen. It was feared

that she would disappear when her only brother departed for England, in

hopes of making a little money to bring back to his father; but Dora’s

parents were proud of her, and anxious that the most should be made of

her, and, therefore, spared her from home for the greater part of every

day, though she was now like an only child to them. There was another

reason for their not grudging her absence, which was, that Dan Mahony,

who lived in the next cabin, and had frequent access to Dora’s society,

from being the son of her father’s partner in his lease, had been long

in love with Dora, and would have married her out of hand, if he had had

so much as half an acre of ground to marry upon. All parties approved of

the match; but would not hear of its taking place till Dan had a roof of

his own to lodge a wife under, and did what they could to separate the

young folks, by keeping Dora at school, and encouraging Dan to go and

seek his fortune at a distance for a while; which the young man, after

much murmuring, consented to do, upon a promise from both fathers that

they would abstain from quarrelling about their partnership, or anything

else, during his absence: a promise which they afterwards declared it

was rash to have given, and next to impossible to observe. They

contrived, however, to keep within the terms of their vow, by venting

their wrath, in all difficulties, upon the third partner in their lease,

Tim Blayney, who made an opportunity to elope before rent-day came

round, leaving nothing but an empty cabin and a patch of exhausted soil

for his creditors to wreak their vengeance on.

These partnership tenancies were almost universal in the district. In

one or two cases there were as many as fourteen or sixteen tenants

associated in one lease: in which case the disputes respecting the

division of their little meadows, or the payment of dues, became so

virulent, that the agent could get no rest from squabbles and complaints

in his occasional visits; and the middlemen, to whom the rent was paid,

adopted the practice of getting it as they could, without waiting for

the decision of opposing claims, or regarding the protests of those

whose property they seized. Sullivan might think himself fortunate in

having no more than two partners, since he could not be made to pay more

than three times his share of rent; and being under vow not to quarrel

with one partner, and the other being beyond the reach of his ears and

tongue, he was in an enviable situation compared with many of his

neighbours. As to the middlemen who were over them, indeed, there was

little to choose among them. All pleaded alike that they had their rents

to pay to other middlemen, or to the landlord; all were too busy to

hearken to excuses,—too determined to be diverted from seizures,—too

much accustomed to their business to regard appeals to their justice or

their compassion. They were not all, or on all occasions, equally

pressing as to time. Their urgency about their dues depended somewhat

upon their own resources, and much on those of the people under them. If

they could afford to wait, and their debtors were likely not to be

totally destitute sometime hence, the middlemen mercifully consented to

wait, for certain considerations, and with the prospect of extorting

rich interest upon the payment thus delayed. The middleman, Teale, to

whom Sullivan, Mahony, and Blayney paid their rents, was one of this

merciful class.

When Dora came home from the school one fine afternoon, she perceived

from a distance, that Mr. Teale’s horse was standing within the

inclosure, and grazing the roof of her father’s cabin. Her approach was

seen by Teale from the door, for there was never a window in the place.

His humour being propitiatory this day, he assailed Sullivan’s weak

side:—

“Here she comes,—the pretty creature she is, that Dora of yours.”

“She’s good, let alone her being pretty; and ’tis she will write the

note and sign it all the same as me. Here, Dora, my darling, hold the

pen and write as you’re bid, and show what a scholard Father Glenny has

made of you.”

Dora, who was remarkably quiet and thoughtful for her years, and suited

her deportment to the gravity of her mind, did not quicken her

movements, but prepared to obey her father’s request. She slipped down

the petticoat tail which she had worn as a hood, gave the pig a gentle

rebuke with her bare foot, which sent him out at the door, and room

being thus found to turn about in, she made a table of her mother’s low

stool, took the paper Mr. Teale offered, dipped her pen in his inkhorn,

and waited for directions.

“You have only to sign, you see,” said Mr. Teale, “‘Dora Sullivan, for

John Sullivan,’ that’s all.”

“Hold your whisht,” cried the father: “you have had your time to write

promises for me, Mr. Teale; but I’ve a scholard now of my own kin, and

no occasion to be taken in with a scrap, when I don’t know what’s in it.

So let Dora write after your words, Mr. Teale.”

“Pho, pho, Sullivan;—for what and for why do you misdoubt me this day?

Miss Dora will be more polite—and I so pressed for time.”

Dora’s politeness, however, disposed her to do as her father desired,

and did not prevent her doing more. She wrote to Teale’s dictation; and,

before signing, looked up at her father, and asked if it was meant that

he should promise to pay, both for himself and partners, all that should

be in arrears, as well as all presently due (including the interest of

the arrears), immediately after harvest, under penalty of seizure.

“I’m not clear of the meaning of it all, but I’m thinking it is much to

pay, and more than we have to pay with, father; that’s all.”

“Be easy, Miss Dora, since it comes out of your own mouth that the

meaning is not clear. Only sign, my jewel; that’s what is still to be

done.”

“But, father——”

“Quiet, my darling of the world, quiet! for what should I do? Here’s

Blayney, the scatterbrain! gone, the devil knows where, and left not a

rag behind him; and Mahony has left the whole to me, entirely, the

ruffian. And you wouldn’t have the beasts driven away, Dora, and we left

without a sup to sleep upon—you wouldn’t, Dora?”

“Come, sign, my jewel,” said Teale, “and up with your pail to be milking

the creatures, Dora, and that’s better than seeing them lifted to the

pound.”

Dora still balanced the pen, vainly wishing that Dan was at hand to

fulfil his father’s part of the contract. Sullivan urged her to finish.

She begged to read it over once more aloud, and at the end asked if

there was no way of making such an agreement as many made, that certain

kinds of produce should constitute the rent, while the family lived as

they could upon the rest, and so have nothing to do with coin, which she

simply supposed was the cause of all the misery in the world. Some

middlemen, she knew, took butter and pigs for the rent, and oats where

there were any, and then there was no trouble about money.

“With your leave, Miss Dora, we’ll hear what the priest has to say about

that another time; for I suppose what you say is all one as listening to

him; and very natural: but I must be going, my jewel; so give me my

scrap, and no more words.”

As there was no help for it, Dora signed, and then saw the pen put into

her father’s hand, that he might make his mark, without which Mr. Teale

would not allow the business to be finished. She did not smile, as her

mother did, at Sullivan’s joke about a raking fellow, like him, sitting

down with a pen, like a priest or one of the priest’s scholards. When

the middleman was gone, and her father laughed at the easiness of

putting a man off with a scrap of paper instead of the rent, she took up

her pail to go and milk her lean kine.

“Off with you, honey, and leave your sighs behind you,” said her mother.

“If I had begun as early as you, sighing and sighing, there would have

been little breath left in my body by this. To-morrow or next day will

do for care, honey. Go to your milking to-day, anyhow.”

“By dad, honey, your mother known more trouble and sorrow by your time

nor you, by reason she was my wife, and had babbies to lose in the

fever. I would have dried up her tears in a hurry if she had had no more

to bestow them on nor you; and so will Dan, by dad, if you’ve no better

a welcome for him.”

Dora smiled, and went about her dairy affairs, her father following to

help, in case the kine wanted lifting; that is, in case they should be

too weak from starvation to rise up at bidding to be milked. The poor

animals being fairly set upon their legs, without much fear of falling,

Sullivan directed his steps towards the last bush which was left in his

field, and cut it down for fuel, not having turf enough dried to boil

the pot this evening.

Sullivan was not very fond of looking about him on his little farm, or

of observing the portions of his partners. It was hard to say which was

in the worst condition, or which might have been in the best if properly

cultivated. Their nearness to the coast put them in the way of manure;

such part of the soil as was dry might have been made into fine grazing

land by the frequent rains which fell in that district, or have answered

for the growth of various crops in rotation; and such as was wet might

have been improved, to almost any extent, by the limestone from the

neighbourhood, or by fine sand from the beach. Instead of laying plans

with prudence for their common advantage, however, and prosecuting them

in harmony, the three partners made choice each of what his land should

produce, and neither varied his crop from first to last. Their only

agreement was to divide their portions by ditches, pronouncing a stone

fence a trouble not to be thought of, turf banks a botheration, and a

ditch the most “asy and nate to the hand.” This done, Mahony sowed

barley every year, and every year less and less came up; and that which

did make a shift to grow yielded less and less meal, till he began to

wonder what ailed the crop that it had come down from being food for

man, to be nothing better than pig’s meat. Blayney tried his hand at oat

culture with no better success than his neighbour, the produce being

such as many a horse on the London road would look upon with disdain.

Sullivan grew potatoes, as we have seen. While the land was in good

heart, that is, for a season or two from the commencement of his lease,

he had grown apple potatoes; but when the soil became exhausted, he

could raise only an inferior kind, which is far more fit for cattle than

for men, and on which he and his family could not have subsisted, if it

were not for the milk with which they varied their meals. Sullivan’s

acre and half did not yield now more than eleven hundred stone; and as

the consumption amounted to more than four stone a-day, at fourteen

pounds to the stone,—a very moderate allowance for three hearty

people,—there was no chance of paying the rent out of the crop, even if

Sullivan had been answerable for nobody’s dues but his own. He depended

upon his live stock to clear him with the middlemen; or, rather, he

depended upon nothing, but made a shift, when the time came near, to

sell and raise the money somehow; and when that could not be done, he

deferred the evil day, by giving his note of hand, as we have seen. Half

these difficulties might have been avoided, if no one had stood between

Sullivan and his landlord; and the other half, if he had known how to

make the best of his own resources. In the first place, Mr. Tracey would

never have thought of asking such a rent as eight pounds per acre for

such land; and, in the next place, he would have been so far considerate

as to encourage Sullivan to improve the land; whereas the middleman

under whom Mr. Teale held the place, paid the landlord a moderate rent,

and made his profit out of the higher rent he asked of Mr. Teale, who,

in his turn, did the same by Sullivan and his partners: so that the

poorest tenant paid the most, and the landlord got the least; or, to put

the matter in another light, the little farm was expected to support

three families of tenants, and to pay rent to three landlords. Again:

two of these landlords, having only a temporary interest in the place,

cared only for getting as much out of it as they could while connected

with it, and had no view to its improvement, or regard for its permanent

value. This ruinous system has received a check by the operation of the

Subletting Act; but not before it has inflicted severe injuries on the

proprietors of the soil, and never-to-be-forgotten hardships on their

tenantry.

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CHAPTER II.

IRISH LIABILITIES.

Dan Mahony being fairly out of the way, Dora’s parents agreed to her

earnest request, countenanced by Father Glenny, that she might leave

school, and try to earn somewhat wherewith to help the rent. Dora now

sat at her spinning-wheel almost the whole day; and her mother doing the

same, a respectable addition was made by them to the few shillings

Sullivan had been able to muster. The next was a fine potato season

moreover, and Sullivan reasonably reckoned on being able to sell a

considerable portion of the produce of his land, and thus preventing any

addition to the arrears already due, even if he could not discharge some

part of them. The gentle Dora now smiled, instead of sighing, when her

father asked where was the good of “troubling the brain at all at all

about what was to come, when the good and the bad was hid entirely;” and

answered only by a kiss, when he inquired for any good that had come out

of the hitherto grave looks of his “darlin’ o’ the world.”

The rent for the year was made up just in time by the sale of only one

pig; and Mr. Teale was surprised, and looked as if he did not know

whether or not to be pleased, when the sum was forthcoming. He

congratulated Sullivan on having got a solvent partner in Blayney’s

place, and on Dan Mahony having sent his father the means of paying his

share; so that Sullivan was free from all encumbrance but that for which

he had given his note of hand. Dora’s heart leaped within her, while she

listened to the facts, and to her father’s fervent blessing on her

lover, whose heart was evidently still at home, wherever his feet might

be wandering. She did not know,—for her father had actually forgotten to

tell her,—that the tithe was not yet paid, nor had been for two years;

the tithe-proctor having accommodated him by taking his note-of-hand for

the amount, and for various incidental charges. Bitterly did Dora

afterwards grieve that she had been for a while spared this additional

anxiety.

The next time she returned from confession, it was with a light heart

and a tripping step approaching to a dance. Father Glenny had readily

absolved her from the sins of mistrusting heaven in regard of her

father’s rent, and mistrusting a holy and solemn oath in regard of Dan

Mahony, having, in dark hours, been tempted to doubt his remembering the

Glen of the Echoes, and all that was in it; which was a great sin,

inasmuch as Dan had vowed a solemn vow, which heaven would guard, to

look upon himself as a banished wanderer, till she should, face to face,

release him from the oath. Father Glenny not only gave her absolution,

and taught her how to keep the tempter at a distance next time, by

repeating the oath, and recalling the circumstances under which it was

made, but spoke well of Dan, and seemed to think the sooner all doubts

were laid, by their being made man and wife, the better.

Dora immediately began to obey his directions by recalling, during her

walk home, the minutest circumstances connected with the vow. She could

just discern, at the highest point of the rugged mountain-road, the big

stone under which they knelt when she was obliged to leave him to pursue

his way alone: she could mark the very spot where she had given him the

“Poesy of prayers,” and where they had exchanged their crucifixes, and

called six very choice saints to witness the vow. While gazing in this

direction, shading her eyes from the setting sun, she perceived men

driving two cows up this very road, sometimes pulling the poor creatures

by a noose over the obstructions in their way, and sometimes lifting

them up as fast as they fell. Dora’s lightness of heart was gone in a

moment. From the circumstance of there being several men to take charge

of two cows, she was convinced that the cattle had been distrained from

some tenant in the Glen; and she had a misgiving that they might be her

own father’s.

When she came within sight of home, she did not know what to make of the

appearance of things. The cows were not visible; but they were apt to

disappear among the ditches, or behind the cabin. Her father gave tokens

of merriment; but with rather more activity than was natural to him. He

was throwing stones and bits of turf at the pigs in the ditches, so as

to make them run hither and thither, and singing, to drown their

squeaking, in the following strain:—

“You’re welcome to the beasts for sale;

For the devil take me if I go to gaol.

My wife and they riz a mournful lowing,

And they looked jist in my eyes so knowing.

So now keep away, if you plase, that’s all;

And the curse o’ Jasus light on ye all!”

This song, as soon as the words were distinguishable, told a pretty

plain story, and the occupation of Dora’s mother told a yet plainer. She

was breaking up the milk-pails to feed the fire; and, in answer to the

girl’s remonstrance, demanded what was the use of vexing their sight

with what would be tempting them to thirst, and putting them in mind to

curse the “scruff of the earth” that had robbed them of their kine? But

could not the cattle be got back again?—Lord save her! when did she ever

know Mr. Teale give up anything he had clutched? Mr. Teale! he who had

just been paid? Even so. He was behind-hand with his dues, like the

people he scorned beneath his feet; and instead of seizing his car,

horses, or the luxuries of his house, the man who was over him

distrained upon the poor tenants, who had already paid their rents;

while Teale looked on, amused to see the Sullivans and others compelled

to pay rent twice over, while he escaped. The people having, in former

cases, discovered that this monstrous grievance is not known in England,

had, for some time, come to the conclusion that England is favoured by

Government, while there is no justice to be had in Ireland; not being

aware that the law is the same in both countries, and that the exemption

from this fatal liability which English cultivators enjoy, is owing to

the rarity of the practice of subletting in their island.

It soon appeared that Teale was disappointed in the amount of the levy

upon his tenants, since the same men returned early in the morning to

take what else they could get, by virtue of the note-of-hand. The crop,

just ready for gathering in, was dug up and carted away, a small

provision only being left for the immediate wants of the family. The

fowls and pigs disappeared at the same time; and to all the hubbub which

disturbed the morning hours, the deep curses of Sullivan, the angry

screams of his wife, the cackling of the alarmed poultry, the squealing

of the pigs, and the creaking of the crazy cars, there succeeded a hush,

which was only interrupted by the whirring of Dora’s wheel. She had

taken to her spinning, partly to conceal her tears, partly to drown

thoughts which would otherwise have almost distracted her.

The ominous quiet of the cabin did not last long. Sullivan was sitting,

so as to block up the doorway, with his back against the mud-wall; he

was chewing a straw, and looking out vacantly upon his trampled field,

when his wife started up from her seat beside the fire-place, where the

pot of cold potatoes was hanging over an extinguished fire. She greeted

him with a tremendous kick.

“Get out o’ that, you cratur!” cried she. “I’m thinking there’s room and

a plenty beyond there, let alone the styes with not a soul of a pig in

them. Get out with ye!”

“Give over, honey, or it will be the worse for ye,” said Sullivan. “It’s

my own place where I’m lying entirely, and the prospect beyond is not so

pleasing to the eye as it was, honey: that’s all.”

“The more’s the reason you should be bestirring yourself, like me, to

hide what’s left us in the bog.”

“What do you mean, if your soul is not gone astray?” inquired the

husband.

“Work, work! if you’d save a gun, or a bed, or a bottle of spirits from

the proctor. Into the bog with ’em, if you wouldn’t have him down upon

you, hearing, as he will, how little is left to pay the tithe. Leave

off, I tell you,” she shouted to poor Dora; “whisht, and give over with

your whirring and whirring, that wearies the ears of me. Leave off, or

by this and that, I’ll make you sorry.”

Dora did her best to understand the evil to be apprehended, and to guard

against it. She roused her father from his posture of affected ease,

sought out a hiding-place among the rushes in a waste tract, where they

might stow their household goods, and helped to strip the dwelling as

actively as if they had been about to remove to a better abode. While

her father and she were laden with the chest which contained her

mother’s bridal provision of bed-linen, which had thus far been

preserved from forfeiture, a clapping of hands behind them made them

turn and observe a sign that enemies were at hand.

“By the powers, here they come,” cried her father. “Work, work, for the

bare life, my jewel. In with it, and its back we’d be going with as

innocent faces as if we’d been gathering rushes. Here, pull your lap

full.”

Dora could not at first tell whether their movements had been observed.

“God save you, kindly, Mr. Shehan,” said Sullivan to the proctor. “It’s

just in time you’d be come to see the new way of thatching we have got,

and these gentlemen to take a lesson, may be. Dora, my jewel, throw down

the rushes and get some more out of hand.”

“One of my gentlemen shall go with her,” said Shehan. “There are things

among the rushes sometimes, Sullivan, that fill a house as well as

thatch it.”

Dora invited any of the gentlemen to help her, and led the way to a rush

bank, in an opposite direction; but, declining to follow her lead, they

entered the house, and laughed, when they found it completely empty.

“You’re grown mightily afraid of the sky, Sullivan,” observed Shehan,

“since you’d be after mending your thatch, sooner than getting a bed to

lie on, to say nothing of a bit and sup, which I don’t see you have to

be boasting of.”

All Sullivan’s good reasons why he should suddenly mend his thatch with

rushes that lay “convaynient” went for nothing with the proctor, who had

caught a glimpse of the stratagem. The claim for tithes, arrears, and

fees was urged, certain ominous-looking papers produced, and no money

being forthcoming, the goods were found and carried off, even down to

Dora’s wheel, with the flax upon it. The proctor gave no heed to the

despair of the destitute tenants, but rather congratulated himself on

having heard of the former seizures in time to appropriate what

remained.

Of those whom he had left behind, the father lay down once more in the

doorway, declaring himself nigh hand brokenhearted, and melancholy

entirely; his wife went about to interest the neighbours in their

wrongs; and Dora kneeled at her prayers in the darkest corner of the

cabin. After a time, when the twilight began to thicken, her father

started up in great agitation, and dared somebody outside to come in and

see what he could find for rent, or tithes, or tolls, or tax of any

kind. His creditors might come swarming as thick as boys going to a

fair, but they would find nothing, thanks to the proctor: unless they

carried him off bodily, they might go as they came, and he would try

whose head was the hardest before it came to that. Dora perceived that

her father was in too great a passion to listen to one who seemed not to

be a creditor; and she went to the door to interpose. More quick-sighted

than her father, she instantly saw, through the dim light, that it was

Dan; and not even waiting for the assurance of his voice, threw herself

on his neck, while he almost stifled her with caresses.

“Dan, are you come back true? Just speak that word.”

“True as the saints to the blessed, darling of my heart.”

“Then God is merciful to send you now, for we want true friends to raise

us up, stricken as we are to the bare ground.”

“Bare ground, indeed,” cried Dan, entering and looking for a

resting-place, on which to deposit the sobbing and clinging Dora. “They

have used you basely, my heart’s life, but trust to me to make it up in

your own way to each of you. You trust me, Dora, don’t you, as the

priest gave leave?”

Dora silently intimated her trust in her lover’s faith, which it had

never entered her head to doubt—love having thus far been entirely

unconnected in her mind with thoughts of the world’s gear. She wept on

his shoulder, leaving it to her father to tell the story of their

troubles, and only looked up when she heard her mother’s voice

approaching, to ask, with great simplicity, what they were to do next?

“To be married in the morning, if father Glenny was at hand, and

consenting,” her lover replied. He had two guineas in his pocket for the

fees; and then they would be all on a footing, (as he had no more

money,) and must help one another to justice and prosperity as well as

they could. Sullivan interposed a few prudent objections, but soon gave

up when he found his little Dora was against him. The fact was, that her

filial duty, religion, and love, all plied her at once in favour of an

immediate marriage. She had always had a firm faith that Dan could

achieve anything he pleased; a faith which was much confirmed by his

having paid his father’s rent, and saved, moreover, enough for his

marriage fees. It appeared to her that Providence had sent this able

helper in the time of her parents’ need, and that it was not for her to

prevent his lifting them out of poverty as speedily as might be.

Dan told them that there was to be a letting of land in the

neighbourhood, the next day; and that if he was made sure in time of

having Dora for his cabin-keeper, he would bid for an acre or two, and

did not doubt to do as well in the world as his father before him. Of

all this, Dora’s mother, on her return, seemed to have no more doubt

than the rest of the party; and she immediately dismissed all her cares,

except the regret that she could not walk so far as to see her daughter

married. Dan was now requested to name his hour for departure in the

morning, and to go home to his father, who had had but a hasty glimpse

of him on his return. He busied himself in obtaining some clean dry

straw and a rush candle for his poverty-stricken friends, overwhelmed

Dora with caresses, and ran home.

Dora had little imagined, two hours before, with what a light heart she

should lie, this night, on the cold floor of their bare cabin. To have

Dan to lean upon was everything. She could not admit any further fear

for the future. They had only to begin the world again, that was all;

and with the advantage, too, of Dan’s experience and skill in getting

money; which it did not occur to her, might be of no avail, where no

money could be got, or where it passed immediately into the hands of one

tyrannical claimant or another. This ease from apprehension formed the

substratum of her happy thoughts of this night; and it was her filial

piety, only, which made the matter of so much importance to her. For

herself, it was enough that Dan was her own. She had not a wish beyond

what would be bestowed by the priest’s office and blessing, which she

hoped so soon to have obtained.

Father Glenny, though at first surprised at being called on to perform

the marriage ceremony so early in the morning, and before so few

witnesses, and mortified on behalf of the young folks, that the

customary revelry and sanction of numbers must be dispensed with in

their case, had nothing to say against the proceeding. Having

ascertained that the friends of both parties approved, he went on to

exhort the young couple to remember that they were now in the act of

fulfilling a divine command, and to trust for the blessing of God on

their union accordingly. He then performed the ceremony and dismissed

them; the bridegroom having taken care, as a point of honour, that the

priest should not lose much in respect of fees, the amount being

tendered by the parties instead of collected from an assemblage of

guests. Father Glenny did not refuse the offering. He was unwilling to

wound the feelings of the offerers: he was not aware of the extent of

their poverty; and, moreover, considered the fees his due, even more

than a Protestant clergyman would have done in a similar instance,—the

remuneration of the Catholic clergy in Ireland being principally derived

from marriage fees.

The pressure of the times obliged the proceedings of the whole party to

be more businesslike than is at all usual on the day of an Irish

wedding. The bridegroom stayed but to give his Dora into her mother’s

arms, and then set off, accompanied by Sullivan, for the place where two

or three lots of ground were to be let by auction, or, as the phrase

goes, by cant.

They were just in time to take a survey of the lots before bidding.

There was small choice of advantages; for the preceding tenants, knowing

that they need not hope for a renewal, and that the mode of letting by

cant would, in all probability, turn them out of the place, had

exhausted the land to the utmost for the last two or three years. This

measure not only gave them as much as they could obtain for the time,

but afforded a chance of getting the lot back again on cheaper terms.

The excessive competition which is usual on such occasions, however,

made this last hope a very doubtful one. The only thing that was certain

beforehand was, that the affair would prove a very bad bargain to all

parties:—to the landlord, because his land was nearly ruined, and little

rent would, therefore, be paid, however much was promised; to the

successful bidder, because he would be unable to fulfil his absurd

promises about the rent, and be therefore liable to driving, distraint,

or ejectment; and to the unsuccessful bidders, because they had come a

great way, full of hopes and visions of being able to settle on the

land, and must return destitute as they came, and disappointed.

A crowd surrounded the man of power, as soon as he appeared on the

ground. Many an offering had he had that morning of dutiful service, of

overstrained civility, or of something more substantial, from those who

could afford it, with the hope of inclining him to favour their

particular bid. The most diversified claims to a preference were

whispered into his ear, or exhibited before his eyes, wherever he went.

One had picked up the landlord’s heir, when thrown by his pony into a

bog in childhood; another had had the honour of lodging the agent, one

stormy night, among the mountains. One limped ostentatiously before Mr.

Flanagan, to remind him that the lameness happened from one of the

landlord’s fences having fallen upon him, while dozing beneath its

shelter; another, a feeble old man, pleaded a yet unfulfilled promise of

a Mr. Tracey who had been in his grave nearly thirty years.

Mr. Flanagan took no further notice of all this than to bid the people

get out of his way. From many a clutch did he disengage his skirts; on

many a petition, savoured with a scent of potheen, did he turn his back;

many a venerable blue topcoat, and gray cloak, did he elbow from his

side, before he could proceed to business. When once begun, it required

an eye as practised, and an ear as inured, as his, to distinguish that

any business was proceeding, amidst the hubbub of voices, the shoving,

jostling, and scrambling, which took place while the bidding went on.

The confusion fairly baffled some lookers on, who stopped their horses

on the outskirts of the crowd to observe the scene. Mr. Alexander Rosso,

just from college, his brother Henry, and a foreign gentleman, a college

friend of the former, were taking their morning ride, surrounded by

their dogs, when it occurred to Alexander, that this was the occasion on

which to exhibit to his friend the resemblance between the Irish and his

countrymen. He was scarcely aware that the occasion on which the people

were assembled was similar to that which often collects the Italian

peasantry in groups, to contend with equal vehemence for slips of land,

which they hold on the same terms. The Irish cottier is of the same

class with the metayer of Italy; and middlemen are, with few exceptions,

alike all the world over: they are what it is natural to expect men to

be under circumstances of strong temptation to oppression and of

absolute impunity.

The Italian gentleman, after gazing with fixed attention, and an amused

expression of countenance, for some minutes, used an expressive gesture,

to intimate that he could make nothing of it.

“The first lot is disposed of, Henry, is it not?” asked Alexander. “That

half-naked, capering fellow bid highest, I think.”

“Yes,” replied Henry; “and he looks as if he had just had the mines of

Peru given him.”

“He!” exclaimed the foreigner, in astonishment. “And how will he pay?”

“No one will pay all,” replied Henry, laughing. “The agent can only

weigh probabilities; and if he happens to know that that poor fellow has

a little coin hidden somewhere, to help him on for a year or two, he

will stop at his bidding as the highest.”

“But why stop? Is it not the people’s part to stop?”

“We might wait long enough for that,” replied Alexander. “They will bid

against each other till midnight. They will offer a hundred per annum

per acre rather than lose their chance of getting the land. Our people

are very rich in promises.”

“And how much has the ragged man promised?”

“Flanagan!” shouted Henry, above the din, which sank to silence in a

moment, “how much has your first lot brought you?”

“Nine pounds per acre, Sir, and yonder stands the tenant.”

The successful bidder, came forward, smiling and scraping, not a whit

ashamed of the bare knees which had burst through what had once been

breeches, or of the tatters which were bound about his person, in

various directions, by hay-ropes, there being no other way of keeping

them together.

“Ask him,” urged the eager foreigner, “ask him where his pounds are to

come from, and why he wishes to be a farmer.”

“There is most likely a lady in the case,” observed Henry; and then

turning to the man, he inquired whether he had not done a very daring

thing in engaging to pay so high a yearly sum?

“God save your honour kindly, the mother is turned out of her own,

beyond there; and it’s a cabin I’m wishing to give her, old creature as

she is, and a bite and sup with me.”

“And is there nobody else, friend, likely to be your cabin-keeper?”

The man’s countenance fell, and he replied that there was to have been

one last Shrovetide, but that she was forcibly carried off, and married

to another man, before he could overtake her. Henry turned the subject

hastily, shocked at his own curiosity, which had led to such a

disclosure. He asked the man whether he could honestly say that he had a

week’s provision beforehand for his mother and himself? The tenant

laughed and pointed to his new ground, saying that they might glean

potatoes enough among the ridges, after the digging, to keep them for a

few days till they could look about them a bit. His mother moreover had

a cow, and a slip of a pig. He ended by bewitchingly asking for the

“blissen” on his enterprise. The foreigner was amused to observe that in

Ireland a blessing comes out of the pocket instead of the mouth; not

that the verbal blessing is absolutely worthless; but it is considered

merely as an accessory to something more substantial.

The process of giving the blessing quickened the bidding, as it was

feared the gentlemen might leave the ground before the next successful

candidate was ready to pay his smiling service. The lot was awarded to

Dan, who, after tossing up his hat, advanced towards the horsemen,

followed by his father-in-law. They observed to one another that he

looked better qualified than his predecessor to pay rent, his dress

being decent, and his manner betokening more forethought and experience.

“Have you an old mother to find a shelter for, too?” inquired Alexander.

“There’s the mother and the father too that’s to the fore,” replied Dan,

turning to introduce Sullivan.

“And the darling too that’s been his wife almost since the sun rose,”

added Sullivan. “Dan has had the priest’s blessing this morn, and sure

your honours’ won’t be long in following?”

“I would have married in the evening, Dan, if I had been you,” said

Henry. “The land first, and then the girl, is the prudent way, you know.

How would you have managed, if you had had the girl without the land?”

Dan could not pretend to guess what Providence’s other way of providing

for him and Dora would have been; the actual case was as much as any man

had to do with. This reasoning put him in the actual case of receiving a

large blessing from the foreigner, who then rode off with his

companions, notwithstanding the vehement prayers of the crowd that they

would stay till the third and last lot was disposed of. They had neither

time nor further blessing to spare this day. They did not, however,

escape by turning their backs. The third new tenant was posted in the

middle of their road homewards, and on their approach, extended his

arms, as if to embrace the three horses with their riders, praying for

an infinity of blessings on their merciful and tender and bountiful

hearts, and expressing his expectation that he should begin the world

with a trifle from their honours, like Pat and Dan.

“See what you have done, Henry,” said his brother. “We shall be expected

to pay tribute, henceforward, to every new tenant, as often as a cant

takes place within twenty miles.”

Henry set himself seriously to explain that their bounty of this day was

purely accidental, and that none of the party meant to give again on a

similar occasion. He would not dismiss the present applicant without a

gift, since his companions had had one; but he gave him less than the

others, in order to enforce what he had said. The man followed for some

way, keeping close in their rear in hope of their relenting, and then

retired to the road side, grumbling as if defrauded of a right.

“It is the most difficult thing in the world,” observed Henry, “to deal

with these people; they have such strange notions of _right_. Every

favour is immediately considered as a precedent to be for ever acted

upon: every change in our methods of doing kindness is looked upon as

caprice, and every suspension of a gratuity as an injury.”

“The same is the case in all regions,” observed the foreigner, “where

the people have other dependence than on themselves. If it is remarkable

in Ireland and in Italy, it is because the people of these unhappy

countries have been long educated by political injury to servile

dependence. It is for you to rectify their notions of _right_.”

“How must we do so?”

“You must make their little possessions secure, and also fortify their

labours with the moral certainty of a due reward. While this is being

done,—and it will be long in the doing,—you must vary your modes of

charity perpetually, in testimony of its being optional: and O, above

all things, save your poor from the blight of a legal charity! Save them

from the delusion that they have a right, which, among a reckless

people, would presently absorb all other rights, making cottiers of your

middlemen, and beggars of your landlords, and converting this fertile

region into a wilderness, which shall but echo the wild cry of famine.”

---------------------

CHAPTER III.

IRISH ADVENTURE.

The accidental bounty of the Mr. Rossos enabled Dan to furnish himself

with the few tools he needed to begin his tillage, and his wife with a

wheel and a small stock of flax. As for clothes, they were obliged to

wear, day and night, those they had on, having neither a change for the

day, nor a bed which might supersede the use of them at night. This was

thought no great hardship by any of the family, for it was a very common

one. Many of their neighbours never attempted to undress after their

garments had passed a certain point of wear. The most tidy, who really

did patch their clothes very patiently while the patches would hold

together, were for the most part content, after that time, to tie them

on till they dropped away in fragments. Their reason for not undressing

was one which their reproving superiors could not gainsay;—that, once

off, no power on earth could get the garments on again. This was nearly

the condition now of Sullivan’s clothing and that of his wife; but they

could scarcely trouble themselves to think of such a trifle in the midst

of the affairs they were undertaking. New life and spirit had been given

them by the timely support yielded by their connexion with Dan; and they

all, under his direction, gave full play to the spirit of enterprise

which ever distinguishes the Irish when in prospect of an equitable

recompense of their exertions. Sullivan might now be seen toiling as a

labourer under his son-in-law, thatching the cabin-roof (now in earnest)

with rushes from the sandbanks, or bringing sand from the beach to work

into the boggy soil of the potato-field, or cutting turf for fuel, or

even carrying loads of it on his back for sale. The first money thus

gained went to hire a pack-horse from one of Mr. Rosso’s tenants, for

the carrying out a further supply of turf; and this answered so well,

that Dan finished by selling their own store, and making fuel for home

consumption, after the manner of the Irish peasantry, when the turf in

the neighbourhood is exhausted; that is, by scraping up what is left in

the state of mire, and baking and shaping it with the hand till it

becomes dry enough to be combustible. Their food was but poor as to

quantity and quality, till Dan thought himself justified in adding a

quarter of a cow to his establishment; from which time, potatoes and

milk, milk and potatoes, were thought as good a provision as they had a

right to look for.

When that which is usually the idle season came round, namely, the weeks

which succeed the potato-sowing, when nothing more is to be done to the

crop, Dan proposed a grand scheme to his father-in-law,—nothing less

than to enlarge their cabin by adding a room at the end. Sullivan

smacked his lips, and stretched himself, somewhat mortified to have his

expected period of rest broken in upon by new toils: but, remembering

that the summer nights were, indeed, somewhat oppressive to four people

sleeping within a space of twelve feet by eight, with no air-hole but

the door; and looking forward, moreover, to the inconveniences of Dora’s

confinement in such a place, he gave a groaning assent to the

undertaking, and went through his part of it with a tolerable grace. He

cursed, for his own sake, however proud for his daughter’s, the grand

notions which Dan seemed to have about a cabin, making the new apartment

half as long again as the old one, and leaving space in the mud wall for

a window. When finished, however, all was right in his eyes, and he did

not sigh, as did the young folks, for yet more comforts; if indeed, they

were not rather necessaries. Dora wished for a bed for her mother, who

was growing more and more weakly, and got little rest on her bundle of

straw. Dan wished for the same comfort for Dora, but was obliged at

present to content himself with looking forward to the time when they

might increase their stock of fowls, and obtain feathers enough from

them, to sew up in a sack, and make a bed of. He had a little money by

him, and was often tempted to spend it in Dora’s behalf; but they both

agreed that the first necessity was, to keep out of the clutches of the

agent and the tithe proctor. Of paying the whole rent, there was but

little chance; but as they had no partners, and as nobody near was

likely to pay better than themselves, they hoped to satisfy the agent

with such a proportion as might fairly average what he was in the habit

of receiving in lieu of the nominal rent. On the whole, they considered

themselves going on “fair and easy, and prosperous entirely.”

They had been nearly a year in their abode, the rent-day was coming

round, and many jokes were continually suggested by that fruitful topic,

when Father Glenny looked in upon them, in the course of his customary

circuit among his people. Dora came curtseying to the door to invite him

to repose himself on the turf seat within; her mother rose feebly to pay

her reverence as he entered, and hoped he would be pleased to remain

till her husband and Dan returned; the one being at work some way off,

and the other having business to settle with the agent. The priest, who

looked remarkably grave, assured her he was in no hurry, and examined

their countenances as if to discover whether they had any thing

particular to communicate. As they waited, “mannerly” for him to

introduce his own topics, he began by remarking on the improvements in

the place, and enquiring into the worldly condition of its inhabitants.

His countenance brightened as he listened to their cheerful reports of

their prospects, but he still seemed uneasy till he had put one

question. Had Dan taken care to secure the lease? he asked; adding that

this was a point on which many tenants were unaccountably and

disastrously careless. They would put off signing and securing for

months, if not years, after taking possession, and many were the cases

in which he had known them rue their procrastination. Dora replied with

a smile, that she hoped she might, by this time, say that the lease was

in her husband’s pocket; it had been drawn up, almost ever since they

settled in this place, but, for some reason or another, never signed

till now, such being her husband’s business with the agent this morning,

and also to pay the first year’s rent. At this moment, Sullivan burst

in, exclaiming, “Lord save us! your reverence, what can have fallen out

now? Here’s Dan coming up the glen, raving like mad, and my own eyes

seen him hold up his fist at the agent; and they, as quiet as lambs

together till now.”

Dora was flying out to meet her husband, when the priest laid his hand

on her arm.

“Stop, my daughter, and listen to me,” he said. “I know it all. For your

husband’s sake hear it from me, that you may not add to his passion.

Remember your vow of trust, daughter, and renew it now, in your time of

need.”

Dora sat down trembling, beseeching, by her looks, that she might hear

the truth at once. Father Glenny related that Mr. Tracey had written to

his agent to say, that it was evident to him that his property had been

much injured, and the condition of his tenantry no less so, by the

subdivision of land having been encouraged to too great an extent: that

it was his pleasure that the reverse process of consolidation should

immediately begin; and that for this purpose, no new leases of small

portions of land should be given, and no partnership tenancies allowed

henceforward; his intention being, that instead of a small plot of

ground supporting many holders, one substantial holder should unite

several small plots of ground into a respectably-sized farm. The zealous

agent, Father Glenny went on to say, had looked round him to see how

many tenants he could eject, and had put Dan and his family down in his

list; the unfortunate delay in signing the lease having put their little

possession into his power. When Dora had made sure that this was all,

she turned to her father who was standing against the wall, tattooing

with his brogues upon the threshold. She might have thought that he did

not hear the news, but that he was humming in an under voice the tune to

which he had sung, on a somewhat similar occasion, the burden—

“The curse o’ Jasus light on ye all!”

His old wife not daring to give vent to her anger in the presence of the

priest, had hooded her head with her petticoat tail, and ceased her

spinning. Father Glenny was beginning a strain of consolation when

Sullivan cried,

“O murther, Dora, my darling, what a sight it is to see Dan raging like

the sea itself! King of Glory! he is mad entirely.”

The priest placed himself by the threshold, so as to be the first to

meet the unhappy man. At the sight of the black coat, the oaths and

threats were silenced; and presently the knit brow relaxed, the fierce

eye was tamed before Father Glenny’s mild, serious gaze. Before any

words were exchanged, Dora drew her husband in with a smile, and asked

him how they were worse off now than on their wedding morning, and where

was the wonder of young and poor people like themselves having to go

forth again to seek a home? She did not doubt they should again find

one, and have a warm corner moreover for her father when he should be

past his work.

Her husband impatiently stopped her, saying that there were no more

homes to be had for poor tenants, and that if she wanted a warm corner,

she must seek it among the beggar’s haunts in the towns,—warm enough,

with seven families in a cellar; a comfortable place truly, for her babe

to be born in, and her parents to end their days in: and disregarding

the priest’s presence, he prayed for confusion on every mother’s son of

the Traceys from the first that had gone before, to the last that should

come after. This brought Father Glenny to interpose.

“Peace, my son!” he said. “It is blasphemy to curse man for the

judgments of heaven.”

He was going on, but Dan interrupted him to say that he was not thinking

of heaven at all in the matter. What he cursed was the clearing of the

estate, and the cruelty of those who would turn so many out of house and

home.—Father Glenny still insisted that this was heaven’s work, since

the Traceys were no Protestants, no strangers in the land, but members

of the true church, ancient possessors of the soil, only kept at a

distance by being deprived of their political rights, and as anxious as

gentry should be, for the prosperity of their people. He mentioned that

Mr. Tracey, while giving the fatal order, had mentioned the good of the

tenantry as one of the motives thereto. It was clear to him that good

would arise out of this measure, since poverty had increased in

proportion to the subdivision of the land; and the distress which must

prevail in the mean time, should be patiently borne as the judgment of

heaven on the sins of the poor, and on the slowness of the rich to

divide their substance with the needy.—Dora, who was accustomed to

receive with reverence whatever her priest let fall, enquired humbly

whether he would have them go and ask assistance from Mr. Rosso, he

being the only person in their neighbourhood who had substance to divide

with the needy. Father Glenny shook his head, sighed, and advised them

to remain where they were, till he should have considered their case and

that of some of their neighbours, who were suffering under similar

calamity. On inquiring whether they had any savings, Dora joyfully

mentioned the rent, naturally supposing that Dan would not part with it

when he found how matters stood; but her countenance fell when she

extracted from her now moody husband the fact that the agent had

received him with a smiling countenance, requested him to count down the

money while he prepared his pen and ink, signed to his assistant to

sweep off the gold, silver, and copper into a drawer and turn the key,

and then, and not before, explained the necessity he was under, of

refusing to fulfil his engagement, scoring the lease from corner to

corner with his newly-mended pen as he spoke, and bidding the insulted

Dan move aside to make way for his betters, who were fortunate enough

not to have put off signing and sealing.

“Then we have nothing left,” said Dora calmly.

“Murther!” cried her father, “and we might have had an elegant bed to

have carried away on the shoulders of us, instead of a coat that has

nothing left but the sleeves, by reason of their having never been used.

And much besides is it we might have had if you had let us be

comfortable, Dan, and leave the rent to take care of itself in peace. By

dad, we may very well pass for beggars without any pretending.”

His son-in-law looked fiercely at him, and the priest interposed to show

that it was all right. All were to have their dues, and Mr. Tracey

should, therefore, receive his rent; for paying which honestly, Dan

might fully trust he should never suffer. After more words of

exhortation and comfort, the priest gave Dora a small present of money,

and expressed his hope of seeing them all at mass in the morning, after

which he would converse further with them on their affairs.

Dan stood watching him from the door, after receiving his blessing with

a dubious expression of countenance. Dora had sunk down at her mother’s

feet, hiding her face in her lap, when she heard her husband say,

“Praise to the powers, he’s out of sight! Up with you, you women, and

all ready for nightfall.”

To the question of all three, what he meant to do? Dan replied, by

giving orders, in a tone which none dared disobey. He made Sullivan take

a spade and dig up, with all his might, potatoes which were not yet fit

for cropping. Dora found up sacks and turf-panniers, and Dan proceeded,

as soon as twilight came on, to impress into his temporary service a

horse which grazed in the neighbourhood. On this animal he packed the

panniers, so as to afford a seat between them, and then commanded the

trembling Dora to mount by his assistance. She clasped her hands,

crying,

“O, Dan! where will you be for taking us in the dark night? You are over

full of haste, I’m thinking, Dan.”

His only reply was to lift her upon the horse.

“My mother!” cried Dora, weeping. “You will not leave her alone; and if

my father stays without us, depend on it he will call in the

neighbours.”

Dan lifted her down again, went for the old woman (who had seemed

stupified ever since the news came), placed her between the panniers,

gruffly desired Dora to remain behind till her turn came, and began to

lead the horse up the hill which stretched towards the sea-shore. Dora

followed, however, at some distance, determined to see whither her

mother was to be conducted. The horse was a grey one, which enabled her

to keep within sight, and out of hearing, amidst the increasing

darkness. It was a dreary walk, over four or five miles of boggy ground;

and many times would she have called out for her husband’s help, if she

had not feared his present mood more than the stormy sky above and the

treacherous soil beneath. Gusts of wind blew from the sea, piercing her

with cold through her scanty raiment. Drenching showers were dashed in

her face, blinding her so effectually for many minutes together, that

she would have lost the track and have sunk yet deeper than she did in

the bog, if the same cause had not obliged those whom she followed to

stop also, and turn their backs for awhile to the storm. The fitful gale

brought to her the feeble wailings of the old woman, and the growlings

of her impatient husband, who cursed heaven, earth, and hell, at every

impediment to their progress. During one of their pauses on a ridge,

over which the roaring of the sea rose more distinctly to their ears,

Dora came closer upon them than she intended. The horse started, and his

snort seemed to be answered from a distance by a cry. The old woman saw

something waving near her, and screamed, and Dan himself shook with

superstitious terror at the very moment that he swore another oath at

those who were scared when the echoes were up and awake on a stormy

night.

“The echoes _are_ up and awake,” said Dora, venturing round to her

husband’s side. “Take care, Dan, that they repeat nothing you would not

have heaven hear.”

As she expected, his anger was now turned on her, for risking her own

life and her child’s by so perilous a walk. She made no reply, but held

by his arm till they arrived at their destination, thankful that he had

slackened his pace and moderated his wrath somewhat, as if in

consideration for her. They stopped on the extreme verge of the cliff

when Dan desired his wife to hold the horse while he carried her mother

home. She was not left for many minutes to conjecture what this home

could be. Her husband led her down to a doorless and half-unroofed

cabin, placed just so far below the verge of the cliff as to be unseen

from the land. Having lodged both the women under shelter, Dan tried to

strike a light with a flint and steel he had brought with him; but as

fast as the little rush candle was lit, it blew out again, there being

no corner of the hovel free from draughts. There was nothing for it but

to abide in wet, cold, and darkness, till dawn. The horse being

unloaded, Dan mounted, and bidding the women expect Sullivan and himself

before morning, set off again across the bog. Three hours afterwards

they appeared with another horse, and a heavier load; and, to Dora’s

disappointment, her husband again left her, not saying this time when he

should return. Sullivan expressed his belief that Dan’s purpose was to

spoil the place as much as possible before morning, and then to hide

himself for a time in some such convenient sort of place as he hinted he

had thoughts of betaking himself to the next day. No inquiries could get

out of him what sort of place that was.

Dora spent the rest of the night in mounting from the hut to the cliff,

and descending from the cliff to the hut, trying to comfort her mother

meanwhile, who lay moaning and peevishly complaining of manifold evils

that it was impossible to remedy. Towards morning, it startled Dora on

her watch to perceive a bright light burning in the direction of their

late abode. She called Sullivan to look at it, who forthwith began to

wave his hat, crying,

“Hilloo, hilloo! Dan is the boy in the world to deal with Flanagan.

Hilloo! Dan, my darling, you’ve finished the job out of hand! ’Twill be

as good as a year’s rent to see the agent overlook the place, let alone

the tenant. It’s burning—the cabin is, my jewel, and the turf-stack

beside it; and it warms my heart at this distance!”

“And Dan—where is Dan, father?”

“O, the cratur, he’d just stop up the drain, and cut the pig’s throat,

and throw him into the bog, and see that everything that he couldn’t

bring with him is put in the way of the fire; and then he would set it

alight, and creep off some roundabout way to us here.”

This was exactly what took place: and the device was so much to the

taste of most of the ejected tenants, that the example was followed to a

great extent before a sufficient force could be summoned to check this

destruction of property. For the next three nights, fires were visible

here and there in the dark and dreary glen. As fast as the agent and his

body-guard galloped from one point of watch to another, a blaze arose in

their rear; and as soon as they arrived at the scene of destruction, the

perpetrators had vanished, and it was too late to do any good. A mocking

laugh came, from time to time, out of the darkness which surrounded the

horsemen, in the intervals of the conflagrations; but this always

happened on spots where the ground on either side the road was not of a

kind to be attempted on horseback. In the morning, slain pigs, not in

condition to be made food of, were found scattered on the road; houghed

horses lay groaning about the fields; and many a poor cow was burned in

its shed. The agent was driven half frantic by these insults and

injuries. He sent messenger after messenger for soldiers, called on Mr.

Rosso, his sons, and tenants for assistance; and besides taking these

necessary measures of defence, pointed out every cottier already

ejected, or about to be so, as a criminal; exasperated every man he met

by his insults; and rode against the women and overthrew the children as

often as he passed a party of homeless wanderers, going they cared not

whither, and to be kept alive they knew not how. It appeared so clear to

the young Rossos that Flanagan was endangering his own life, and

aggravating the evils of the time, by awakening the revengeful passions

of the people, that one or other of them kept continually beside him, in

order, by their presence, to impose a restraint upon him, and, by their

mediation, to sooth the wounds he inflicted. They well knew that, by

thus associating themselves with so obnoxious a person, they ran the

risk of being hated by the people; but this risk they had courage to

brave for a time in a good cause.

Alexander had taken his turn one day, when he rode up to join his father

and brother, who had compassed a circuit of observation in a different

direction, and were now returning home to refresh themselves before

beginning their evening watch.

“Father,” said Alexander, “do you mean to forbid your tenants to receive

any of these ejected cottagers?”

“Certainly not: it is no affair of mine.”

“So I thought; but Flanagan has not only been routing out some poor

creatures from a barn of one of Tracey’s tenants, but has taken upon him

to declare that they must remove themselves out of the district, as they

would be harboured neither by you nor any of the proprietors in it.”

“What business has the fellow to answer for anybody but himself?” said

Mr. Rosso. “However, the poor people know more of the matter than he

does. They know that I am harbouring many,—as many, alas! as I can

afford to relieve. Would this were all over, boys! Every case I hear of

seems a harder one than the last; and it breaks one’s heart to leave

them to take their chance. See, from this very point, what melancholy

groups of them:—aged parents, or helpless children, or weakly women in

each, to be a burden upon the spirit-broken cottager!”

“Where will they go? What will become of them, father?”

“The greater part will crowd into the towns, and herd by hundreds under

the same roof, till the fever sweeps half of them away. Others will

stroll the country as beggars; and others will live by plunder. The most

fortunate of them will be those who will beg enough in crossing the

island to pay their way over the sea in search of English wages. The

noblest in their natures, the brave and high-spirited, will become

whiteboys, and die amidst acts of outrage, or on the gibbet. So much for

that policy of landlords, by which they first increase the numbers of

their tenantry, in order, by force of competition, to let their land

high; and then, finding that they have gone too far, take a fit of

consolidation, and make no provision for the crowd they called up around

them, and now deprive of the means of subsistence. What think you of

such policy, Henry?”

“I was just thinking, Sir, that it is rather surprising to me that you

lift up your voice, on all occasions, against establishing poor-laws in

Ireland, while you have such scenes as these before your eyes.”

“While that question is pending, Sir,” said Alexander,—“and it is a

question which will not be speedily settled, and which, if settled in

the affirmative, will bring tedious arrangements after it,—in the

meanwhile, is not Tracey bound, by every merciful consideration, to give

his ejected tenants dwellings elsewhere? Ought not each one of them now

to have a slip of land on yonder mountain-side, and wherewith to build

himself a cabin?”

“That would afford no present relief,” observed Henry. “Besides having

to build their cabins, the people must drain and manure their ground by

a process of many months, before it will yield them the food they are

this day in want of.”

“Even supposing these new lots to be prepared before the ejectment was

served,” said Mr. Rosso, “the plan would be a bad one. It would secure a

future repetition of precisely the same evils we are deploring to-day.

Bad cultivation and over-population, through the too extensive

subdivision of land, are our grievances; and to remedy them, Alexander,

you would begin afresh to divide and subdivide, and encourage the

increase of numbers as before. This seems to me scarcely reasonable.”

“But the poor-laws we were talking of, Sir,” interrupted Henry; “do tell

me how you can resist pleading for them. Tell me, if you please, that

these poor people have been idle and improvident—tell me that they have

brought families into the world without a prospect of maintaining them;

but tell me whether such destitution as theirs is not a dreadful

punishment for what are, after all, more faults than crimes. Look, too,

at the number of innocent persons that suffer: the old, who lie down to

die by the wayside after a life of toil; the infants, who expire of

hunger on their mothers’ breasts; the sickly, who, instead of being

tended by careful hands, are shrinking and shivering in the wet and

cold;—look at these wretches, in contrast with Tracey, living in luxury

abroad, on funds wrung from the misery of his tenantry....”

“Tracey is a benevolent man,” interrupted Alexander; “he may be mistaken

in the way in which he sets about improving the condition of his

tenantry, and he may have chosen his agent badly; but he is far from

being a hard-hearted man.”

“True,” replied Henry, “and all this makes for my argument. Levy a rate

upon him, and he will no longer be insensible to what passes at home;

the burden of relieving distress will no longer fall wholly upon the

charitable,—upon you, father, and your kindhearted tenants, who are

giving up their barns for lodging, and rood after rood of their

potato-grounds, for food for the destitute. O, father, when I see these

things,—the calamity of the oppressed, the insensibility of the

oppressor, the liabilities of the charitable, the exemption of the

selfish and the avaricious, I cannot but cry out for the interposition

of the strong arm of the law to rectify these monstrous abuses, by

making charity compulsory.”

“If the law could rectify these abuses, Henry, I would cry out with as

loud a voice as you. It is because I am convinced that a legal charity

would only aggravate them, that I advocate other methods of

rectification. We all know that a permanent state of comfort depends on

character. Do we not?”

“Certainly: we might give and give for ever to a set of depraved

paupers, without any better result than impoverishing ourselves.”

“True. Well; the mistake seems to me to lie in supposing that, as

character and comfort are connected, we must produce character by giving

comfort; whereas this is beginning at the wrong end; and the results

have always been the direct reverse of what was expected. We must begin

at the other end....”

“But, my dear father, how long it must be before education can work....”

“Remember, Henry, there is another kind of education always going

forwards, besides that of our reading and writing schools—the education

of circumstances. By our present institutions, we educate our peasantry

to indolence and improvidence; and by calling in poor-laws, we should

only be appointing an additional teacher to enforce the same bad

lessons. Instead of this, I would fain have institutions which should

stimulate, instead of superseding industry,—which should cherish,

instead of extinguishing true charity,—and ensure its due reward to

prudence, instead of offering a premium to improvidence.”

“I know the evils you speak of have grown out of the English pauper

system; but must they, therefore, be inherent in every system of legal

charity?”

“They must; because the supposition of a _right_ to assistance is

involved in the very notion of a legal provision; and herein lies the

mischief. You will never improve character (which is the same as

improving the external condition), while you separate character and its

consequences,—while a right to support is accorded to any man, whether

his conduct be wise or foolish, correct or profligate. Lay hold of a

child, teach him effectually that industry and prudence are the means of

comfort, and you put comfort within his reach. Take the profligate, or

the reckless man, in his middle age, give him the means of comfort, and

you will not give him character; he will presently be as poor as ever,

and the more reckless for having received arbitrary assistance.”

“The more arbitrary charity there is, the less natural will there be,”

said Alexander. “In England, our peasantry are held in respect for their

filial duty and neighbourly kindness;—too little known there, alas!

except in the remote districts where the poor-laws have not yet shed

their blight over the growth of kindly sympathies. Give us poor-laws,

and here, too, the aged will be committed to the cold care of strangers,

orphans will be without a home, and the maladies of the body will

involve the soul-sickness of pauperism.”

“Such is the fate of the helpless in England,” said Mr. Rosso; “and

their calamities are aggravated in precise proportion to the amount of

legal relief provided. The most deplorable misery prevails in the

southern counties, where the poor-rate is highest: the condition of the

poor improves to the northward, where a dislike of this species of

relief has been longer kept alive. There is still less distress in

Scotland, where assessments for the poor are rare; and least of all

where their condition is confided to voluntary charity. That the misery

is as much the consequence as the cause of legal relief, is proved by

the result of an experiment of abolishing a stated mode of relief.

Pauperism was on the perpetual increase in a populous district under a

system of assessment; the assessment was discontinued, and pauperism

vanished. It was swept away by the current of human affections, as soon

as they were restored to their natural channels.”

“It seems rather absurd, to be sure,” observed Alexander, “first to

complain that the misery about us arises from the obstructions imposed

on human powers, and then to seek to remedy it by obstructing the

current of human affections.”

“But what after all,” inquired Henry, “have these human affections done?

Whence comes all this misery, if they have been left free?”

“They have been rendered impotent by the force of bad institutions,”

replied his father; “they live and act, but are baulked of their natural

rewards by the injustice of our economy, and the impolicy of our

government. While industry is overloaded and foresight baffled, as at

present, children may honour their parents, and the poor have compassion

to one another, but they can yield little mutual support against

indigence.”

“It seems rather an injury to Ireland, brother,” said Alexander, “to ask

what its benevolent sympathies have done. Our public provision for

lunacy and sickness, is greater than in England; and innumerable plans

have been tried, at a great expense of capital and trouble, to lessen

the amount of pauperism. That all have failed, betokens not a want of

charity, but an overpowering counteraction from other quarters. If we

look only at the Mendicity Associations, what vast sums have been raised

by them as often as the increase of pauperism suggested to some the idea

of a compulsory rate! All this voluntary charity would cease, as it has

ceased elsewhere, upon the establishment of a poor rate.”

“But, father, we ought to give more every year as our resources

increase; and they certainly are increasing on the whole.”

“They are; and this is another reason for deprecating an institution

which would swallow up all we have gained, and effectually prevent the

further progress to improvement. The vast and increasing unproductive

consumption which takes place wherever there is a poor-rate, would

presently absorb our now growing capital, and repress the spirit of

improvement which is beginning to stir among us. Let our capital be

allowed to spread itself naturally; let more and more of the lower

classes be encouraged to clothe themselves decently, to add a room to

their cabin, to exchange a portion of their potato diet for oatmeal or

bread; and far more will be done for the lowest class of all, than if

the earnings of the industrious were directly applied to the maintenance

of paupers. I see bakers’ shops beginning to appear in many of our

villages; and I regard them as an indication of growing prosperity. If,

in their place, I were to see workhouses, or any part of the apparatus

of a legal charity, I should regard it as an indication that a final and

overwhelming curse had lighted upon the land.”

“But, father, every poor-rate need not have the abuses of the English

system. It is not an inherent necessity in a poor-rate, that it should

grow in one century from five hundred thousand pounds to eight

millions.”

“No; but the principle of growth is inherent in the system, whether that

growth be rapid or slow; and the destruction of the country in which it

is established becomes merely a question of time. The only way to get

the better of it is, to annihilate it in time; and this being the case,

it is mere folly to call it in for the relief of temporary evils.”

“It seems to me,” said Alexander, “that such a system would aggravate

the very evils we want to remedy. It is for want of capital that the

land is subdivided too far. If revenue is so far absorbed by a poor-rate

as to check its conversion into capital, this subdivision will go on.”

“Undoubtedly such would be the effect in our agricultural districts; and

in the manufacturing towns the case would be as bad. Our linen-weavers

would be a burden upon the rates in slack times, and their masters must

encroach upon their wages-fund to support them; and thus the masters

would be brought lower and lower, to the permanent injury of their men.”

“I do not believe,” observed Alexander, “that the thing could ever be

done here. We have not the requisites. All have a nearly equal horror of

an assessment; and I could name many parishes where there are none to

manage the business, and many more where no one would undertake it.”

“There would soon be an end of that difficulty,” replied Mr. Rosso;

“there are people enough ready to administer the fund for the sake of

living upon it. We should have a new class of unproductive consumers

introduced; and for every one of them we should lose a hardy labourer,

who would commit to them his aged parents and helpless little ones, and

go to seek good wages in England. A poor exchange truly!”

“Do you complain of numbers, father, and yet object to the emigration of

our poor?”

“To that of productive consumers who leave all the helpless members of

their families upon our hands; and of this kind of emigration there

would be a vast increase upon the establishment of a pauper system. The

same influence which would supersede domestic charities, would dissolve

domestic ties: and would not a legal relief be an irresistible

temptation to a man to throw his burdens upon the public, and go to seek

his fortune elsewhere? If it is done already while no legal provision

exists, it would be done more extensively upon the establishment of such

a provision.”

“Well, then, Sir, what would you do? Something, I suppose.”

“By all means. I would do much, and without loss of time, lest there

should be many lives to answer for.—Till education can be made universal

in Ireland, so that the interests of the people can be safely committed

to their own guardianship, we must weather the evils which surround us,

opposing peculiar methods of relief to their peculiar stress. We must

consolidate our small farms....”

“O, father, look about you and see the consequences!”

“Hear me out, Henry. We must gradually consolidate our farms, removing

our ejected population, not to other small holdings in the

neighbourhood, but to regions where population is the one thing

deficient. The people are already making efforts to do this for

themselves, at a tremendous expense of hardship and danger. It should be

done for them on a better plan by those who eject them, on the

understanding that it is a temporary measure, caused by the new

arrangement of landed property. The tenants who remain should be freed

from the burden of supporting two religious establishments, from all

interference between themselves and their landlords, from all

impediments to the free exercise of their industry, and to the gradual

accumulation of capital.”

“Might not emigration remedy the worst evils of the poor-laws, father?”

“We cannot afford, Henry, to be for ever doing and undoing in any such

way. To increase numbers by poor-laws and lessen them by emigration,

would cost endless toil and expense, and leave our grievances untouched:

but as a temporary measure, as a specific remedy for a specific

grievance, nothing can be wiser, or, in our case, more necessary. Tracey

meant to do a patriotic thing when he ordered the consolidation of this

estate: the deed would have answered to the will, if he had done it more

gradually, carefully providing a settlement in Canada or Australia for

every family that he displaced.”

“And why not on some of our waste tracts at home?”

“Because much capital is required to bring them into a productive state;

while, in the case of emigration, the only cost incurred is that of

transportation to a place where capital superabounds and labour is the

one thing wanted.”

“And this then, you think, opens a fair prospect of improvement.”

“I do. If this plan be pursued in conjunction with the removal of the

most galling of our political fetters, we may see Ireland the

flourishing region nature intended her to be. If a pauper system be

introduced instead, our case is hopeless. To use the words of one who

well understands our maladies and their causes, ‘its probable effect

appears to me to be to fill Ireland with a population multiplying

without forethought; impelled to labour principally by the fear of

punishment; drawing allowance for their children, and throwing their

parents on the parish; considering wages not a matter of contract but of

right; attributing every evil to the injustice of their superiors; and,

when their own idleness or improvidence has occasioned a fall of wages,

avenging it by firing the dwellings, maiming the cattle, or murdering

the persons of the landlords and overseers; combining, in short, the

insubordination of the freeman with the sloth and recklessness of the

slave.’”

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CHAPTER IV.

IRISH CRIME.

The Sullivans and Mahonys were not immediately pursued. Dora watched by

day and listened by night, in vain, for tokens of the approach of

enemies, till she began to believe, as she was told, that the place of

their retreat was not known; or, if known, was supposed to be so

surrounded by a disaffected and desperate peasantry, as to render any

attack too perilous to be attempted. That this last supposition was true

she had some reason to believe, though she knew little more than Mr.

Flanagan himself what was passing around her. Her father disappeared the

day after their arrival on the coast; but he had since looked in on

them, twice at night and once early in the morning, which seemed to

prove that his abode was not very distant from theirs. He brought with

him each time a supply of whiskey for his sick wife, who was failing

fast, and able to enjoy little besides a drop of spirits to warm her.

These gifts, coupled with what Sullivan had let fall about what went on

in the bog, led Dora to think that he had connected himself with an

illicit distillery in the neighbourhood; but no confession could she get

from him but eloquent gestures and significant snatches of song. Dan was

yet more mysterious. His tenderness to his wife in great measure

returned after the night of the flitting, but there was no confidence

with it. He went and came at all hours, never saying where he had been,

or how long he should be absent; but always desiring her not to be

uneasy, and showing that he thought of home during his excursions by

bringing little comforts for her mother and herself, which she wondered

how he could procure. Once he threw over her shoulders a cloak which was

much less rent and tattered than her own; another time he produced a

packet of tea for his mother-in-law; and with it a handsome teapot and

cups nicely secured in straw: lastly appeared a piece of fine linen for

the use of the expected baby. Dan expected very warm thanks for this, as

he knew that Dora’s great anxiety was on account of nothing being

provided for her little one, who would too probably scarcely outlive its

birth in circumstances of destitution: but Dora looked at her husband

with anguish in her countenance, saying,

“O, husband, you would not doom your child before it is born! You will

not wrap it about with crime as soon as it sees the light! This is not

earned, Dan. It cannot be yours; and my child shall not be touched with

that which is stolen.”

Dan, far from being angry, coolly observed that when there was an end of

justice, there was an end of law. If he was cut off from earning what he

wanted, he must take it where he could get it; and to take it thus was a

less crime than to let his family die of hunger, and his child of cold,

while food and clothing were within reach. In answer to his wife’s timid

questions what this would avail him when the law was urged against him,

and soldiers were dogging his heels, he laughed, and said that if the

gentry brought the matter to that pass, he and others must fight for it.

They had driven him out, and must not wonder if he did not come in again

at their beck and call. If the orderlies chose to try their strength

against the desperates, there should be a fair battle. He was ready to

fight bravely or to swing merrily, according as the powers decreed the

one party or the other to prevail.

Dan could not succeed in any degree in imparting his spirit of

recklessness to his wife. She became more thoughtful as he grew less so:

a deeper and deeper melancholy shaded her countenance. Her form wasted,

her spirits were hurried, and she seemed unable to control her temper by

other means than perfect silence. Instead of soothing her mother’s

complaints, and patiently answering her incessant questions, as

formerly, she heard the former in silence, and escaped as often as

possible from the latter. Her practice was to set within the old woman’s

reach whatever she was likely to want, and then wander out, sometimes

sitting on a perilous projection of the cliff to watch the swell of the

sea, and sometimes hiding herself in a cave immediately below the cabin;

whence she would come forth occasionally, climb the cliff laboriously,

peep in at the door stealthily, to see if she was wanted within, and

creep down again to her place of idleness and solitude. Yet it would

seem as if, even in this place, she heard her husband’s step from a

distance, so invariably did she appear as he approached. At other times

she came forth when it was not Dan moving over the bog, but some less

welcome visitor; and then she turned back quickly and tried to evade

observation. One woman, and another and another, came to visit her, she

knew not whence nor why; but they were of a more companionable nature

than herself, and gave broad hints that as their husbands or fathers or

sons were united in enterprise, the women should be so in confidence;

and would have told many a horrible tale of what was nightly done and

daily suffered by the band they professed to belong to. Dora always

stopped such communications at the outset; professing that Dan and she

belonged to nobody and nobody to them, and that all she wished for was,

to live alone and be left quiet. She did not so much as know where her

visitors came from, she said. They pointed, some to the bog, some to the

rocks, and others to little mounds of turf, from which a thin blue smoke

was seen at times to curl up. Some hinted at an intention of building

cabins on the cliff, near hers; to which she gave no encouragement. This

kind of reception did not tempt them to repeat their visits very often,

and after a short time, Dora flattered herself she had got rid of all

intruders. She was not deceived. In a little while she was solitary

enough.

It was a December night, wrapt in that kind of gloom which is as a

stifling pall descending to shroud the world, when a vessel came ashore

almost directly below Dan’s dwelling. How the accident happened, those

on board were wholly ignorant. They had believed themselves acquainted

with the coast, and felt themselves secure while the beacon glimmered

south-east of them. It did, indeed, only glimmer; but the fog lay so

thick, that the wonder was how the beacon could be seen at all. What

wind there was blew directly on shore; so that it was too late, when the

vessel was once among the breakers, to preserve her. She struck; and

with the first cry uttered by her crew, the supposed beacon vanished.

The shouts of the mariners rose at intervals amidst the hoarse music of

the waves, which renewed their dirge with every human life that they

swept away. All might have been saved if there had been a ray of light

to guide their efforts; but, murky as it was, they struggled in vain,

while wave upon wave, without a moment’s pause, found them full of

desperate effort, and left them less able to encounter its successor.

The first man that gained a footing on the beach found himself unable to

yield the slightest assistance to his companions, and looked about for

signs of human habitation. The only token was a feeble gleam from Dan’s

cabin, towards which he directed his steps, not perfectly satisfied at

first whether it was light from a dwelling on an eminence, or a star

seen through an opening in the gloom. Tripping, stumbling, now climbing,

now falling, but still shouting all the time, he pursued his way in a

direct line to the light, fearing every moment that it would vanish,

like the supposed beacon, and leave him no choice but to sit down and

wait on the spot for day. When he had drawn near enough to feel pretty

secure of his object, his shout was suddenly answered by many voices, in

immediate succession and from different distances; and moving lights at

once appeared along the whole face of the cliff. A man started out from

the darkness on either hand of the astonished sailor, and told him he

was going the wrong way for assistance, there being none but women

above. The sailor, on whom, being a foreigner, this information was

lost, swore his deepest oaths at them for their delay, and for the

artifice by which he suspected the vessel had been purposely brought on

shore. His wrath, vented in unintelligible threats, was only laughed at.

“Be easy, now,” said one. “Sure it takes a man a long time to wake with

such a lullaby going on all the while.”

“Sure a darker curtain was never about a sleeping man’s head than this

fog,” observed another.

“The beacon!” exclaimed a third; “it’s just the drop made you see

double, that’s all. The beacon is far away south, and yon cabin’s the

only light.”

Their explanations were as much wasted as the foreigner’s wrath; and

after a prodigious expense of eloquence on both sides, recourse was had

to action, the purport of which was presently intelligible enough. A

shrill whistle set all the wandering lights converging towards the

beach: the sailor’s two guides, whose outer garment was a shirt, bound

round the waist with a hayband, in which pistols and knives were stuck,

slung their lanterns to their belts, seized each an arm of the stranger,

and led him rapidly down the cliff. Instead of permitting him to proceed

towards the wreck, they ordered him into the cave whither Dora often

resorted, and set a guard of two men over him. One after another, five

of his companions were brought to join him, the guard being strengthened

in proportion. When no more live men could be found about the wreck, a

small supply of food and spirits, and materials for making a fire, were

sent into the cave, as an intimation that all the business was over in

which the crew was to have any share. The poor wretches, soaked,

battered, exhausted in body, and harassed in mind with grief and panic,

were not interfered with by their guards, except when their lamentations

became dangerously audible.