(_From our own Correspondent._)
We are at length enabled to inform the Public that we have, at a vast
expense, completed our arrangements for the transmission of the earliest
news from Ireland. We have just received the _Over-bog Mail_, which
contains facts of a most interesting nature. We hasten to lay our
sagacious correspondent's remarks before our readers:--
_Bally-ha-ghadera, Tuesday Night_.
PUNCH will appreciate my unwillingness to furnish him with intelligence
which might in any way disturb the commercial relations between this and
the sister island, more particularly at the _present crisis_, when the
interests of that prosperous class, the London Baked Potatoe vendors, are
so intimately connected, with the preservation of good feeling among the
Tipperary growers. However, my duty to PUNCH and the public compel me to
speak.--I do feel that we are on the eve of a great popular commotion.
Every day's occurrences strengthen my conviction. Bally-ha-ghadera was
this morning at sunrise disturbed by noises of the most appalling kind,
forming a wild chorus, in which screams and bellowings seemed to vie for
supremacy; indeed words cannot adequately describe this terrific
disturbance. As I expected, the depraved Whig Journalist, with
characteristic mental tortuosity, has asserted that the sounds proceeded
from a rookery in the adjoining wood, aided by the braying of the
turf-man's donkey. But an enlightened public will see through this paltry
subterfuge. Rooks and donkeys! Pooh! There cannot be a doubt but that the
noises were the preparatory war-whoops of this ferocious and sanguinary
people. We believe the Whig editor to be the only _donkey_ in the case;
that he may have been a ravin(g) at the time is also very probable.
No later than yesterday the _Cloonakilty Express_ was stopped by a _band
of young men_, who savagely ill-treated our courier, a youth of tender
age, having attempted to stone him to death. Our courier is ready to swear
that at the time of the attack the young men were busily engaged counting
a _vast store of ammunition_, consisting of _round white clay balls_ baked
to the hardness of bullets, and _evidently_ intended for _shooting with_.
I have to call particular attention to the fact that a countryman was this
day observed to buy a threepenny loaf, and on leaving the baker's to _tear
it asunder and distribute the fragments with three confederates_!!! an act
which I need not say was evidently symbolical of their desire to rend
asunder the _Corn Laws_, and to divide the landed property amongst
themselves. The action also appears analogous to the custom of breaking
bread and swearing alliance on it, a practice still observed by the
inhabitants of some remote regions of the Caucasus. I must again solemnly
express my conviction that we are standing on a _slumbering_ VOLCANO; the
thoughtless and unobservant may suppose not; probably because in the
present tee-total state of society they see nothing of the CRATER.
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