Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846

by Various

A Tale of the Short War. Part I.

I tremble for my people, when I think of the unjust acts of which they have been guilty towards the aborigines.—Jefferson.

The numerous romances of Indian life and manners to which, during the last twenty years, the busy pens of Cooper and of his disciples on both sides of the Atlantic have given birth, would perhaps make us hesitate to notice a work of a somewhat similar class, had it not, as we believe, merits and interest peculiar to itself. The readers of Blackwood who have followed us through the varied and lively scenes so graphically depicted by the author of "The Viceroy and the Aristocracy," will, we are inclined to think, turn with pleasure to a notice of another book by the same clever writer, one published previously to most of those from which we have already made extracts, and of which the time, the characters, and, partially, the scene, are different from those of any of his other works. In the "Viceroy" are found an exposition of the sufferings of the Mexican aborigines, and their half-blood descendants, under the inhuman yoke of their Spanish oppressors. Of the book now before us, one of the objects seems to be to illustrate the less sanguinary, but still, in many respects, unjust and cruel treatment received by the more northerly races of Indians at the hands of the Americans. Barbarous tribes must recede and disappear before the advance of civilisation;—doubtless it was not the intention of Providence that a few scanty hordes of savages should occupy as their hunting grounds vast tracts of land, which, by the application of industry and art, would yield sustenance to millions of men. But whether, on the other hand, the encroaching spirit of the inhabitants of the United States, that restless, rambling propensity which has driven their settlers southwards into Mexico, and westward to the Pacific, should be indulged to the extent of exterminating and dispossessing the original owners of the territory before the new occupants have real need of it, is a question admitting of more discussion than we shall here enter upon.

We have already said so much about the author now referred to, concerning the general scope of his talent, the many beauties and occasional defects of his writings, that any further preamble would be superfluous, and we will at once proceed to give specimens of his book.

Upon the road connecting the town of Coosa with Milledgeville, the capital of Georgia, and near to the spot where, at the present day, a convenient hotel invites the traveller to repose and refreshment, there stood, towards the close of the last century, beneath a projecting rock, crowned with a few red cedars and pine-trees, a rudely constructed, but roomy block-house. In front of the building, and between two massive perpendicular beams, connected by cross-bars, swung a large board, upon which was to be distinguished a grotesque figure, painted in gaudy colours, and whose diadem of feathers, tomahawk, scalping-knife, and wampum, denoted the Indian chief. Beneath this sign a row of hieroglyphical-looking characters informed the passer-by that he could here find "Entertainment for man and beast." On that side of the house, or rather hut, next to the road, was a row of wooden sheds, separated from the path by a muddy ditch, and partly filled with hay and straw. These cribs might have been supposed the habitations of the cows, had not some dirty bedding, that protruded from them, denoted them to be the sleeping apartments of those travellers whose evil star compelled them to pass the night at the sign of the Indian King. A stable and pig-sty completed the appurtenances of this backwood dwelling.

It as a stormy December night; the wind howled fiercely through the gloomy pine-forest, on the skirt of which the block-house stood, and the rapidly-succeeding crashes of the huge trees, as, with a report like thunder, the storm bore them to the ground, proclaimed the violence of one of those tornados that so frequently rage between the Blue Mountains of Tennessee and the flats of the Mississippi, sweeping with them, in their passage, trees, houses, and villages. Suddenly, in the midst of the storm, a gentle tapping was heard at the window-shutter of the block-house, to which succeeded, after a short interval, a series of heavy blows, causing the timbers of the dwelling to quiver to their foundations. Presently the door of the house was partially opened, and a man's head protruded through the aperture, as if to reconnoitre the cause of the uproar. At the same moment that this occurred, a tall, dark figure stepped quickly forward, pushed the door wide open, and, stalking into the dwelling, took his seat opposite the fireplace, followed, in deep silence and with noiseless stride, by a line of similar apparitions. When all had entered, the door was again closed, and a man of almost colossal frame approached the hearth, where some embers were still smouldering. Throwing on a supply of wood, he lit one of a heap of pine splinters that lay in the chimney corner, and then producing a tallow candle, lighted it, and placed it upon the table. By its glimmering flame, and that of the reviving fire, the interior of the hut, fully corresponding with the rough and inartificial exterior, became visible. In the corner opposite the fireplace was the bar or counter, behind whose wooden lattice stood a dozen dirty bottles, and still dirtier jugs and glasses. Below these were three kegs daubed with blue paint, and marked with the words, French Brandy, Gin, Monongahela. On one side of the room a pile of deer hides, of beaver, bear, and fox skins, denoted a frequent intercourse and active trade between the inmates of the tavern and the red men. Near the skins stood a huge tester-bed, surrounded by three small bedsteads, and a cradle, or rather trough, made out of a fragment of a hollow tree, with boards nailed across the ends. In these receptacles, to judge by the loud snoring that proceeded from them, the family of the tavern-keeper were enjoying a deep and uninterrupted repose. The walls of the apartment were of unhewn tree-trunks, varied only by broad stripes of clay filling the interstices.

On a stool in front of the fire sat the man who had first entered, a bloodstained blanket thrown over his whole person, concealing both figure and face. Behind him about twenty Indians squatted upon the clay floor, their legs crossed, their faces shrouded in their blankets, the crimson spots upon which seemed to indicate that the expedition whence they returned had been other than a peaceful one. Notwithstanding the presence of these strange guests, the master of the block-house now busied himself with putting in order the stools and benches which the intruders, upon their entrance, had unceremoniously knocked over, and this he did with as cool and sturdy an air as if his nocturnal visitors had been friends and neighbours, instead of a troop of savages on their return from some bloody foray, and who might, as likely as not, add his scalp and those of his family to the other trophies of their expedition. When he had put the last stool in its place, he sat himself down next to the Indian who appeared the chief of the band.

After the lapse of about a minute, the latter raised himself up, and allowed the blanket to slip from over his head, which now appeared bound round with a piece of calico, fringed with gouts of congealed blood. The backwoodsman cast a side glance at the Indian, but it was only a momentary one, and he allowed his gaze to revert to the fire.

"Has my white brother no tongue?" said the Indian at last, in a deep guttural tone; "or does he wait in order the better to crook it?"

"He waits for the words of the chief," replied the American drily.

"Go, call thy wife," said the Indian, in the same bass voice as before.

The tavern-keeper got up, approached the bed, and opening the curtains, spoke to his wife, who had listened, with curiosity rather than anxiety, to what passed. A few sentences were exchanged between them, and the lady made her appearance, a burly, broad-shouldered dame, with an expression upon her somewhat coarse features, indicative of her not being very easily disconcerted or alarmed. An upper petticoat of linsey-woolsey, adapted both to daily and nightly wear, made her voluminous figure look even larger and more imposing than it really was, as with a firm step and almost angry mien she stepped forward by her husband's side. But the menacing stillness of her visitors, and their bloody heads and blankets, now fully revealed by the blaze of the fire, seemed of such evil omen, that the good woman was evidently startled. Her step, at first quick and confident, began to falter, and with an involuntary shudder she approached her husband, who had resumed his seat. A minute passed in gloomy silence. Then the Indian again raised his head, but without looking up, and spoke in a harsh, severe tone.

"Listen, woman," said he, "to the words of a great warrior, whose hand is open, and who will fill his brother's wigwam with many deer skins. In return he asks but little of his sister, and that little she may easily give. Has my sister," continued he, raising his voice and glancing at the woman, "milk for a little daughter?"

The backwoodsman's wife stared at her interlocutor in great astonishment.

"Will she," continued the redskin, "give a share of her milk to a little daughter, who must else die of hunger?"

The countenance of the woman brightened as she discerned that the Indian wanted something of her, and that it was in her power to grant or refuse a favour. She took a step towards him, and impatiently awaited further explanation of his singular demand. The Indian, without deigning to look at her, opened the ample folds of his blanket, and drew forth a lovely infant, wrapped in a pelisse of costly furs. For a few seconds the woman stood in mute surprise; but curiosity to obtain a nearer view of the beautiful child, and perhaps also a feeling of compassion and motherly tenderness, speedily restored to her the use of her tongue.

"Good God!" cried she, stretching out her hands to take the infant; "what a sweet little darling; and come of good parents too, I'll be sworn. Only look at the fur, and the fine lace! Did you ever see such a thing! Where did you get the child? Poor little thing! Feed it? To be sure I will. This is no red-man's child."

The worthy lady seemed disposed to run on in this way for some time longer, had not a significant sign from her husband stopped her mouth. The chief, without vouchsafing her the smallest attention, unfastened the pelisse of grey fox skin, stripped it off, and then proceeded to divest the infant of the first of the coats in which it was enveloped, like a silkworm in its cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes from its body, and handed it over stark naked to the tavern-keeper's wife.

"Incarnate fiend!" screamed the shuddering woman, as she snatched the infant from his hands.

"Stop!" cried the Indian, his cold and imperturbable gaze fixed upon the infant's neck, from which a small medal was suspended by a gold chain. Without uttering a word, the woman stripped the chain over the child's head, threw it into the face of the savage, and hurried to her bed.

"The devil's in the woman!" muttered her husband, apparently not a little uneasy at her violence.

"The red warrior," said the Indian, with immovable calm, "will pay with beaver skins for the milk that his little daughter drinks, but he will keep what he has found, and the door must open when he comes for the child."

"That's all very well," said the tavern-keeper, to whom it suddenly appeared to occur that some farther explanation might not be altogether superfluous; "and I'll keep the child willingly enough, though, thank God, I've plenty of my own. But if the parents should come, or the white father hear of the child, what then? The red chief knows that his hand reaches far."

The Indian remained for a while silent, and then replied in a significant tone—

"The child's mother will never come. The night is very dark, the storm howls in the forest—to-morrow nothing will be seen of the red men's footsteps. It is far to the wigwam of the white father. If he hears of the child, my white brother will have told him. It he takes it, then will the red chief take the scalps of his white brother's children."

"Then take your child back again," said the backwoodsman, in a decided tone, "I'll have nought to do with it."

The Indian drew his knife, upon which fresh blood-stains were visible, and cast an ominous glance towards the bed.

"We will take care of it; no one shall hear of it!" screamed the horrorstruck woman. The Indian calmly replaced the knife in his girdle, and again spoke.

"The throats of the red men are dry," said he.

A muttering was heard behind the curtains of the bed, sounding not unlike the Christian wish, that every drop the bloodhounds swallowed might prove poison to them; the host, however, whose humanity was less vindictive than that of his wife, hastened to the bar to comply with his guest's demand. The chief drank a half-gill of whisky at a draught, and then passed the glass to his neighbour. When a sixth bottle had been emptied, he suddenly rose, threw a Spanish gold piece upon the table, opened the curtains of the bed, and hung a string of corals, which he took from his wampum girdle, round the neck of the child.

"The red men will know the daughter of a warrior," said he, fixing his eyes upon the infant, which now lay wrapped in flannel upon the bosom of the hostess. He gave a second glance at woman and child, and then passing silently out at the door disappeared with his companions in the darkness.

"The hurricane is over," said the tavern-keeper, who had followed the Indians with his eyes as they glided like dim shadows to their birch canoes upon the Coosa.

"In heaven's name! who is that incarnate red devil?" cried his wife, drawing a deep breath of relief, and shuddering as she spoke.

"Hush, woman!—hold your tongue! till the Coosa's between it and the redskins. This is no joking matter, I can tell you."

As he spoke he closed the door; and, taking up the light, approached the bed, where his wife was suckling the child.

"Poor little thing!" said he, "if you could speak you would tell us a tale that might well make our hair stand on end. This affair may cost us dear yet; those red devils are come from a scalping expedition; of that there is no doubt. But in what direction, God alone knows. Well, if it were only amongst the Spaniards," continued he, glancing alternately at the child, and at the gold coin in his hand, "I should not much care about it, but"—

And without finishing the sentence he resumed his place in the bed, although some hours elapsed before the recollection of the strange scene that had occurred allowed sleep to revisit his eyelids.

In defiance of the menaces of the savages, Captain John Copeland, the rough but worthy host of the Indian King, institutes inquiries concerning the parentage of the infant so unceremoniously imposed upon him. Various obstacles are thrown in the way of his researches by the disturbed state of the country, and by the Indians themselves, who suspect his intentions, and keep a strict watch on his movements; and when at last a more settled state of things enables him to prosecute his inquiries, it is with small success, or at least he does not admit that he has discovered any thing, although he suspects the child, which is a little girl, to belong to one of the French or Spanish planters on the Mississippi. Seven years elapse, during which the numbers of the backwoodsman's family are doubled, and his worldly wealth augments in a far larger proportion. The shores of the Coosa have become populous and flourishing, the solitary block-house is now a roomy and convenient dwelling, situated in the midst of smiling plantations, and Captain Copeland is well to do, and much respected by his neighbours. One summer evening, however, the Captain is disturbed at his supper, and his family frightened from their propriety, by the appearance of a tall gaunt Indian, who enters the room unannounced, and is recognised by a missionary there present as Tokeah, the miko or king of the Oconees, the principal tribe of the Creek Indians. This Tokeah is one of the most deadly and persevering enemies of the white men, whom he detests with a bitter hate, because they have driven his nation from its hunting grounds. He it was who, seven years previously, gave the little girl in charge to Copeland and his wife; since then he has regularly sent furs and beaver-skins as payment for her maintenance, and he now comes to claim her as his property. Resistance to his demand would be in vain, for he is backed by an imposing force of Indian warriors; the entreaties of Mrs Copeland and the missionary are insufficient to turn him from his purpose, and he takes away the child, who has been christened by the name of Rosa. The third chapter of the book, which we will now extract, opens, after a second lapse of seven years, at the latter end of the year 1814.

At the northern extremity of the Sabine lake, and in the midst of the reed and cypress swamps that extend southwards to the sea, there lies, between the rivers Sabine and Natchez, a narrow tongue of land, which, widening in proportion as the rivers recede, forms a gently swelling eminence, enclosed by the clear and beautiful waters of the two streams. The latter flow through dark thickets of cypress and palmetto, to the lake above named, which, in its turn, is united with the Gulf of Mexico, and it would almost appear as if nature, in a capricious moment, had chosen thus distinctly to mark the boundary of the two vast countries which the Sabine severs. On the right bank of that river rises a black and impenetrable forest, so thickly matted and united by enormous thorns, that even the hunted deer or savanna wolf will rarely attempt an entrance. The earth is overgrown by an impenetrable carpet of creeping plants, under whose treacherous shelter innumerable rattlesnakes, king's-heads, and copperheads, writhe themselves, or lie coiled up on the watch for the wild pigeons, mockingbirds, parroquets, and black squirrels, who share with them the shelter of the thicket. Rarely is the maze broken by a clearing, and where it is so, is seen a chaos of mouldering tree-trunks, uprooted by the frequent tornados, and piled up like some artificial fortification. The wild luxuriance of the place reaches its acme in the neighbourhood of the cypress swamp, but on the further side of that it assumes a softer character, and the perplexed wanderer through these beautiful scenes finds himself on a sudden transported into one of the most enchanting of Mexican landscapes, where the myrtle, the stately tulip-tree, and the palma-christi, alternate with the dark-leaved mangrove, and on the rising grounds the cotton-tree and sycamore spread their silver-green branches above a sward of the tenderest verdure. The whole forest is interwoven, like a vast tent or awning, with the jessamine and the wild vine, which, springing from the ground, grapple themselves to the tree-trunks, ascend to the highest branches, and then again descending, cling to another stem, and creeping from mangrove to myrtle, from magnesia to papaw, from papaw to the tulip-tree, form one vast and interminable bower. The broad belt of land, in the centre of which the waters of the Natchez flow, presents to the beholder a waving and luxuriant field of rustling palmettos, extending from the forest a full half mile to the stream, in whose waters the mangrove and cypress dip their drooping foliage.

It was an afternoon of that magnificent latter autumn known as the Indian summer, and the sun, golden and glorious, as it is only to be seen in that country and at that season, was declining behind the summits of the trees which fringe the western shore of the Natchez. Its beams already assumed that rich variety of tint, so beautiful to behold, varying from bright green to golden, from purple to orange, as the rays passed between the leaves of the myrtle, the palma-christi, or some other variety of the surrounding foliage. Not a cloud was in the heavens, the air was balm itself, the soft evening stillness was only now and then broken by some babbling parroquet, by the whistling tones of the mockingbird, or the sudden rising of a flock of waterfowl, thousands of which floated on the broad bosom of the Natchez, and dressed their plumage for their winter flight. Along a narrow path between the forest and the palmetto field above referred to, a female figure was seen tripping towards a small opening in the wood, formed by the uprooting of a mighty sycamore. On reaching the prostrate tree she leaned against a branch, apparently to take breath. She was a young girl of about twenty years of age, whose complexion denoted Indian parentage, but whose countenance had something in the highest degree interesting, even noble, in its expression. Her forehead was well formed, her black eyes had an arch, almost a roguish, glance, her finely cut lips, and the whole contour of her physiognomy, betrayed a frank and joyous disposition, whilst the slight curve of her Roman nose gave her an air of decision and self-reliance, with which her bearing and costume corresponded. This costume was far superior to the usual dress of Indian girls, and as remarkable for simplicity as for good taste. She wore a sleeveless calico gown, reaching to the ankles, and her hair, instead of hanging long and straight down her back, as is customary with Indian women, was twisted into a knot, and held together on the crown of the head by an elegant comb. A pair of gold ear-rings, bracelets of the same metal, and half-boots of alligator's skin and scarlet cloth, completed her graceful exterior. From her girdle was suspended a pocket knife of considerable length, and in her hand she carried an empty basket. Her step could be called neither walking nor running; it was an odd sort of frisking springing movement. After each ten or twelve paces she stopped, looked back along the path, and then again sprang forward, again to stop and look behind her.

"But, Rosa!" cried she at last, as she leaned panting against the sycamore; "but, Rosa!" she repeated, in the Indian tongue, and in a tone of slight impatience, retracing her steps, and hurrying to meet another young girl who now advanced along the winding path, "why do you remain behind, Rosa?" And so saying, she threw herself upon her knees before the new-comer, and clasped her arms around her with a rapidity and suppleness that almost resembled the coilings of a snake.

"Ah, the white Rose!" cried she, in a tone of melancholy reproach; "she is no longer the same. See, the grass grows upon the path which her foot used often to press. Why is my white Rose sorrowful?"

The complaining tones of the Indian maiden were so touching, her whole posture so imploring, love and anxiety were so plainly depicted on her countenance, that it seemed uncertain whether the interest she took in her friend had its source in the ties of near relationship, or was caused by the manifold charms and graces of the young girl whom she now so tenderly caressed, and who had as yet scarcely emerged from childhood. This was the same Rosa whose acquaintance we have already made, seven years previously, at the tavern of the Indian King, and who now stood in an attitude of enchanting and unstudied grace, her dark eyes, shaded by their long and silky lashes, alternately reposing their glances upon her kneeling friend, or gazing out into the distance with a mournful, pensive look. The gently swelling breast, the cheeks overspread with the most delicate tint of the rose, the airy and elastic form, might have belonged to the goddess of love herself, in the days of her freshest youth; but on the other hand, the childish innocent glance, the nobly-formed forehead, the rosy mouth, of which the coral lips were rather indicated than displayed, and an indescribable something in her whole appearance, gave her an air of purity and dignified modesty calculated to prevent her beauty from exciting the slightest sensual thought. Her hair, of a dark gold colour, fell in long tresses around a snow white and exquisitely moulded neck; a gown of green silk enveloped her person, and reached to a pair of the minutest feet that ever supported the form of woman. Her mocassins were similar to those of the Indian girl, a white silk kerchief veiled her neck, and in her hand she carried a straw hat.

A tear gathered in the eyes of Rosa as she gazed kindly, but mournfully, at her friend, and then stooping down she folded her in her arms, and pressed a kiss upon her lips. For a short time, no sound was audible save the sobbing of the maidens. At last the Indian spoke, in a plaintive tone.

"See," said she, "Canondah's bosom is open to the grief of Rosa."

"My dearest Canondah!" exclaimed the beautiful girl thus addressed; and again a flood of tears gushed from her eyes.

"Oh!" implored the Indian, "tell thy Canondah the cause of this grief. See," continued she, in tones melodiously mournful, "see, these arms bore the white Rose when yet she was very little, on these shoulders did she hang when we crossed the great river, on this bosom did she lie like a waterfowl that suns itself on the broad mirror of the Natchez. Day and night, like the doe after his fawn, did Canondah follow the steps of the white Rose, to shield her from harm; and yet, now that she is a woman, and has become the white Rose of the Oconees, she shuts her from her heart. Tell thy Canondah what it is that makes thy bosom heave, and thy cheek grow pale."

"Does not Canondah know?" replied Rosa in a gentle tone. "Poor Rosa has good cause to be sad and heavy of heart."

"Is the great chief of the Salt Lake the cause of her grief?"

Rosa shuddered, took a step backwards, and, covering her face with her hands, sobbed aloud. The Indian girl sprang to her feet, and throwing her arm round her friend's waist, drew her gently towards a neighbouring cotton-tree, up which a vine had crept and twined itself, and now dangled its graceful festoons, tasselled with ripe grapes, from the very top-most branches. "Sad is the path of an Oconee maiden," said Canondah, after a long pause, during which she had filled her basket with the grapes. "Whilst the warriors are absent at the hunting grounds, we sigh away our days in the wigwam, or labour wearily in the fields. Would that Canondah were a man!"

"And El Sol?" lisped Rosa with a melancholy smile. "Canondah should not complain."

The Indian girl placed one hand upon the lips of her friend, whilst with the other she playfully menaced her.

"Yes," said she, "El Sol is a great chief, and Canondah owes him her life. She will cook his venison, and sew his hunting shirts, and follow him with a light heart. Let the white Rose listen to the words of her sister. Soon will El Sol visit the wigwam of the Oconees, and then will Canondah whisper softly in his ear. He is a great warrior, and the miko will hear his words, and return the presents to the chief of the Salt Lake, and the white Rose shall never see his wigwam."

Rosa shook her head doubtingly.

"Does Canondah know her father so little? The storm may bow the feeble reed, but not the silver stem of the mighty tree. It may be uprooted, and broken in its fall, but never bent. The miko," continued she with a desponding sigh, "sees the chief of the Salt Lake with the eye of a warrior, not of a maiden. He has promised him Rosa for his wife, but Rosa would rather die than"—

"No, no," interrupted Canondah, "Rosa must not die. El Sol loves Canondah, and the miko of the Oconees knows that he is a far greater warrior than the chief of the Salt Lake. But listen! what is that?" cried she, "turning her head in the direction of the swamp, whence a loud splashing was now audible.

"What is it?" repeated Rosa.

"Perhaps an alligator or a bear," replied the Indian girl.

The noise continued, although less loud than before. "Canondah!" exclaimed Rosa with visible uneasiness, "you will not again hunt the great water-snake?"

Her words were in vain. With the swiftness of a deer the Indian maiden sprang through the reeds, and in a moment had disappeared. Rosa had no choice but to follow. Whilst making her way through the innumerable stems that barred her passage, she heard a loud cry, but it was not Canondah's voice. A noise like that of a heavy body falling into the water, immediately followed, accompanied by a short but violent splashing and beating in the mud, and then all was again still. Breathless and terrified, Rosa forced her way through the reeds, and at length reached the river bank, where she descried her companion standing among the cypresses and mangroves, which grew down into the water.

"Canondah!" she exclaimed, in a tone of bitter reproach, as her friend pointed to an enormous alligator that lay beating the mud with its tail in the agonies of death. "Why do you do these things? Must Rosa lose her sister, because she foolishly wishes to be a man, and to fight the water-snake?"

"See there!" replied Canondah, pointing to a deep wound in the neck of the alligator, and triumphantly waving her bloody knife; "I plunged it to the hilt in his throat. The daughter of the Miko of the Oconees knows how to strike the water-snake. But," added she, indifferently, "this one was young, and already benumbed, for the water begins to be cold. Canondah is only a weak girl, but she could teach the young white man to strike the water-snake." As she spoke the last words, she glanced in the direction of a cypress-tree which sprang out of the shallow water at a few paces from the bank.

"The young white man?" said Rosa enquiringly.

The Indian girl laid her forefinger significantly upon her lips, washed the blood from her hands and knife, and approached the tree. Separating the impending branches with her left hand, she held out her right, open and with the palm upwards, in sign of friendship, and then pointed to the shore, towards which she herself slowly advanced. The boughs were put aside, and a young man appeared, walking cautiously and with difficulty towards the bank, clutching for support at the reeds that grew around him. Rosa gazed in astonishment at the stranger.

"How came he here?" said she softly to her friend.

The Indian girl pointed in silence to a boat entangled amongst the reeds, through which an attempt had evidently been made to force it. The stranger had now arrived within a few paces of the shore, when he began to stagger, and Canondah, who hurried to his assistance, was but just in time to prevent his falling back into the water. Supporting him in her arms she assisted him to the bank, and the cause of his weakness became apparent, in a stream of blood that flowed from his leg, severely wounded by the jaws of the alligator. Canondah hastened to Rosa.

"Your white brother has been bitten by the water-snake," said she, "and you see that Canondah has only her gown."

Whilst speaking, she untied the silk 'kerchief from her friend's neck, then stooping down, she gathered, with the quickness of thought, a handful of a certain herb, broke a young palma christi across her knee, and took out the delicate, fleshy substance found under the bark of that tree. Returning to the stranger, she filled the wound with the pith, overlaid it with herbs, and bound it with the handkerchief. The whole was the work of an instant, and so rapid and decided were Canondah's movements, that Rosa's neckerchief was tied round the leg of the stranger before the blush that its loss occasioned had faded from the cheek of its owner.

When the bandaging of the wounded limb was completed to Canondah's satisfaction, she again stepped into the water, and carefully examined the boat in which the stranger had arrived; then returning to her patient, she gazed steadfastly at him for a moment, returned a second time to the boat, and finally, approaching Rosa, whispered in her ear a few words which brought a paleness like that of death over the young girl's countenance. In her turn, Rosa gazed earnestly at the stranger, the contraction of whose features, and the dull glaze that overspread his eyes, betrayed the highest degree of exhaustion. His ashy-pale complexion, sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes, bespoke long privations and severe suffering; he looked more like a corpse thrown up by the waves, than a living creature. His hair, bleached by the action of seawater, hung in tangled locks over his neck and forehead, and the original colour of his apparel could only be guessed at. He appeared very young, and his features, allowance made for their emaciation, were by no means disagreeable, as he sat leaning against the trunk of a cypress-tree, through the branches of which the sunbeams played upon his countenance, and lit up its suffering expression.

"Our white brother's canoe," said Canondah, "is that of the chief of the Salt Lake, but he is not one of his warriors."

"He is perhaps what they call a sailor," remarked Rosa.

"No," replied Canondah, in a decided tone. "Look at his hands, they are small and delicate as those of a girl, though the seawater has stained them brown."

"He may be a messenger," suggested Rosa doubtfully.

The Indian maiden again shook her head. "See," said she, "he comes from the great salt lake which drinks the waters of our river, and yet he knows not how to bring his boat through the thick grass. He took the water-snake for a rotten tree, and stepped upon it, and it buried its teeth in his flesh. Thy white brother has fled from the chief of the Salt Lake."

She spoke these words with as much confidence and decision as if she had herself accompanied the stranger on his adventurous voyage.

"And will Canondah," said Rosa, "leave her brother to perish of fever in the cold night air—he who never harmed her or hers?"

"My sister speaks with the tongue of a white, but Canondah is the daughter of the great Miko," replied the Indian girl, with some severity of manner. The next moment her countenance again brightened, and she took Rosa's hand.

"Canondah will listen to the words of her sister," said she, "and will befriend her white brother. She will take him to the hollow tree."

The two maidens now raised the young man, and each taking one of his arms, assisted him through the thick growth of reeds. It was a long and wearisome task, for loss of blood, and previous privations, had rendered the stranger nearly helpless, and they were hardly able, by the utmost exertion of their strength, to keep him on his feet and convey him along. At one moment, when half-way through the palmettos, he seemed about to breathe his last; his strength left him, and it was only by the most laborious and painful efforts that the young girls got him over the rest of the field. Panting and trembling, they at last reached its extremity, and Rosa sank upon the ground, incapable of further exertion. By a last effort Canondah drew her burthen out of the palmettos, and then threw herself down by the side of her friend.

The last rays of the sun still played upon the summits of the loftier trees, of which the lower branches were dimly seen in the rapidly thickening twilight, when Rosa approached the Indian maiden, and with the words, "The sun is low," roused her from her state of exhaustion and semi-unconsciousness. Canondah sprang to her feet, and the two girls tripped side by side into the wood, until they at last paused before an enormous cotton-tree. Several gigantic vines, in whose powerful and enervating embrace the mighty trunk had perished, still clasped the magnificent colossus with their shining red tendrils, whilst the interior of the tree, hollowed by the tooth of time, was of a fantastical configuration, not unlike a Gothic chapel, and sufficiently spacious to contain twenty men. The care with which the hollow had been swept out, and the neighbourhood of a salt spring, showed that it was used by the Indian hunters as a resting-place and ambush. Canondah cautiously approached the tree and returned to Rosa with the intelligence that it was unoccupied. From the branches of a neighbouring cypress, the two girls now stripped quantities of Spanish moss, wherewith they speedily composed a soft and luxurious bed in the interior of the cotton-tree. This done, they rolled blocks of wood and fragments of trees to the entrance, apparently to form a rampart against the nocturnal intrusion of bear or panther. These preparations completed, they returned to the wounded man. Canondah passed her left arm under his legs, and signed to Rosa to grasp her hand, whilst their arms should serve as a support to his back. Rosa blushed and hesitated.

"Does the white Rose," said Canondah, "fear to touch her brother, for whose life she was lately so anxious?"

For sole reply, the young girl took her friend's hand, and raising the stranger from the ground, they carried him to the hollow tree, and laid him down upon his mossy couch.

"When the earth is covered with darkness," said Canondah, bending over him, "Canondah will visit her brother, and pour balsam into his wounds."

But her words were unmarked by the person addressed, who, with the exception of a faint breathing, gave no sign of life. The two maidens struck into the path by which they had first approached the river, and along which we will now precede them in order to introduce the reader into an entirely new world.

At a short distance from the scene of the adventure above narrated, was a wide clearing, extending for about three miles along the shore. It had originally been part of a palmetto field covering the bank of the river for the breadth of half a mile, at which distance a limit was put to it by the colossal stems of the aboriginal forest. The clearing had been made by the burning of the palmettos, in whose place a carpet of luxuriant grass had sprung up, dotted with groups of magnificent trees, and intersected by natural hedges of myrtle, mangrove, palm, and tulip trees, giving to the whole tract of land the appearance of a beautiful artificial park. Here and there, through the branches of the sycamore and cotton trees, small swirls of smoke were seen curling upwards, telling of the presence of man, and on nearer inspection there became visible, under various of the groups of trees, one or more huts, surrounded by little plantations of Indian corn and tobacco, and forming collectively a scattered hamlet of some fifty habitations.

No particular rule had been observed in the architecture of these modest dwellings, whose builders had been more remarkable for indolence than for refinement of taste, and had carefully avoided overworking themselves during their construction. The simplest materials had sufficed, and had been used in the same rough state in which nature afforded them. The walls were constructed of the smaller boughs of the cotton-tree, with Spanish moss stuffed into the interstices. Instead of the clapboards, wherewith, to the west of the Alleghany range, the dwellings of the poorer class of country people are usually roofed, the palmetto reed had been made use of, a selection that gave the hamlet a peculiar air of rustic simplicity. The houses were for the most part without windows, and their interior received light through the chimney or door, which latter, instead of being of wood, consisted of a buffalo hide suspended in front of the doorway, and thrown back during the day upon the low roof. The principal charm of the village, however, lay not in its style of building, but in the manner in which the humble dwellings seemed to nestle under the numerous clusters of trees. The universal cleanliness and absence of all offal formed another remarkable feature, and went far to increase the favourable impression made by the delightful situation of the hamlet. It was truly a lovely spot, as its ruins still show. The broad Natchez flowing majestically by, on its way to the sea; the dark framework of cypresses and mangroves fringing its shores, their tall shadows reflected in the clear waters; the innumerable groups of trees, with huts peeping out of their shade like so many hermitages; and finally, the spacious clearing itself, enclosed at either end by the waving palmettos, and bounded on the third side by a wall of gigantic and venerable trees, gave to the whole scene an air of enchanting repose and seclusion.

The inhabitants of this retired spot, although offering fewer charms than did their residence, were in many respects scarcely less interesting. In front of the foremost hut was assembled a group of creatures with dark shining skins, which, at a first glance, and owing to their comical movements, might well have been taken for a herd of apes. Now, like those animals, they leaped the hedges and bushes, and then, like snakes, wound along the ground, or rolled down the river bank with a rapidity of motion that the eye could scarcely follow. Further on in the village were seen lads of a maturer age, practising warlike games and exercises. They were performing the spy-dance. Whilst one party crept stealthily over the grass, others lay upon the ground in a listening posture, and with their ears pressed to the earth, strove to distinguish the movements of their antagonists. At last, when the two parties had approached each other, they sprang suddenly up, and forming themselves in Indian file, commenced a combat in which they dealt furious blows with their blunt wooden tomahawks, exhibiting in every movement an extraordinary degree of activity and natural grace. Little interest was shown in these evolutions by the adult inhabitants of the village, whose extreme apathy and indifference contrasted curiously with the display of violent exertion on the part of the young Indians. Before the open doors of the huts sat the squaws and their daughters, stripping the maize from the ear, beating hemp, or picking tobacco; the children, who, according to Indian custom, are from their very birth kept in an upright posture, hanging against the outer walls on long concave boards or pieces of bark, to which their hands and feet were fastened by thongs of buffalo hide, their only garment a strip of calico round the hips.

At a short distance from the upper part of the clearing stood two wooden huts, which might have passed for two of the school or meeting-houses often met with in the American backwoods. Like the other dwellings composing the hamlet, they were propped against sycamore-trees, but they were distinguished by their larger dimensions and more careful style of building, by the bowers of palm and mangrove that surrounded them, and the plots of smooth turf before their doors. In front of one of these little houses, and in the centre of the lawn, about fifty men were squatted upon the ground, enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke, proceeding from tobacco-pipes, three to five feet in length, with which all of them were provided. They were attired in hunting-shirts, open in front, and showing the naked breast down to the wampum girdle, to which a second garment, reaching to the knee, was attached. Instead of the shaved head and scalping-tuft adopted by many Indian tribes, they wore the whole of their hair. They appeared to have taken their places according to their rank, the inner half-circle being composed of the older warriors, whilst the young men formed a second and third line. In the centre of the curve sat an old warrior, on whom the eyes of the assembly were respectfully fixed, and whose remarkable exterior, combined with the deference shown him, bespoke the chief of the tribe. It would be difficult to imagine a more singular, and at the same time interesting-looking person, than this old man, whose body seemed to consist of nothing but skin and bone. All the coarse and fleshy portions of his frame were dried up, and only veins and sinews remained. His open hunting-shirt disclosed a breast far broader than that of any one of his companions, resembling a board that had been chopped and hacked, so covered was it with the scars of many wounds. The chief characteristic of his countenance was a gloomy stoical gravity, mingled with a resigned expression, telling a tale of many a fearful struggle, and of grievous mental suffering. The fall of his tribe, and seven years' exile, had brought about this change in the Miko of the Oconees.

This old man is Tokeah, who, driven by the Americans from his hunting grounds, has taken refuge, with the remnant of his tribe, upon Mexican territory. Canondah is his daughter, and the young man whom she rescued from the jaws of the alligator is an English midshipman belonging to a frigate employed in sounding the entrances of the Mississippi, preparatory to the expedition against New Orleans. Whilst away from his ship on a turtling party, he and two of his comrades have been captured by Lafitte, the famous French pirate, whose chief haunt was on the island of Barataria, in the Gulf of Mexico, whence, from amidst shoals and swamps impenetrable to those unacquainted with their intricacies, he issued forth to commit depredations on the high seas, and especially in the Mexican Gulf. During an inland excursion, about two years previously to the date of this tale, Lafitte discovered the Indian village on the Natchez, and was at first about to attack and plunder it; but the determined attitude of its defenders, and, still more, the reflection that their alliance might be useful to him against the Louisianian authorities, who had set a price upon his head, induced him to change his intention, and to hold out the right hand of good fellowship to the red men. Tokeah, whose ruling passion is hatred of the Americans, gladly concluded an alliance with the pirate, who professed an equal detestation of them. The Frenchman speedily ingratiated himself with the old chief, with whom he bartered a portion of his plunder for provisions of various kinds; and after a time, Tokeah, unsuspicious of the real character of his disreputable ally, whom he believed the chief of an independent tribe living on the sea-shore, promised him Rosa in marriage, an arrangement to which, as has already been seen, the poor girl was any thing but a consenting party.

Early upon the morrow of the arrival of the midshipman, upon whom our author has bestowed the unromantic name of James Hodges, the Oconee warriors depart on a hunting expedition, and the wounded man is removed to a hut in the village. During their absence, Canondah, at the entreaty of Rosa, between whom and the young Englishman a kindness has grown up during the convalescence of the latter, and who fears for his life should Tokeah discover him, disguises the midshipman in Indian paint and apparel, supplies him with arms, and explains to him the road to New Orleans, which he trusts to find occupied by British troops. She has guided him through the swamp and ferried him across the Sabine, when some words she lets fall apprise him of the peril she and Rosa will be in from her father's anger, when he returns from his hunting party, and is informed by the squaws of the evasion of one of the detested Americans, to which nation he will naturally feel assured that the English midshipman belongs. To avert all danger from the heads of his deliverers, the young man then wishes to go back to the village, but this the noble-minded girl refuses to allow, and pushes off her canoe from the shore, to which all his entreaties are insufficient to induce her to return. She retraces her steps to the hamlet, and shut up in her wigwam with Rosa, awaits, in alarm and deep dejection, her father's return from the chase.

Twenty-four hours had elapsed, during the whole of which time Canondah had not left her hut, nor had any of the squaws been to visit her. At last, towards morning, the voices of men were heard upon the shore. It was the Miko and his hunters. His daughter rose, her knees trembling under her, and looked out of the window. She saw the old squaws whispering to the men, and pointing to the wigwam in which the Englishman had dwelt. Presently the Miko entered his hut, followed by several warriors, and Canondah stepped forward to welcome her father. With hands folded upon her throbbing bosom, she silently awaited his commands.

"The men of the Oconees," he began, after a pause, during which he seemed to read his daughter's soul, "have told their Miko that a messenger from the chief of the Salt Lake has reached his wigwam. Why do not my eyes behold him?"

The trembling girl made no reply, but remained with her eyes fixed upon the ground.

"Has Canondah so forgotten her father's blood as to bring a Yankee into his wigwam, and to show him the path that leads to the villages of the pale faces? The Miko thought he had a daughter," said the old man, with the most cutting scorn; "but Canondah is not the daughter of the Miko of the Oconees. Go," continued he, in an accent of unspeakable disgust; "a miserable Seminole deceived her mother, and gave life to a traitress."

On hearing these terrible words, the maiden sank to the ground as if struck by lightning, and, writhing like a worm, crept to her father's feet, and laid hold of his garment. He pushed her from him with loathing.

"Go," said he; "she sang in the ears of the Miko, and implored the Great Spirit to protect him, whilst she cherished and concealed the foe of his race. Therefore could not the White Rose sing the night-song, because the spy was waiting for her in the forest. The Miko has nourished a snake in his bosom, his beaver-skins have been thrown away, and the White Rose has brought a spy into his wigwam to betray him to his foes. In a few suns he and his will be hunted by their enemies like the wild panther of the forests."

An angry howl escaped the Indians, and two of the most ferocious looking glided towards the curtain of Rosa's apartment. Canondah was lying speechless, apparently almost senseless, upon the ground, but hardly had the red men taken a step, when she suddenly stood before them.

"It is I," she cried; "it is Canondah, who guided the pale face across the swamp, and showed him the path he should follow. The White Rose knows it not."

Scarcely had she spoken, when the curtain was lifted and Rosa appeared. The Indian girl clasped her in her arms as if to shield her from harm, and the two maidens stood with drooping heads before the incensed Miko. The eyes of the chief had followed the rapid movement of his daughter, and he appeared astounded at the boldness with which she interposed between him and the intended sacrifice to his wrath. On beholding Rosa, a grim smile distorted his features; he made a step forward, and raised his knife.

"It was I!" cried the affrighted Canondah.

"No!" exclaimed Rose, in trembling tones; "I it was who brought the white youth into the wigwam."

The Miko stood like one petrified. Gradually, however, the generous rivalry and self-devotion of the two beautiful beings before him produced its effect on his savage nature. The expression of his features softened.

"Go," said he with bitter scorn; "does Canondah think the Miko a fool, and that his eyes do not see who brought the white spy into the wigwam? It was the foot of Canondah that opened the path, but the treacherous tongue of the White Rose prevailed with her to do it."

"Will my father," said Canondah, folding her hands humbly on her breast—"will my father loosen the tongue of his daughter?"

A long pause ensued, during which anger and paternal feeling held a visible contest in the bosom of the deeply-moved chief. Finally, the latter prevailed.

"Canondah may speak."

"My father, the white youth has sworn to me that he is no spy, and not one of the Yengheese. He is from the island of the foolish chief, the land of which you have told me that it is cold and icy. His people are on the war-path against our foes, the Yengheese. It is but a few suns since he and his friends came across the great salt lake; they will go up the great river and burn the wigwams of our enemies. The chief of the Salt Lake, he says, is a thief, who overpowered him and his brothers whilst they caught oysters and turtle, and took them to his wigwam. He escaped, and for eight suns he suffered hunger. His people will hang the chief of the Salt Lake by the neck to a tree. See, father, thy daughter delivered him from the jaws of the great water-snake, and he was already nearly dead. He has returned to his brothers, to lift the hatchet against your foes. He is no spy; his hands are soft and he was weak."

"Has Canondah more lies to tell her father?" said the old man, in a milder tone. "Her tongue is very nimble."

The abashed maiden cast her eyes to the ground. Her words, however, had visibly made a deep impression upon the Miko, and he remained for a while sunk in reflection. Tokeah was a savage by birth, habit, and education; but he was neither bloodthirsty nor cruel. Under other circumstances, and in a civilized land, he might have been a hero, a benefactor of thousands or millions of his fellow-creatures; but in his wild condition, despised, goaded and insulted as he felt himself, his better feelings blunted, and his whole nature soured by real and fancied injuries, what wonder was it that he raised his knife even against his own daughter, entering the hut as he did with the full persuasion that the young man she had sheltered was a spy and emissary of his bitterest foes?

The account given of himself by the midshipman, and the imputations cast by him on the chief of the Salt Lake, as Lafitte is called by the Indians, receive strong confirmation from two handbills, which Tokeah, who has learned to read English in the course of his long intercourse with the white men, has torn, during his recent expedition, from a wall in one of the new Louisianian settlements. One of these papers is a proclamation by the authorities of Louisiana, enumerating the crimes and cruelties of the pirate of Barataria, and offering a reward of five hundred dollars for his head. The other is an address to the citizens of the state, summoning them to the defence of their country against the British. Notwithstanding this corroborative evidence of the correctness of his daughter's statement, Tokeah, unwilling to remain with the smallest doubt upon his mind, or to risk the discovery of the nook in which, for seven years, he has been unseen by an American eye, sets off with a party of warriors in pursuit of the young Englishman. The ensuing chapter, the last of the first volume, we will translate with small abridgement, and therewith, for the present, conclude our extracts.

The mood of mind in which we left our young Englishman may aptly be compared with that of the assassin neophytes, whom, according to the tale, the Old Man of the Mountain was wont to introduce into an enchanted garden, peopled with ravishing houris, whence, after a short enjoyment of the most voluptuous delights, he again thrust them forth into the dark and dismal night of the desert, with nothing remaining of their past pleasures save a wild confusion of the senses, a chaos of images and visions, and a burning desire to recover the lost paradise. True it is, as our readers know, that the young sailor had no such enjoyments to regret, and equally true that his own wish had driven him from his Eden; but he nevertheless experienced the tumult and confusion of thought, and the longing to return, above described. It seemed as if the nobler and inferior qualities of his nature were striving within him, the two principles alternately, as either got the upper hand, impelling him onwards and calling him back. A full hour elapsed, during which he several times walked away from the shore and then again returned to it, until at last he was surprised by the first beams of the sun, disclosing to him a scene whose sight assisted him to prompt decision.

Agreeably with what Canondah had told him, he found the left bank of the Sabine bare of trees, with the exception of a few stunted firs and cedars growing along the shore. Before him was spread a landscape which the most skilful pencil could but imperfectly sketch, the most powerful fancy with difficulty conceive. It was an interminable tract of meadow land, its long grass waving in the morning breeze, presenting an endless succession of gentle undulations, whilst in the far distance isolated groups of trees appeared to rock like ships upon the boundless ocean. Nowhere was a fixed point to be seen, and the whole stupendous landscape swam before his eyes, waving like the surface of the sea in a soft tropical breeze. Towards the north, the plain rose gradually into highlands, between whose picturesque clusters of trees his eye penetrated to the extremity of the vast panorama, where the bright tints of the landscape blended with those of the horizon. Eastward the huge meadow sank down into bottoms, shaded by trees, and overgrown with reeds and palmettos, shining, as the wind stirred them, like sails in the sunshine. The profound stillness of the sky-bounded plain, only broken by the plash of the waterfowl, or the distant howl of the savanna wolf, and the splendour of the rising sun, imparted an indescribable solemnity and grandeur to the scene. Lower down the river were detached groups of trees, amongst which grazed deer, who, with wondering glances, seemed to ask the wanderer whence he came; and after gazing at him for a while, tossed their antlers proudly in the air, and, as if displeased at the intrusion upon their territory, paced slowly back into the thicket. The whole landscape was dotted with diminutive hillocks of a conical form, the habitations of small brown animals, who sat in front of them with their faces to the sun, making their breakfast on the tender grass.

The district just described is the western portion of Louisiana, which, from the alluvial land of the Mississippi, Red River, Atchafalaya, and other smaller but deep streams, swells gradually upwards towards the west, and ends in these vast and magnificent savannas. The detached pictures that we have laid before our readers, in the endeavour to convey to them some idea of the whole, burst at once upon the young Englishman; and their view put him in much the same state of mind with the seaman, who, having left his ship during the night in a frail skiff, finds himself in the morning alone upon the wide waters, and hesitates whether he shall not, by one desperate plunge, avoid the misery and suffering that await him. This feeling of isolation and helplessness, like the last grain thrown into the balance, suddenly terminated the young man's indecision, and induced him to take a step, which, whilst it seemed to ensure his own destruction, attested the triumph of the better principle within. Hastily stripping off his clothes, he tied then in a bundle, and jumping into the chilly stream, in a quarter of an hour reached the opposite shore. The parting words of the noble Indian girl had decided him to return to the village, and give himself up to the fury of the terrible Miko. Any other consideration was subordinate to that generous motive.

Upon reaching the right bank of the river, Hodges proceeded to seek the path through the thicket. But the difficulties he encountered were such as might well deter the most persevering. The western side of the Sabine, like that of the Natchez, is a gentle slope, ending in a ridge which again sinks gradually and imperceptibly down to the swamp. The black masses of cypress and cedar allowed him to penetrate a few hundred paces through them, and to reach the summit of the rising ground; but as soon as the descent began, he found it impossible to get a step further. The slope was covered with a description of tree which he had never before seen or heard of. The stems were not thicker than a man's body, but they grew close together, and were covered with thorns as long as his arm, presenting the appearance of millions of brown bayonets, so thickly planted, and so manifold in their direction, as scarcely to allow a squirrel to set foot upon the trees on which they grew. He tried to call to mind the position of the path along which Canondah had conducted him; he investigated every thicket and opening in the bushes, but all in vain; hours passed away, and he had not found it. When he detected the trace of footsteps, they invariably proved to be his own. At last fortune seemed to smile upon him; he discovered the place where the canoe was concealed. He had still long to look, however, before he could find the track leading through the forest; and when he did hit upon it, it was so intricate, and led in such a zigzag line, now up the slope and then down again, that darkness came on, and he had not yet reached the swamp. Hungry and fatigued, he returned to the Sabine, and, fully determined to try his luck again next morning, he trusted with better success, he loaded the canoe upon his shoulders, launched it upon the water, and rowed to the opposite bank, where he had left the provisions with which Canondah had supplied him. Taking them with him, he recrossed the river, and after a short but hearty meal, busied himself in the preparation of a sleeping place. In that heavenly region, nature has supplied the means for a simple, but delightful bed, in the tillandsea or Spanish moss, whose long, delicate, horsehair-like threads, compose the most luxurious couch. With this moss Hodges now filled the canoe, and carried it to the hiding-place where he had found it. This had been selected between two cedars, whose lower boughs served as rollers, upon which he only had to raise the boat to be secure from observation. His gun at his side, and wrapped in his blanket, he fell asleep.

The fatigues of the day procured the young Englishman several hours of profound and untroubled slumber, but at the end of that time he was tormented by a strange dream. He thought he saw the corpses of Rosa and Canondah lying pale and bleeding before him, whilst over them strode a fantastical-looking monster, a knife in its claws, levelled at his heart. He turned round, he fought and wrestled, and strove to seize his gun. The desperate struggle awoke him.

That which had been a dream had now become reality. A grim savage really stood over him, one foot upon the canoe, in his hand a tomahawk, which he waved above his head with a scowl of triumph. One blow, and all would be over. Quick as thought the young Englishman raised his rifle, and pointed it at the breast of the Indian, who started on one side. The tomahawk descended, but, fortunately for Hodges, his sudden movement overturned the canoe at the very moment that the blow fell. This saved his life. Clasping the knees of the Indian with the strength of desperation, he brought him to the ground, and threw himself upon him. The deadly scalping-knife was about to pierce his heart, when he caught the wrist of the savage in his right hand, and with his left clutched his throat. For a moment the Indian struggled, glared at him with an expression of inveterate hate, and then his breath left him, his features became distorted, and he let the knife fall. The next instant it glittered in the hand of Hodges, and the Indian lay defenceless, his antagonist's knee on his breast, awaiting, with set teeth and staring eyes, the death which he deemed inevitable. During one second, the young man appeared to hesitate; then he sprang to his feet.

"Go," said he; "I will not sully myself with your blood."

"My young brother is really a friend of the red men," said a voice behind him.

Hodges turned, and beheld another Indian, a scalping-knife in his hand, which he seemed about to plunge into his back. Springing on one side, he confronted this new foe.

"My brother need not fear," said the second Indian, behind whom the other had now retreated, not unlike a dog, who, feeling himself guilty of a misdeed, creeps, with tail between his legs, behind the back of his master. The new-comer surveyed him with a severe glance.

"Milimach," said he, "would have taken a scalp from a sleeping man, but he has to thank the white youth that his own is still upon his head. Milimach has disobeyed the Miko."

"Are you the Miko?" cried Hodges—"the Miko of the Oconees?"

The old man fixed his calm and penetrating look upon his interrogator, and replied with much dignity, "My young brother has said it. He has nothing to fear; the Miko stretches out to him his hand, in peace and friendship."

"You the Miko of the Oconees?" repeated Hodges, grasping the Indian's hand, and heartily shaking it. "I am delighted to see you; and, to say the truth, I was on my way to your village."

"The maidens," said the chief, "told the Miko that the son of the great father who owns the two Canadas, had escaped from the chief of the Salt Lake, and sought shelter in his wigwam. My eyes have seen, and my soul believes what is true. But my brother has travelled very little of the path leading to his people."

"I will tell you why," said the young man. "You have an excellent girl for a daughter—Heaven bless her!—and she and that angel, Rosa, were like sisters to me. I would gladly have remained longer, had not the voice of duty called me away. But when your daughter left me upon the other side of the river, something escaped her that made it my first duty to return to your wigwam."

The chief had listened with much attention. "What did my daughter whisper in the ear of my young brother?" said he.

"Few words," was the reply, "but weighty ones. I understood that the poor girls would suffer for their goodness to me; and that, suspecting they had brought a Yankee spy into your wigwam, you would perhaps kill them."

"And my brother?" said the Miko.

"Held himself bound to return, to avert the danger from their innocent heads."

The Indian stood for a while in silent reflection. Then his countenance brightened, and once more he stretched out his hand to the Englishman, to whom this sign of good-will was rendered the more welcome by the appearance of a long line of savages who just then glided out of the thicket, and ranged themselves behind their leader.

"Does my brother wish to go to the village of the whites?" said Tokeah after a pause.

"I do wish," said Hodges, "to rejoin my ship as soon as possible. I am a British officer, and must not be wanting at my post."

The Indian shook his head. "The Miko," said he, "knows the sons of the great father of the Canadas; he has lifted the war-hatchet with them against the Yankees. Great warriors are they, but in our forests blind as the night-owl. My brother would never reach his people; he would perish of hunger in the wide wilderness. See," continued he, pointing to a group of trees that appeared like a black speck on the distant horizon, "my brother will go to those trees, but when he gets there, his head will dance and turn round, and he will wander in a circle, like a dog pursuing his own tail. In a hundred suns he will not find his way out of the meadows."

The comparison was not a very elegant one; but a single glance at the vast plain before him, convinced the young man that the Indian spoke the truth.

"Answer me one question," said he. "Have the maidens nothing to fear, and will the Miko generously forgive them for having brought a stranger into his wigwam?"

"The Miko will look upon his daughters with a well-pleased eye."

"Then I have nothing to do but to be off as quickly as possible. If I can only get to the Mississippi, I shall find our ships there."

The Indian seemed to reflect. "My brother's path is very long," said he, "and the canoes of his people are far away. His great father has many warriors, but the Yankees have more. Will my brother listen to the words of an old man, who has seen many summers, and whose hair is grey with age and sorrow?"

Hodges bowed his head, perhaps even lower than he intended to do.

"Let my young brother return to the wigwam of the Miko. The warriors will smoke with him, and the maidens will sing in his ears. In two suns the chief of the Salt Lake will come. To him will the Miko whisper, and he will take my brother in his canoe and restore him to his people."

"The chief of the Salt Lake! The pirate take me back to my people?" exclaimed Hodges, shaking his head. "My dear Miko, you are vastly mistaken. He will take good care not to do so, for his welcome would be a halter."

"Is the chief of the Salt Lake also at war with my brother's tribe?" inquired the Miko.

"Not at war; but he is a pirate, who robs and plunders wherever he goes, and, if taken, will of course be hung."

The countenance of the Indian darkened, and Hodges feared that he had touched a dangerous string.

"My brother is right," said Tokeah; "he must go. But, if he will remain, the wigwam of the Miko is open to him; the White Rose will cook his venison, and he shall be the son of Tokeah."

The Englishman took the old warrior's hand, and pressed it kindly.

"When the Oconees," said he, adopting the Indian phraseology, "have sworn to their Miko to lift the war-hatchet in his behalf, they must keep their word, or they are dogs. Even so must the son of the great father of the Canadas observe the oath that he has taken. He must hasten to his brothers, or he will be looked upon as a coward, and his name will be spoken with contempt."

These words, uttered with feeling and emphasis, were decisive. The chief nodded his approbation.

"The sun was low behind the hills," said he, "when my young brother approached the wigwam of Tokeah, and the chief was buried in sleep. His footsteps must not be seen by the white men. Will my brother swear by Him whom the Oconees call the Great Spirit, and the pale-faces name their God, that he will not betray Tokeah to his enemies?"

"I swear it solemnly."

"Will he promise never to say that the Miko and the chief of the Salt Lake have been friends?"

"I promise that also," replied Hodges, after a brief pause.

"Then may the bones of his fathers moulder in peace," said the old man, laying his hands on the shoulders of the Englishman. "The Miko will clear his brother's path from thorns, and his runners shall show him the way to the Coshattoes. But my brother is hungry," he added, "and his path is a long one."

He made a sign to his followers, and one of them emptied a hunting-pouch upon the grass; the Miko sat down, and, beckoning Hodges to do the same, offered him some cold game, of which he himself sparingly partook. A handful of roasted corn, and a calabash of tolerable wine, completed the repast. The meal dispatched, Tokeah rose, nodded in a friendly manner, and plunged into the forest, followed by all but one of the Indians. Hodges cast a last glance after their dark figures, as they disappeared between the trees, and then seized the canoe to carry it to the water. Upon reaching the opposite shore, the Indian concealed the boat amongst the bushes, and started off across the prairie at a pace with which the young Englishman had some difficulty in keeping up.

---

IRELAND—ITS CONDITION—THE LIFE AND PROPERTY BILL—THE DEBATE, AND THE FAMINE.

It is now some years since, in the pages of this Periodical, we pointed out to Sir Robert Peel's government the necessity of adopting coercive measures towards Ireland, in mercy to the peasantry themselves, and the folly of permitting sedition to run its course, in the delusive hope that the fallacy on which the arguments of the demagogues were founded would at length be discovered by their dupes, and that the repeated disappointment of their expectations would ultimately induce the deluded people to withdraw the confidence which they reposed in their political leaders. But our remonstrances, as well as the advice of others who equally understood the Irish character, were disregarded; and the consequences have been the destruction of property, the sacrifice of life, and the increase of crime, to such an appalling extent, that very shame compels the administration to propose now (with small chance of its efficiency, even should it be adopted) a measure, which, incomplete though it be, might then have been attended with considerable success.

The coercion bill introduced by Lord St Germains, is, though much to be approved of so far as it goes, perfectly inadequate to accomplish what it is intended to effect; for while it recognises the fact, that the action of the ordinary laws is inadequate to cope with the difficulties and the dangers of the emergency, it stops far short of the limits which would ensure its utility. It suspends the constitution, and incurs the odium which must ever attach to the violation of popular rights, without affording much hope of its being able to attain those results which alone can render such a proceeding justifiable. The perpetrator of crime is by it to be subjected to pains and penalties; while he who instigates him to the commission of it, is to be left in the full enjoyment of the liberty of action: the peasant is to be confined to his dwelling at night, but the demagogue may hold his monster meetings by day, when the law enacted "for the preservation of life and property" will be derided and denounced, and his misguided followers taught how to violate its provisions with safety, and to defeat its objects with success. But the principal defect of the bill is, that it does not enact a law, under which immediate and summary justice could be administered and the very terror of which would go far to check the commission of crime, by depriving the guilty of all hope of escape from the partisanship or the fear of their judges.

In their speeches on Lord St Germains' bill, both the Home Secretary and Mr O'Connell congratulated themselves that there was nothing of a sectarian or political character in the Irish outrages, that the lives and properties of Roman Catholics and Repealers were as much sought after, as were those of persons who differed from them in doctrines and opinions; yet this we consider the very worst feature in the case, for it exhibits a loosening of those ties which bind society together, and shows evidently enough that spoliation, and not redress, is the object of the people in the disturbed districts. Mr Sidney Herbert tells us, "men were there under the dominion of a power more irresponsible than any of the powers conferred by this bill—a power exercised by persons unseen, and for causes unknown, and exercised, too, in a manner not to be foreseen, which no conduct, no character however excellent, no virtue, no station, could avert." And it is while society is in such a state, that persons are to be found ranting about the violation of the constitution, and refusing to protect the lives of the virtuous and the innocent, lest in their endeavours to do so they should intrench on the liberties of the guilty. We cannot conceive how Christian men can, under such circumstances, put party objects in competition with the obvious dictates of duty, or seek to secure the triumph of their political principles at the expense of the blood of their fellow-creatures. Yet do we see a formidable opposition raised against what is represented to be an impotent measure, and English gentlemen battling in defence of the perpetrators of crime, under the banner of him who is morally responsible in the eyes of God and man for the awful state of his unfortunate country. But those protectors of anarchy will say—"In following Mr O'Connell, we must be right; O'Connell and his party represent the feelings of the Irish people"—ay, just as much as the Terrorists of the Revolution did the sentiments and the feelings of the people of France. His is indeed a reign of terror—of moral terror, if you will—but of a terror quite as effectual, and more powerful than that of the guillotine; a terror which pervades all classes of society, which is "exercised by persons unseen, and for causes unknown," and whose influence "no conduct, no character however excellent, no virtue, no station, can avert;" a terror which seeks to regulate not only political but private concerns, which causes even the Bishops of his own faith who dare to oppose him without the means of support, and such men as Sir William Somerville, to crouch under his denunciations, and at his behest to violate what must be the dictates of their own consciences, in order to purchase immunity from political defeat.

Judging from the tone of the debate, the admissions of the ministerial speakers, and the delays which have been submitted to, we would almost be inclined to doubt the sincerity of the government in wishing to pass even this measure, imperfect as it is. There seems to exist an extraordinary and ominous good feeling between the opposing parties. Sir James Graham is described by Mr O'Connell as having "stated the case of the promoters of the bill in a manner which could not dissatisfy any one;" "so hard a measure had never a more moderate exponent," (and well might the wily agitator pay the compliment, for his own share in producing the lamentable state of things was entirely left out of sight;) and, in detailing his budget of enormities, the minister seemed actuated by the most delicate feelings towards the guilty. "There were no indignant bursts of feeling;" and he even went the length of declaring, that he would have suppressed one of the most atrocious cases in the whole catalogue, "only that it had been previously alluded to by Lord George Bentinck." Of a verity, "the convicted conspirator" and the denounced "renegade" seem now to have a perfect understanding. But if the mild manner of the Home Secretary on the introduction of the bill is calculated to excite distrust in the minds of those who really wish for the establishment of tranquillity in Ireland, the speech of the Secretary at War is sufficient to convince them, that the government do not care to go the necessary length for accomplishing that object, for fear of coming in violent contact with the really guilty. Mr O'Connell twitted them with the obvious fact, that they gave no protection under their bill by day, although it was notorious that almost all the assassinations were then perpetrated. Mr Sidney Herbert is reported, with great naïveté, and innocently enough, to have offered the following reasons for the omission:—"He could show from proofs before him, that the murders which were committed in broad day were, generally speaking, murders perpetrated against persons in the higher ranks of life; and that, on the other hand, the night murders were committed on the poor and defenceless; and for this reason,—the rich man lived in a house carefully secured, with his servants well armed, his windows barricaded, and every thing about it capable of standing a siege; and when such a man was murdered it was usually in the open day; perhaps fired at from a hedge when he was returning from the quarter sessions, or some other duty. But the poor man, who lived in a wretched thatched cottage, with the door and window ill secured—that man was attacked at night, shots were fired into his house, and incendiarism was almost solely confined to him, because he was poor and defenceless—he had no servants to repel the invasion of what ought to be his castle; and, therefore, he maintained that an obvious distinction must be made between the night class of murders, which especially required their interference, and those that were committed in broad day. The one class of victims called much more loudly for protection than did the other."—(Hear.) Here we have it unreservedly stated, that no restriction is sought to be imposed upon the evil-disposed by day—merely because none are then murdered but landlords, who cannot with convenience be come at by night; but, as if more fully to show the little sympathy which exists between the Irish proprietors and the government, the Secretary at War asks, in a subsequent passage, "How many murders of landlords had there been? Or rather, he should say, how few had there been? God knew he was not underrating the number who had thus lost their lives, but he asked the House to consider how few landlords had been murdered, in comparison with the whole number which had taken place in the five counties in which outrage had been so conspicuous. In these five counties there had been the following offences:—Firing at the person, 85; incendiarism, 139; threatening witnesses, 1043; firing into dwelling-houses, 93. Now, of all these, how many were attacks on landlords? There was Mr Gloster, Mr M'Leod, Mr Hoskins, Mr Carrick, Mr Booth, and some others; but they formed no comparison to the number of poor and defenceless."

Far be it from us to impute improper motives to any man, much less to a person of Mr Sidney Herbert's private character; but we would calmly ask that gentleman, whether such admissions, coming from a minister of the crown, are not likely to have the most pernicious effects upon the Irish people? No man who understands the system pursued in Ireland, can doubt but that they will be applied to the worst of purposes; the agitators will tell their dupes that the reason government took no precautions to protect life by day was, "because the only persons then murdered were the gentry;" and it will be said, "let the poor alone, and you may shoot as many landlords as you please—the opportunity is afforded you." A hint on the subject will be found perfectly sufficient for such intelligent persons.

"See," cries Mr Sidney Herbert, "the few, the very few, landlords murdered—only five, and a few others!" If the honourable gentleman's memory was not very fallacious, he might have greatly enlarged the list; and if those persecuted men do survive, they certainly do not owe their preservation to any extraordinary sympathy in their behalf, or any exertions made to protect them, by the administration of which he is a member. The very system of self-defence which they are compelled to practise seems to be perfectly well known to the government, without appearing to produce the slightest uneasiness in their minds; and a measure which its advocates propose for the suppression of crime is defended, not because the gentry are insecure under the operation of the existing laws, "but because the peasantry, not being able to have recourse to the same means of defence, are more easy victims to their assailants;" as if the executive were only bound to protect the poor, and had no responsibility imposed upon them as regards the rich. It appears the old system, said to have so long prevailed in Ireland, is still to be persevered in—with this difference only, that now the law is to be exclusively for the benefit of the poor, while the rich are left to shift for themselves. "Turn about" is, no doubt, considered as "fair play."

When we couple the delicacy of the Home Secretary with the admissions of Mr Sidney Herbert; and, further, take into consideration the statement of the O'Connor Don, that on his return from the Roscommon Assizes, in July last, Sir Thomas Freemantle, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, told him he was right in opposing a petition got up by the Grand Jury of his county, praying government to cause the enactment of some coercive law, "as ministers had no intention of introducing any such measure;" yet, at that very moment, we find, according to Lord George Bentinck's statement, that the crimes committed in the five disturbed counties greatly exceeded the number perpetrated now—when they find it convenient to do so. In the quarter ending 1st of August 1845, when we are thus told the Chief Secretary declared to O'Connor Don that the ministers would not interfere with the career of the assassins, the number of outrages perpetrated was 1180—in the last three months, when they profess an anxiety to do so, it amounted only to 806.

Sir Robert Peel affects to be embarrassed as to which of the two measures—the Corn Bill or Coercion Act—he should most immediately pass. On the one hand he says, "He wishes to prevent crime, but, perhaps, he should first relieve destitution." Now, as far as the present laws affect the introduction of food into Ireland, they are virtually repealed already; for the Indian corn is being and has been introduced duty free long since. We therefore humbly submit, that as no persons are said to be starving in this country, the preservation of the lives of our Irish fellow-subjects should first engross his attention.

But as if the open admission on the part of the government, that after witnessing for years the operation of a system of assassination with indifference, because the victims were of the upper order, they are now induced to apply a remedy, because latterly the peasantry were subjected to the same sanguinary code, would not be sufficient to mar the success of any measure they might introduce for the suppression of crime in Ireland, they accompany their Coercion Act with scraps of comfort to the discontented. On the one hand they hold out the terrors of a penal law, while on the other the people are led to hope that some of their wildest expectations may speedily be realized. Crime, they are told, (at least so far as regards its commission on their own class,) must be repressed; but they are left to infer that spoliation is to follow.

There never was a period of our history at which the state of Ireland formed a more important topic for the consideration of the British people than at the present moment. The hard-won earnings of their industry are applied to relieve her immediate wants, and to reduce her local burdens; while a change in their commercial policy, pregnant with the most momentous consequences, is sought to be effected, avowedly based upon the necessity of rescuing her impoverished people from the horrors of pestilence and famine. That there is much of what we should call misery and wretchedness in Ireland, there can be no doubt. The question is not, whether such is the case or not? for the fact is admitted; but the problem to be solved is, from what cause does this state of things arise? Is it from the misconduct of the landlords, or of the people themselves?—from the severity or mal-administration of the laws?—or from the absolute and total disregard of all social restraint whatever? And it is important, beyond measure, to ascertain the truth, not only because, upon the supposition that the people are blameless, the rights of private property are threatened with invasion, and a precedent established for legislative interference with personal privileges, which may at no distant period, in those days of uncertainty and change, be extended to ourselves; but because the disease being mistaken, and a wrong remedy applied, the state of that unhappy country must become worse, instead of better—her social condition more complicated and inexplicable, and demoralization and discontent be still further increased. In those days poverty and wretchedness appear to be the best recommendations to sympathy and support; to be poor and of the people, is sufficient to imply the possession of every virtue; to be rich, and of the aristocracy, is, in the estimation of the majority, proof "strong as holy writ" of hardness of heart and depravity of disposition. And hence it is that all compassion is reserved for the Irish people, because they are said to be poor, without duly inquiring whether or not their own misconduct is the principal cause of the misfortunes they suffer; and universal reprehension is heaped upon the Irish landlords, because, the people being impoverished, they are supposed to have neglected their duties;—and no inquiry is made as to whether they are enabled, if inclined, to perform their parts; or whether all their schemes to improve the condition of the people entrusted to their care, are not thwarted and counteracted by designing and unprincipled men, acting, from self-interested motives, on the passions and the prejudices of an excitable and ignorant population. We respect and would assist the poor man struggling with the difficulties which Providence has imposed upon his condition; but that is no reason why we should extend our kindly feelings to the degraded ruffian who reels in rags from the gin-shop.

The Irish people have been so trained by the agitators in the art of deception, that it is almost impossible for those who have not an accurate and perfect knowledge of their objects, and their practices, to fathom their intentions, or to detect their impositions. They are always ready, always prepared, with arrangements to support their statements. Perhaps a better instance to exemplify their disregard of truth, and the lengths they will go to attain their objects, cannot be adduced, than one which we select from a letter of the "Times commissioner," who visited the property of Mr O'Connell. After describing the general wretchedness of the population, this gentleman proceeds—"A little apart from these was the house of T. Sullivan, jun., who, with his twelve children, a sick cow, and two pigs suffering under some grievous malady, occupied the same room. In answer to our enquiries as to his condition, he replied that the food of himself and family all the year round was potatoes and buttermilk. 'Were the potatoes good?' 'Troth they were not—bad as could be,' (and he proved the assertion by cutting open a number of them taken at random from a heap, and showing us the extent of the disease.) 'Had he plenty of potatoes?' 'Indeed he had not.' 'Of milk?' 'Never—nor half enough—never had enough for either dinner or breakfast.' All his children were as badly off as himself—not half enough of potatoes, and often nothing to drink with them, as he could only afford the milk of one stripper for his family.' He had no fish, 'and very little of any thing.' This was the substance of his story, translated to us by an interpreter, Mr Connell; and yet he was a large holder, though his bed was of straw—his cabin falling to pieces—and the mud outside percolating to the interior, where it was trodden into a filthy, adhesive, earthy glue, by the feet and hooves of the semi-naked children, pigs, fowl, and cattle." Now, can there be a more perfect picture of desolation and misery than this man's case presents? Could any rational person raise a doubt as to the truth of the sufferer's representations?—his potatoes were rotten, "and he proved it by taking them indiscriminately from a heap." Nothing could be more conclusive—"here there could be no deception"—and the graphic sketch which the talented gentleman drew of this wretched wight, would no doubt have formed the groundwork of many leading articles in the influential journal for which he reported, had he not been undeceived before he had time to forward his dispatch, and undeceived, too, by no less an authority than Mr Sullivan himself. At the conclusion of the very letter which contains this harrowing picture, we find the commissioner writing—"Whilst sitting at the hotel at Cahirceveen, Mr Trant, a magistrate of the county, entering the room, informed me that Thomas Sullivan of Aaghenming, whose house I visited on the preceding day, and whose testimony I have already given, was outside, and wished to make evidence on oath that he had quite misinformed me as to his condition; in other words, that he was desirous of swearing that he had been telling me lies. Sullivan was called in, and it appeared that he was quite ready to take an affidavit. I took from Mr Trant, who acted as interpreter, the following explanation of Sullivan's previous statements—'He imagined that I and your commissioner were coming from government to enquire into the state of the potato crop, and he therefore exaggerated the badness of its condition and his own poverty, as much as possible.' He now wished to say, 'That he was not nearly so badly off as he had stated; that he had plenty of potatoes and milk—that he had a bed-tick which was in the loft when we inspected his cottage.'"[3]

Now, had Professors Playfair and Lyndley entered this man's house instead of the agents of the Times, no doubt his case would have been before this on the table of the House of Commons. Nor could we be much surprised that all should be taken as truth, when we consider his admirable state of preparation. The diseased potatoes selected and placed ready to be appealed to, as if they were the bulk of the crop. The bed-tick stowed away, "and all clear for action." We are indebted for the discovery of the cheat solely to the fact, that his statements would, if uncontradicted, have damaged Mr O'Connell. "Neither, unfortunately, can this be considered an isolated case; the bulk of the population are actuated by the same motives; and are, we lament to say, not only willing to deceive, but ready, no doubt, if need were, to substantiate their assertions by their oaths."

Hence arises the difficulty of ascertaining the true state of things in Ireland—hence the signal failures of the different commissions which have from time to time been appointed by the government of the day, when the truthfulness of their reports came to be tested by the working of the legislative measures founded upon them—"hence it comes, that out of 2,800,000 Irish persons reported to be in a state of utter destitution by the Poor-law Commissioners, not more than 68,000 could in any one year, since the establishment of the Poor-law, be induced to accept the relief which Parliament provided for them;" and for this reason it is, that the condition of the most idle and indolent people in Europe is compassionated, as if it resulted from the misconduct of others rather than their own; and that "the patient endurance" of the most turbulent and bloodstained peasantry on earth is pronounced, in Lord Devon's report, "as deserving of the highest commendation, and as entitling them to the best attention of the government."

It also most unfortunately happens, that in Ireland you can always find men—ay, and sometimes men in respectable stations in life too—who not only take the most opposite views of the same subjects, but who give a totally different explanation of the same facts—even when bound by the solemn obligations of an oath. Let any man look into Lord Devon's blue-book, and he will find ample evidence in support of our assertion; unhappily, the dicta of those least worthy of credit are generally adopted, because they pander to the popular feeling; and the country is called upon to decide a disputed point, and Parliament to legislate, on evidence[4] to which no private individual would pay the slightest attention, merely because it has been adopted and sanctioned by the report of a government commission.

To explain the anomaly which the condition of Ireland presents to our consideration, has often been attempted without success, chiefly because we allow our feeling to overcome our judgment. We there see a people holding the most fertile lands on infinitely cheaper terms than ground of a much inferior quality is rented at in the other portions of the kingdom, relieved by special enactments from almost all the local burdens which press upon their fellow-subjects, and freed from participation to a most incredible extent in the general taxation of the country, enjoying the exclusive advantage of an easy access to the best markets in the world; and yet, with all those advantages, we find them in a continual state of destitution, a disgrace to our reputation, and a drain upon our resources.[5]

In his opposition to the Life Preservation Bill, Mr O'Connell exhibited his usual extent of craft, with more than his habitual amount of exaggeration. With that cunning for which he is so remarkable, he kept aloof from all topics which could bring his own political conduct before the House, while there were no bounds, no limits, to his assertions. He appealed to evidence taken before commissions which sat some twenty years ago, to account for the present state of Ireland; while he studiously avoided quoting that which was more recently taken before Lord Devon's—contenting himself with adopting the oft-quoted description of the sufferings of the peasantry, which is contained in the report, and which has so often before been successfully pressed into his service. Now his reason for pursuing this course was simply because the passages on which he relied, were opinions given by persons supposed to be well informed as to the then condition of the country. They were generalities, and therefore their errors were even at the time difficult of detection, and are now wholly so; but the evidence taken before Lord Devon's committee contained special accusations, which were widely promulgated, and which, when they came to be substantiated, were proved to be utterly groundless. And this merit at least is due to those commissioners, that they gave each party an opportunity of being heard, and placed fairly before the world their respective statements. Had Mr O'Connell alluded to the charges, he must have also adverted to the explanations, and this would not have suited him; for with all his talent for perversion, and, until the appearance of Lord Devon's report, we thought that in this respect he was unequalled, he never could have made so good a thing out of the same materials as he found left cut and dry to his hand, in the passage of the report which he so often appeals to. He therefore most wisely left "well alone." May we not ask what became of all the instances of tyranny which were brought to light by "the committee of grievances" of the Association? why were they burked now, "when they might legitimately be used?" why go back for a quarter of a century, when the atrocities reported and disseminated by Mr Balfe, might have served him as an unanswerable justification for the adoption by his followers of the "wild justice of revenge?" It was because the charges made against the proprietors were proved to have been fabrications, and because the unblushing perjury of the peasantry would, if investigated, have excited horror and disgust. Even the kind-hearted and sympathizing commissioners, in speaking of the people whose condition they so much commiserated, are obliged to admit, that "there is frequently a readiness amongst these to attribute their own wretched condition exclusively to the conduct of their landlords, sometimes with an utter disregard of truth, and almost always without admitting, perhaps without seeing, how much of it arises from their own indolence or want of skill." With his usual disregard of truth, Mr O'Connell attributes the assassinations which have taken place in Tipperary, to the number of ejectments which have been carried into execution. "They found that in Tipperary, where the greatest number of ejectments took place, murders were most frequent. For that county, in one year, no less than 5304 ejectments issued from the Civil Bill Court, to which there were 14,816 defendants; and 1724 ejectments issued from the superior courts, to which there were 16,503 defendants; making a total of 7028 ejectments, and 31,319 defendants. Within the last five years, upwards of 150,000 persons had been evicted from their lands in the county of Tipperary."

As an instance of the extraordinary ignorance of the laws, in which the commissioners venture to propose amendments, and of the negligence with which the report is drawn up, we quote the following passage from the report:—"By the present practice, when a mesne lessee exercises his power of redeeming under an ejectment for rent, the landlord may be required to give up the land to him, without any occupiers upon it; and it is suggested that cases have occurred in which a mesne tenant has permitted, or even encouraged, a process of ejectment against himself, in order to throw upon the landlord the unpleasant task of removing a number of sub-tenants, so that he himself might, upon redeeming, obtain entire possession of the land. This requires alteration.

"The defendant, upon redeeming, is only entitled in justice to have the land restored to him in the same state as to occupiers in which it was when the ejectment was brought; and we recommend that the law should be amended in this respect. The possession of the under-tenants, or occupiers, who were upon the land when the process commenced, should, for this purpose, be treated as the possession of the lessee."

It is almost unnecessary to say, that the restitution of the interest of the mesne lessee by redemption, involves as a matter of course, as the law now stands, the restitution of all the minor interests derived under him—Who could have "suggested" such nonsense to the commissioners?—In like manner, the notices which they suggest in cases of ejectment and distress, are at this moment absolutely indispensable to render either proceedings valid.

Now, in this statement, the learned gentleman has not given even the particular year in which these evictions are said to have taken place; neither did he specify the period within which a third of the population of that county are said to have been displaced; while the land commissioners themselves admit, that the number of ejectment decrees obtained in all parts of Ireland, bear no proportion to the number of processes issued, and that those again are infinitely greater than the numbers which are executed. This Mr O'Connell well knows to be the case; because in a country where distress cannot be made available, the landlords have recourse to ejectment as the only means by which they can coerce their tenants into payment of the rent. All the assistant barristers in their evidence bear testimony to this fact, and to the comparatively few decrees under which possession is taken. Mr Tickell, one of those gentlemen, states that, according to the clerk of the peace's return made to him, the number of ejectments entered in the years 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843, in his court, were 1753, and there were decrees or dismissals in 1210 of those cases. He is asked—"10. Have you any opportunity of knowing whether a considerable proportion of those cases in which decrees are so made are carried into effect?—"There is in the county of Armagh a very intelligent sub-sheriff, Mr McKinstry, and he informed his brother, the deputy-clerk of the peace, that the number of warrants signed by him as sub-sheriff in the last five years was, according to the best of his knowledge and computation, about seventy in each year; and that of these seventy, he thought not more then one-fourth was put in force; so as to cause a change of tenancy, certainly not more than one-third."

So that out of 1765 processes issued in one of the most populous counties within five years, only about 350 decrees were presented to the sheriff for signature; and that officer declared, he thought that not more than a fourth of the number (90) were put in execution—and this gives an annual average of about 23. But had the number of ejectments in Tipperary been as great as Mr O'Connell asserts, still the eviction of the tenantry would have been fully justified; for we have the evidence of Mr Sergeant Howley, the assistant barrister, to prove that no tenant was so proceeded against who did not owe an enormous arrear. This gentleman is asked—"6. In your experience, has it occurred to you to observe whether, in the majority of cases, more than a year's rent has been usually due, or just enough to found a suit?—My experience enables me to say, that more than a year's rent, and frequently three years' rent, is due before an ejectment is brought."

Mr Dillon O'Brien, a sessions attorney in that same county, and an out-and-out follower of Mr O'Connell, admits—"That the landlords have recourse to ejectment more as a means of getting the rent, than of evicting the tenantry." The Liberator's reference to Tipperary is an unfortunate one for his purposes; for not only have we it in our power to prove, by the most unimpeachable evidence, that comparatively few evictions or consolidations of farms have taken place there, but we can demonstrate most satisfactorily, that the tenantry in this bloodstained district hold on the most moderate terms as regards rent, in general by a lease, and that they are in the full enjoyment of "the tenant-right," the honourable gentleman's most favourite panacea.—Mr Thomas O'Brien, an extensive land-valuator, in a letter written to Mr Colles, the superintendent of Trinity College estates, (which was laid before the land commissioners,) writes—"I will say that Kerry tenants pay the highest rents I have met with in any part of Ireland, and Tipperary men the lowest."

Mr Griffith, the able engineer under whose superintendence the government valuation is being made, and who, as he states himself, has walked over nearly every part of Ireland, and has personal knowledge of almost every locality, is asked—"In the county of Tipperary, can you say whether the tenant-right prevails there?"—"The tenants generally hold under leases there; but the tenant-right does prevail to such an extent, that few are bold enough to take the land where a tenant has been dispossessed."

Mr Nicolas Maher, the Repeal member for the county, replies to the question—"Do you understand at all in Tipperary what is known in the north of Ireland as the tenant-right, by which a tenant, without a lease, expects a sum of money for giving up the possession of the land, either from the landlord if taking possession, or from another tenant to whom he may give up the farm?"—"That is expected in Tipperary. I have offered myself for fourteen Irish acres to a tenant-at-will who held at thirty shillings an acre; and if that land was to be let to-morrow, I would not charge more for it; so much so do I look on this land as fairly set, that last year and this year I gave this tenant fifteen per cent abatement upon his rent from the fall of agricultural produce, and conceived he had a right to it; and, though there is no lease, I offered him £200 for his interest, which he refused." Without one solitary exception, every witness examined in Tipperary, both at Roscrea and Nenagh, touching the point, by the Land Commissioners, bears testimony to its universal prevalence.

Mr O'Brien Dillon is asked—"73. Does the sale of the good-will of farms prevail much in the district?—Very much, I should say."

Mr Digan.—"39. Is the sale of the good-will of farms the custom of that district?—Yes, for small spots it is.

"40. Is it recognised by the landlord?—It is recognised by the agent. If there is a poor fellow who wishes to go to America, he gets £8 or £10 for his plot of ground, and he will let him go off if he gets a better tenant.

"41. Do they generally ask the agent's permission?—Sometimes, and sometimes not."

The Rev. William Minchin.—"73. Is the sale of the good-will of farms prevalent in the district, and recognised by the landlords?—Yes; it is quite recognised.

"74. Is the value of it increasing or diminishing?—I do not see any thing to make land decrease, though of course the purchase of the good-will will bear a proportion to the rent that the land bears.

"75. Suppose the landlord requires the land for himself, to add to his demesne, does he pay the usual price?—Yes, in general he does.

"76. Has there been any consolidation of farms?—No, not in the neighbourhood; nothing to any extent worth speaking of."

George Heenan, Esq., after stating the existence of the practice, is asked—"88. Does it take place in reference to lands held at will?—Yes; and for lands held at will the sum is altogether disproportioned to the apparent value of the interest given.

"89. Does a man purchase without knowing whether he will be recognised as the tenant?—Yes; I have known many instances of that.

"90. In case of a landlord taking land himself from a tenant, would he be expected to pay him for the possession of it?—Certainly, provided the rent of it was clear and the land was taken up, it would be expected he should pay him liberally for it;" and he further says, "in confirmation of the correctness of a former part of my evidence relating to the sale of the good-will of the land, I beg to produce a document which has recently come into my hands. The farm in question consists of fourteen acres Irish, which but three years ago was set by me to a tenant from year to year. The purchase to which the document refers, was effected without the consent of the proprietor, or of his agent. [The witness delivered in the following paper:—]

"Received from Michael Scully, £34 for all my land in Ballywilliam, containing fourteen acres, with all my wheat, dung, manure, &c.; and Michael Scully pledges himself to pay Ford Ross one half-year's rent of the said lands, now due—amount, £5:11:8. Given under our hands, at Ballywilliam, this 11th day of March 1843.

"£34.

his
"JOHN X HORAN.
mark.
her
"CATHERINE X HORAN.
mark.

"Present, Patrick Scully."

"Received from Michael Scully, the sum of £10 sterling, being the consideration for one and one-half acre of the lands of Ballywilliam, for seven years, commencing 1st November last 1842, and ending 1st November 1849. Dated this 19th December 1842.

"£10.

his
"JOHN X HORAN.
mark.
her
"CATHERINE X HORAN.
mark.

"Present, Patrick Scully."

Mr John Kennedy, who denies altogether the existence of any such system, admits—"That though the landlords never, in any instance, give remuneration for improvements, they always give money for subsistence and support;" and with regard to the incoming tenant he naïvely observes—"How they dispose of it is this: another tenant proposes to come and get it, and the other tenant is sure to be murdered if he does not give him something, and he gives him something; or, however long he has been out of possession, he will be either murdered or burnt, or his stock maimed, if he does not do something in that way."

Neither is the assertion that evictions of the tenantry, to any extent, have taken place, borne out by the evidence; and where such have occurred, it is admitted, or proved in the explanations of the accused, that non-payment of rent, and general misconduct, were the causes to which they might be attributed.

Mr Dennis Kennedy is asked—"56. Has there been any consolidation of farms in the district?—No, not in my district."

Mr Michael Digan—"46. Has there been any consolidation of farms in the district with which you are acquainted in the county of Tipperary?—No. In my immediate neighbourhood the cottier system of having five or six acres is more practised than in the county of Clare."

And where any instances have been adduced, on turning to the explanations we find they were fully merited; while many alluded to by the priests and agitators will give some idea of the lengths those persons go, and the distance of time they are compelled to travel back to support their assertions. One man, Mr John Moylan, refers to "exterminations" which occurred just thirty years ago "on the estate of Mr Kinahan;" and was replied to by that gentleman's son, who states "that his father paid the then tenants £10,000 for their interest."

All the witnesses bear testimony to the mild manner in which those removals, necessary for the good of all parties, have been effected.

Mr Edward Byrne is asked—"35. Does the landlord, in general, remove for any other reason than considering that the lands are too thickly populated?—I never heard of the landlords putting them out, except that the land was too much divided, or too much devoted to the support of those families, that nothing would be left to pay the rent."

And Mr John Meagher—"27. When there is a large number of tenants upon a townland, what do they do when the middleman's lease expires?—I never knew them to do any thing harsh to them; they let them pull on one with another, except where some of their lands are mixed with their own, and they get some of the land to themselves.

"28. Do they give the tenants any thing in that case?—Yes, they forgive them what is due; and I knew one landlord to give a man £24 for leaving four acres, and forgave him what was due, and he was tenant-at-will."

Mr O'Brien Dillon, who has been proved to be very inaccurate in his statements, and who most probably, if asked to name the instances, could not adduce one, is forced to admit the paucity of their numbers—"67. Have tenants who have made improvements been ejected in order to get in fresh tenants, or been charged a higher rent themselves?—I do not know of any having been ejected on that estate for that reason; but there are some few instances in which they have been so treated: I should say, not generally; very few instances indeed."

Now, touching the disputed point of want of tenant-right, and insecurity of tenure, and displacement of the tenantry, we have quoted only the evidence of small farmers and some few agents, with one exception Roman Catholics, and to a man devoted followers of Mr O'Connell; if they have not heard of those dispossessions, and prove on oath the existence of that which he denies, what value should we place upon his statements—"that the enormous extent of the evictions in Tipperary, and the want of security in possession, have been the active causes of the state of crime in that county?" We have the sworn testimony of reluctant witnesses against the honourable gentleman's whole assertions. What becomes, then, of the one hundred and fifty thousand "men in buckram?" Could a third of the population have been dispossessed unknown to their neighbours?

It is not only proved that the Tipperary men in general hold by lease; but that, in some instances, when leases are offered them, they refuse to accept them.

Mr Maher, M.P., (then agent for his relative Mr Valentine Maher,) states, "that some four years ago, his principal ordered him to grant leases to any one who wished for them; that he announced this to the tenantry, and that on an estate containing 19,000 acres only six or seven parties made application, and not one of these afterwards took them out." We could adduce other testimony. We have selected Mr Maher's, because he will not be suspected of any undue leaning against the people, and because his estate is admitted to be most reasonably let. It is further proved, and every man who has any knowledge of Ireland knows the fact, that the most comfortable and improving tenantry hold at will. Mr Guinness, the extensive agent, holding employments in twenty-seven counties, and himself a proprietor in Tipperary, confirms the fact of leases being generally granted in that county; and contrasts the state of the inhabitants with that of Wexford, one of the most improved districts in Ireland, where the land is much worse in quality, the rents much higher, and the tenantry peaceable and independent, and almost universally tenants-at-will. And Mr Kincaid, the head of one of the largest agency houses in the kingdom, says in his examination—"I may state generally, that I never knew a case of a tenant inclined to improve, who declined making such improvements for want of a lease." But if the causes to which Mr O'Connell assigns the state of the disturbed counties be untenable as regards Tipperary, they are still more so as regards the others. It is admitted by all the witnesses who have been examined before the land commission touching the condition of Clare, Limerick, and Roscommon, that the tenant-right or "good-will" is recognized in these districts; that the evictions of the tenantry, or consolidation of the farms, have not been carried to any extent; and that, when such have taken place, most liberal allowances were given by the landlords.—Our space will not permit us to give extracts. But as regards Leitrim, the county next in criminality to Tipperary, there is not a shadow of any such excuses for agrarian disturbance in that district. There have been neither evictions nor consolidation, even to the most trifling extent;[6] and yet in this county, in which there is nothing to qualify agrarian outrage, we find, according to Sir James Graham's statement, the number of crimes committed in 1844 to be 226, and in 1845, 922. Amongst those who have spoken to the condition of this county, and who reside in the most disturbed parts, is the Rev. George Geraty, parish priest, who is asked—"30. Has there been any considerable consolidation of farms in your neighbourhood?—No; the population is as dense as it was formerly: there may be a few isolated cases."

Mr G. H. Peyton.—"22. Has there been any consolidation of farms in that neighbourhood?—No, I have not known of any for some years past."

Major Jones.—"44. Has the consolidation of farms taken place to any extent in the district?—No; no man is ever ejected if he pays his rent. It does not signify who he is, or what he is."

Touching the tenant-right, which is admitted to exist by Mr Geraty, the priest, Mr Burchall Lindsay is asked—"49. Is the sale of the good-will of farms prevalent in the district, and to whom is the purchase-money paid?—It is; and the money is paid to the tenant."

Mr Little, in answer to the same question, says, "Yes." He is further asked—"42. How far is it recognised by the landlords?—The landlord merely consents to the party coming in: he does not interfere with the tenant disposing of his interest, if he gets a decent man and an honest man for a tenant, whose character is recommended. He has no objection to the tenant disposing of his farm to the best advantage."

If we test the amount of rent by making the usual addition of 25 per cent to the government valuation, it will appear that in this county the tenantry pay for good land not more than seven shillings the acre; and this certainly is not a price which should produce either poverty or outrage. But it may be said, perhaps, the landlords are non-resident and negligent: the people have no example set them; they have no knowledge of a proper system of cultivation; and hence the poverty which generates crime. It so happens, however, that there are not better or more painstaking landlords in England than are to be found in this very district, and in the adjoining and equally disturbed county of Cavan. The Lord Primate has a large estate in Leitrim, and in the most disorganized part, on which he has had a Scotch agriculturist for the last sixteen years, merely for the purpose of instructing his tenantry. His grace is a model in every position of life; but as a landlord he is most conspicuous. Mr Latouche has an immense tract of land. He, too, has a Scotch steward for the same purpose; and his brother, who is his agent and resides on the estate, was regularly qualified by an agricultural education. The Earl of Leitrim has a Scotch steward: so has Mr White, Mr Simpson, Mr Crofton, and a host of minor proprietors who reside in the neighbourhood; and it is an important fact, that for the last three years, during which crime has so awfully increased, a great additional source of employment has been given the people by the improvement of the navigation of the Shannon.

"The Times Commissioner" has fallen into a great error in attributing the disturbances in Leitrim to evictions and non-resident landlords. He asserts—"There are no resident landlords in the neighbourhood of Balnamory," where the direct contrary is the truth, all the proprietors to any considerable extent being resident Irish landlords. Again he writes—"Nearly the same thing may be said of the parish of Cloone, the headquarters of Molly Maguire. In the Appendix to the Report of the Land Commission, Part II., page 90, Henry Smith, of Kells, in this county, swears to ejectments served on twenty-eight families, consisting of one hundred and fifty. He swears to seven families being ejected there in 1843, and of sixty-four people being ejected out of Irishtown, who owed no rent and received no compensation." Now Kells, where those evictions were said to have taken place, is in the county Meath, about fifty Irish miles from Cloone, where the commissioner states they occurred. We have only to refer our readers to the evidence of Mr Sergeant, the agent of the Marquis of Headfort, to show how unfounded the charge was, that so many people were ejected even there. The evidence of this gentleman was before the commissioner, and he should have attended to it.

The Gerrard case, of which we heard so much, ought to be a caution to those who put faith in the statements of the Repeal press, or of the Irish agitators. Yet the explanation given by Mr Gerrard does not seem to satisfy the Times. That journal indignantly asks, "Why did he suffer beggars to be bred upon his estate?" How could he prevent it? "He remonstrated; but because the people held under a lease, (or a written agreement, which was of equal value,) he could do no more." But suppose he had power to prevent "this propagation of beggars," how could he exercise it in the present state of Ireland? The same system of abuse and execration would have met him at every step he took. If his tenants were tenants-at-will, with the utmost vigilance, squatters would most likely have been admitted on his land, and have been living under the same roof with the holder of the farm, long before he was able to discover it; and when he did, his only resource would have been to serve notice to quit, and eject. He must then put out all parties; and the cry of extermination would have been then raised as loudly as it is now, and the Punishment of Death would, if there were but an opportunity to execute it, as inevitably have followed. Having granted a lease, the only power Mr Gerrard could exercise he did. If Irish landowners give leases, they cannot prevent "the propagation of beggars;" and if they refuse to do so, for the very purpose of guarding against this evil, they are denounced as men who keep their tenantry in dread of being dispossessed, and who effectually prevent the improvement of the country, by not giving to the tillers of the soil security of tenure. To talk of clauses against subletting is sheer nonsense. How are such clauses to be enforced? The penalties can only be levied by distress. No man can make distress available for the recovery of rent, much less so for a penalty inflicted on an occupier, because he gave one-third of his farm to a son, another to a married daughter, and thus planted three families on that portion of his estate which the landlord designed for the comfortable support of one.

We are told those persons have been turned out to starve. They have the poor-house to go to, if they wish; but, if they had not this resource, their condition should not excite much sympathy. They had the landlord's property for four years, without paying any rent—they took all their crops away with them; and if they were so improvident as to spend all they made, they were entitled to but little of our commiseration. It so happens that Mr Gerrard is a very rich man, and can afford this loss; but hundreds of cases are there where poor men, with large families, and with heavy encumbrances put on their properties by their ancestors, are similarly treated. They are compelled, by the dishonesty of the tenantry, to sell the "homes of their fathers," and emigrate to foreign lands. But there is no expression of sympathy for them. No; "they belong to the upper classes;" "they can suffer nothing on such occasions." 'Tis only the people who can feel, "only the people who ought to be compassionated." Strange as it may appear to those who choose to indulge in remarks on subjects with which they are perfectly unacquainted, and who put forward their nostrums for diseases of which they do not understand the nature, not only is it proved, that generally, in Ireland, the tenantry without leases, and holding at fair rents, are in better circumstances than those occupying under old leases, and paying very low rents; but it is made manifest, by undoubted testimony, that the possession of a farm, at an under rent, and for a long tenure, almost universally leads to poverty and ruin; and any person who knows the Irish character can easily account for this seeming anomaly. The love of display and the spirit of ambition which pervade all classes in Ireland, leads every one to assume a station, and incur an expenditure, far beyond what his circumstances would entitle him to. The shopkeeper styles himself a merchant, and must have a car and a country-house; the man who has a long lease of fifty or sixty acres at an under rent, sets up at once for what is significantly termed a "half sir;" he will be quite above doing any thing for himself, and will keep two or three servant-maids, while he has four or five "young ladies" walking about doing nothing. The time which should be devoted to business, is by all classes consumed in pleasure or in politics; and the consequences are to be seen in the embarrassments of the gentry, the bankruptcy of the tradesmen, and the poverty of the people.

"I have found by experience," says Mr Wilson—a large proprietor and most painstaking landlord of the county Clare, who was examined before the commission—"that leases are positive bars to improvement, however low the rent; and I hand in several cases as proving my assertion." Amongst them was one statement furnished by Mr Fitzgerald, the agent of Mr Vandeleur, of the condition of the tenantry on a large farm of that gentleman's estate which had lately fallen out of lease. "This tract of land was divided into seven parts, six of which were originally let to persons who under-let at very considerable profit-rents to others; on those divisions the occupying tenantry were, in general, in comfortable circumstances." The seventh portion had been leased to persons in the rank of cotters or small farmers, "and their families are still in possession, all of them in a state of poverty, although there were only eight holdings on a hundred and seventeen plantation acres, and they paid but £27: 10s: 2 for that extent of land, which was valued under the poor-law valuation at £68, and in addition to which they had a considerable extent of mountain and bog." Mr Lambert, an extensive farmer in Mayo, declares—"I see among the poor people having land, that those who have leases are much less inclined to make improvements than those who have not." Mr Kelly of Galway, a large proprietor, is asked—"What effect has tenure at will upon the tenants, or the improvement of their farms?" and he answers—"I think it makes exactly this difference: The man who has a fixed tenure considers that he cannot be put out; he immediately mismanages the farm—he sublets, divides, and the whole thing is lost." Mr Fetherston of Westmeath states the particulars of a farm of which he holds a division at £2 an acre, and small tenants hold the other parts on lease at eighteen shillings an acre, in divisions of from ten to twelve acres, "and they are in want. Those men will work ten hours a-day for him at tenpence, yet they won't till their own lands; and when they do any thing, they never commence to work before nine o'clock in the morning." And he gives an instance of a labourer of his own to whom he gave two and a half acres of the same land, which was a perfect waste, at his own rent, (two pounds an acre;) and by his industry this man supports a large family on this small and dear spot, while those about him who have good-sized farms of better land, at less than half rent on lease, "are starving."

Mr Spottiswood, who holds many extensive agencies, including Lord Londonderry's and Sir Robert Bateson's, states that part of the properties with which he is connected have been leased in perpetuity in small quantities; and he adds, that such mode of letting "has not a good effect at all." He is asked—"Do you find that the tenants are less industrious?" "Yes, they are paying the present proprietor, in many instances, not more than two-and-sixpence or five shillings an acre; they are quite independent of their landlords, who have no control over them."—"How do you suppose that their poverty arose?" "I think it arose from the subdivision of the properties; and the parties feeling a sort of independence, they do not think it necessary to become industrious, depending upon their farms for their support, and paying these very small rents;" and Mr Fagoe says—"I must admit that there are tenants who hold old leases, whose farms are very badly cultivated."

We have now quoted authorities from all quarters of Ireland, to show that the want of tenure cannot be the cause of the poverty of the people, or the bad cultivation of the land; but that, in point of fact, it has directly the contrary effect. Almost the whole of Earl Fitzwilliam's tenantry hold at will; and Mr Furlong, the agent, swears that two-thirds of the Devon estate "is set from year to year;" if this be a bad system, why do those noblemen practise it?—if a good one, why condemn others for acting as they do themselves?

By the agitators, the deplorable state of the Irish people is, on all occasions, attributed to the want of security in possession, and to the exorbitance of the rents. We have already, we trust, disposed of the former, more particularly as regards the disturbed counties. We shall now apply ourselves to ascertain the truth of the latter assertion; and the evidence taken before Lord Devon's Committee, strange as it may appear from the nature of the report, proves to a demonstration, that in those parts of the country where the land is worst and highest rented, the people live in contentment and affluence; and that those parts in which the rents are lowest, and the soil richest, are stained with the commission of the most abominable atrocities; and yet, with those facts staring them in the face, we find the government ready to adopt the suggestions of men who live by levying tribute on the people whose wretchedness they affect to deplore, because the opinions of those persons happen to be backed by a report utterly at variance with the evidence on which it purports to be founded.

As if there must be blunders in every thing connected with Ireland, Mr Griffith, the government engineer, was sent forth to make his valuation, according to a scale of prices furnished him, of the principal agricultural productions of the country, from which two of the most important—namely, flax and wool—were altogether omitted; and by this means he found himself obliged to exclude from his consideration the staple crop of the country when he was valuing the land in the north, and the clip of the grazier when he was estimating the rich pastures of the west. "Previous to commencing the valuation of the counties of Derry and Antrim, in the year 1830," (says Mr Griffith in his examination,) "I ascertained that the general average prices for agricultural produce throughout the principal markets of Ireland, for the preceding five years, were one-eighth, or two-and-sixpence in the pound, higher than those contained in the Act; and, consequently, the amount of valuation, according to the Act prices, should be in each case one-eighth less than if the valuation were made according to the then prices." Now, we beg to impress upon the minds of our readers, that this valuation, by which the fairness of the rents in Ireland is to be tested, was made when the ascertained value of those productions on which it was to be based were 12½ per cent above the prices according to which Mr Griffith was compelled by Act of Parliament to make it; and that the prices of butter, pigs, and cattle, are now, and have been, at least 20 per cent higher since 1830 than before that period; while corn has varied but little, if any thing, from the price it then bore: in short, that almost all the productions on which Mr Griffith's valuation is founded, are now at least 33 per cent higher than they were taken to be in the schedule by which he was guided. We must submit, then, that if the rents paid come within 30 per cent of the government valuation, the amount is less than the circumstances would warrant. And such is the view Mr Griffith himself has taken; for he says—"I have uniformly replied to applications from the guardians of Poor-law Unions, in different parts of the country, respecting the addition that should be made to the amount contained in the printed schedules of the general valuation, to bring it to a rent value, that if one-third be added, the result will give very nearly the full rent-value of the land under ordinary proprietors." But if, on the other hand, we ascertain that the actual rents paid assimilate in a great majority of instances to the government valuation, in those parts of the country where destitution and lawless violence prevail, we must acquit the landlords in those districts of inhumanity and extortion; and this, too, on proofs adduced by an individual whose competency and whose impartiality are alike unimpeachable. "In regard to the difference between the valuation of land adopted by me," (continues Mr Griffith,) "I have to observe, that our valuation is about twenty-five per cent under the full rent-value, but very near that of many of the principal landed proprietors in the country. * * * The foregoing observations will apply to all lands to the eastward of the Shannon; but within the last year, in comparing the valuation made in the county Roscommon with the average letting prices of land in that county, I find that our valuation is not more than 2s. 6d. in the pound, or 12½ per cent, under the letting rents. This does not arise from any change in the relative scale of valuation, but is owing to the poverty of the people, and the injurious system which prevails of burning the upland soils for the purpose of raising crops without the aid of ordinary manure, or new lime, which is abundant in the country; hence the land, though intrinsically of equal value with similar land in the counties of Longford and Westmeath, on the east side of the Shannon, does not bring so high a rent, and yet the people, on an average, are not nearly so well off as those of Westmeath or Longford—their houses, as well as their food and clothing, being inferior. * * * * * On going into the west of Ireland, I found my valuation nearer to the rents than it was near the east coast. I consider that the circumstance arose from want of industry in the people, and their ignorance of the ordinary principles of agriculture, as practised in the districts to the eastward of the Shannon. For these reasons, the small farmers of Roscommon, Mayo, and Galway, do not, on an average, raise the same quantity of produce from land of similar quality and circumstances as do the farmers to the eastward; and hence the rents are necessarily lower, and at the same time the people are not so well off." And on being asked to account for the vast difference between the rents paid in the county Down and his valuation, in answer to the question—"You have stated that the rental in parts of Down is fifty per cent higher than your valuation: is it your opinion that rents in that county are high according to the ability of the people to pay them?" "I think the rentals of the county Down, in proportion to the industry of the people, are not higher than they are in other counties. The people are better off."

"So that the people in the county of Down, paying fifty per cent higher than your valuation, are able to pay that, and yet be comfortable?" "Certainly; they are amongst the most comfortable tenantry in Ireland."

Mr James Clapperton, a Scotchman, agriculturist to the Ballinasloe Farming Society, being asked—"What is the rent here compared with the rent in Berwickshire?" replies, "It is not one-third what some are there." "What would the lands you have described as let here for twenty-one shillings be let for?" "They would be considered cheap at four pounds the acre. The land that lets at one pound an acre here, would give three pounds an acre in the county of Antrim and the north of Ireland."

Mr Andrew Muir and Mr William Milne, Scotch farmers employed by Lord Erne in Fermanagh, after describing the bad cultivation, say:—"They think the land of the same quality in Scotland would fetch £4 the Irish acre." "You think the Scotch farmer could afford to pay £4 an acre, corresponding with this, under the Scotch system?"[7] "Yes, and if he had the advantage of the Scotch markets here."

We have thus proved, we trust, to the satisfaction of our readers, and solely by the evidence of impartial and most competent witnesses, that the exorbitance of the rent cannot possibly be the cause of Irish discontent, because, as we before stated, the most respectable and comfortable tenantry are to be found on the worst and highest-priced lands; and we shall conclude our remarks upon this subject by a quotation from "the Times commissioner" as to the quality of the soil thus moderately rented:—"In no part," says that gentleman, writing from Enniskillen, "have I seen the natural capabilities of the soil and climate surpass those of Ireland, and in no part have I seen those natural capabilities more neglected, more uncultivated, more wasted, than in Ireland. It is now the middle of the hay harvest in Ireland—the meadows, for the most part, are wholly unmanured, and yield simply a natural crop of grass. I speak with confidence when I say, that the quantity of hay cut appears to the eye to be, in proportion to the land, nearly double the amount which ordinary land in England well manured produces; and it is certainly one-fourth more than the best land in England yields; but this is the produce of the unassisted soil and climate. I have seen such crops of potatoes growing as I never saw before."

Security of tenure is amply attained in every part amongst the lower classes, and in their favour—where leases do not exist, the tenant-right, and the system of terror, protects the occupier; and this tenant-right, or "good-will," is admitted to exist in every part of the country—the only difference being found in the persons by whom it is paid, and the purposes to which it is appropriated. In the north, the incoming tenant invariably pays, and the arrears are deducted from the purchase-money, for the benefit of the landlord; while in the west and south it comes direct from the purse of the landlord himself, who never dreams of being allowed what is due him, and is swelled in amount by the conditions of the succeeding holder, who pays for liberty "to occupy and live." Mr O'Connell himself bears testimony to the fact; for although he on all other occasions absolutely denied the existence of any such compact, yet when writhing under the exposures of the "Times commissioner," he claimed merit for having "introduced and extended all over the south the benefit of the tenant-right."[8]

But if the northern tenantry can and do thrive under the double infliction of much higher rents than are paid in other provinces, and of a money outlay for merely getting into the possession of land which would purchase the fee-simple elsewhere, surely this fact furnishes the strongest argument against the truth of the assertion, that the misery and distress which we are told prevail in the west and south, may be attributed to the exactions of the owners of the soil.

Does not the condition of Mr O'Connell's own tenantry bear out our assertions, that indolence, inattention, and want of industry, are the real blights of Irish prosperity? They have no dread of being dispossessed or deprived of the benefit of their improvements; they don't, we are told, pay rack-rents; yet the security which he must feel upon living under the protection of "the Liberator" cannot induce Mr Sullivan, of whose cabin we have given the description, to remove the filth "which has percolated from the cess-pool before his door, and which is trodden into a glutinous substance by the feet and hooves of the semi-naked children and animals who occupy his floor;" nor "to devote so much of his unoccupied time as would be necessary to render waterproof his cabin, which was falling into pieces." Surely, if security of tenure and moderation of rent were alone necessary to ensure happiness, among the tenantry of Mr O'Connell, if any where, comfort and respectability ought to be visible; yet, if we are to credit "the Times commissioner," "on the estates of Daniel O'Connell are to be found the most wretched tenants that are to be seen in all Ireland."

Not only are the southern tenantry averse to taking out leases, as Mr Maher and others state, but they are unwilling to receive, at the hands of their landlords, those comforts of which gentlemen here so feelingly deplore the want; for when a proprietor attempts to give them domestic conveniences or suitable homesteads, he finds that, instead of conferring a favour, he inflicts what is considered a hardship. Mr Maher, M.P., (from whose evidence we have before quoted,) having had the covenants of a lease granted by the Grocers' Company read over to him, in which it is stipulated, "That the tenant shall have slates, tiles, bricks, timber, and lime, delivered free of expense, on condition that he makes use of such materials as are furnished him within a certain period, and under the advice of an appointed agent, and that fences, and quicks, and hay-seed, necessary to complete them, and drains, should be allowed for at a certain rate,"—is asked, "What is your opinion of such a clause as that applied to Tipperary? I apprehend that much in a clause of this kind could not be carried into effect in Tipperary."—"In what do you think it deficient?—what is there which would prevent its being carried into practice? The dispositions of the people do not lead them to look for the comfort which buildings of this kind would give."

"Do you know of any estates in Tipperary in which there are such covenants in leases?—No, I do not. I have heard from the agent of Baron Pennefather, with whom I am intimate, that he has succeeded in some measure in getting slated houses built by the tenants: he advanced the money to the tenants for the houses, charging as rent five per cent upon the money so expended in building." "That is in the case of a lease?—Yes."

"Can you state from your own knowledge, whether in those cases the tenants seem to feel the advantage of having money lent to them on those terms?—I am told that they feel it a hardship, that they look upon it as a hardship to pay this charge, and that they do it with great reluctance." "Does that arise from their inability to pay, or from not appreciating the advantages?—My own opinion is, that it arises not so much from their inability to pay, as their not appreciating the advantages."

"Are the farmers of a respectable class?—Yes, they are a very comfortable class of farmers. I have passed through the estate, and they appeared to me to be so."

"From your knowledge of the state of farming in Tipperary, do you conceive that the produce of the land might be considerably improved by a better system of farming?—I have no doubt of it."

"Would not a better system of farming in some degree be promoted by an improvement in the farm buildings as one means?—Yes, I think so; but I do not think that those men wish for it. In fact, they have not in reality a desire for it—even those that can afford it. I know farmers who could afford to build or make their houses comfortable, and they have no disposition to do it."

Mr Collis, the superintendent of the Trinity College estates, says, "When I spoke to them (the tenants) about improvements, they said as much as that they did not want any, if they would only let them remain as they were."

And Mr Walker, an extensive agent, says—"I have induced some of Mr Stafford O'Brien's tenantry to engage in raising green crops, but, when left to themselves, they have invariably gone back to their old system, even although satisfied that it was remunerating while they followed it, but it gave them too much trouble." Yet these are the people who are said to want employment while they refuse to cultivate their own farms—"are so loudly compassionated on account of the huts in which they live"—and who consider it a hardship "to be compelled to have better."

What an incomprehensible set of men are the Irish patriotic members! In the extracts which we have given from Lord Devon's Blue-Book, we have Mr Maher, one of the most respectable of them, swearing an oath that clauses in a lease, by means of which "all the materials for building, clearing, and fencing, are proposed to be given for nothing provided the tenantry only used them, could not be carried into effect in Tipperary because the dispositions of the people don't lead them to wish for the comforts which buildings of this kind would give." And we find the same gentleman one of the party of declaimers against the tyranny of Irish landlords, who state in the House of Commons that the peace of "Ireland can only be secured by giving the tenant 'contingent compensation,' for improvements which, he swears, they cannot be induced to make, even where the materials are furnished for nothing, and where the labour is immediately paid for."

The same man, who supports O'Connell in his assertions that exorbitant rents are the cause of Irish poverty, gave before the commissioners the following opinion under the obligation of an oath—"54. If the occupiers are not prosperous, do you attribute that more to the mismanagement of their farms, rather than to the rate of rents?—Yes, indeed I do; to their badly farming the land in many instances."

And it is undoubtedly true that it is not improvement in their condition, or their comforts, which the Irish tenantry desire, if those are to be acquired at the cost of labour and exertion; what they wish for are low rents, which they can easily discharge, without restricting their pleasures or their amusements; and the fact is, that from the exertions lately made by the landlords to better the condition of their estates, arises all the outcry which has been raised against them. Had the old system been persevered in, it would have been much more agreeable to the people. In their operations the proprietors were necessarily compelled to dispossess some, because the ground they had to dispose of could not possibly, if even given rent-free, support the numbers of inhabitants upon it; but this distressing task has been performed in almost all cases with the most extraordinary kindness; and we venture to assert, that in the whole of the evidence laid before Lord Devon's committee, five well substantiated instances cannot be adduced in the rural districts, in which rent-paying and well-conducted tenantry were evicted; and not one in which any tenant has been removed without receiving some compensation—while what is pompously denounced as consolidation of farms, amounts to having increased the holdings of the occupants, in many cases, from a rood to two acres, "and in others to the enormous extent of eight." But was not this change unavoidable? Could the old system have been longer persevered in? Let us see the opinion of the late Dr Doyle, Roman Catholic Bishop of Carlow, a man of extraordinary talents, and perfect knowledge of the situation of Ireland. Speaking of the necessity of preventing subdivision, and of increasing the holdings to such a size as would afford employment and adequate support to the occupiers, Dr Doyle says—"Had the evil gone much further, the misery would of necessity have increased. It was, indeed, essentially necessary to the good of the country that the system should be corrected, and every wise man applauds those measures which were taken for the correction of it."

As regards the humanity of the affair, sure we are that it is more to the interest of the dispossessed to be afforded the means of going to countries where land is plenty, and labour well remunerated, than to be allowed to remain at home in squalid misery and idleness. Advantage was taken of the dispossession of the people under any circumstances by the agitators—it was found to be a good subject by means of which the passions of the sufferers could be excited; and they have made a handsome harvest of it.

But it is not enough for our purpose to show that the tenantry are averse to have improvements thrust upon them—it is necessary that we should exhibit their conduct towards those who have endeavoured to improve their condition, or to set them examples by following which they would be sure to profit; and above all we wish to place before the public, in its true light, the behaviour of the labouring classes which has called forth so fully the approbation of the Devon Commissioners, and to prove that it is principally the misconduct of those very men which tends to their own disadvantage, and to the ruin of their country; and again we have recourse to the Blue-Book.

Mr Quin, whose good conduct as a landlord was borne testimony to by his neighbours, and approved of after a public investigation by Lord Ebrington, wished to occupy some of his own lands to build a mansion, and give employment to the people; he determined not to turn off a single man, and this he told them personally. To provide for those he must dispossess of their present holdings, he purchased the good-will of another part of his own property, sold by the executors of a deceased tenant, where he purposed to locate them, and there he sent his steward (Mr Powell) down to commence improvements. The wretched man was murdered in the arms of his daughter, and the first who struck him was a monster he was forbidden to employ, but to whom he had given work from compassion. "I saw the man," said he to his master in explanation of his conduct, "living in such a wretched hovel; I had pity on him, and could not help employing him." An anonymous letter, written to the unhappy victim previous to his murder, and warning him of his fate, is characteristic of the cool barbarity with which those "patient people" undertake a murder—of the sordid calculations which retard or accelerate its commission—and of the gratitude which they evince to those who, following the recommendation of the Commissioners, "endeavour to introduce an improved system of agriculture, and thereby extend the employment of the agricultural population:"—

"Honoured Sir,—I take the liberty on myself in sending you these few lines, informing your honour that you and Mr Quin, Esq., is to be shot the first opportunity, and if you had paid the men that worked at the drain when it was done, you were killed long ago. Now they have sat on it, there are some of them that would wish to have it done at where you live at present.... They have made a collection, and the man that kills you will go to America... They have heard that you are one of the skilfullest men in Ireland for planting and making drains; and they are saying that if they had you killed, he (Mr Quin) would never come to the country. If you don't take my advice, your daughter will cry salt tears. And be God you will be killed."

Mr Armstrong, the history of whose persecutions is well worth the trouble of reading, says—"In the same summer I was fallowing and preparing at considerable expense a field for wheat. Every one exclaimed at the folly of sowing wheat in that country; but finding that this would not dissuade me from my plan, one of the most respectable men in the neighbourhood told me, that 'the country' thought it a bad example to bring in new plans, and that he had himself 'declined to sow wheat, rather than get the ill-will of the people.' I said I really could not see 'what offence this could give to any man.' 'Oh,' said he, 'you know if the landlords saw the ground producing wheat and good crops, they would raise the rent.' Determined, however, that nothing less than a failure after trial should convince me of 'the folly of sowing wheat,' I ventured to do so, and it turned out very fine, producing thirteen barrels to the acre; but I was obliged to keep a guard watching for two months, as a man who lived close to the spot told me, that it would 'be mowed down in the shot-blade; bekase the country did not like whate there at all at all.'"

Many similar instances could we adduce from the same source, did our limits permit; but we have only to refer to what is daily occurring in Ireland, to show the utter impossibility of the gentry making any efforts to improve their own estates, or the condition of the tenantry, under existing circumstances. Men here talk flippantly of the evils of absenteeism, while they are the very first to object to measures which would render it possible for landlords to reside at home. A coercion act is opposed, while Sir Francis Hopkins, a resident and admirable landlord, is fired at at his own hall door, and for what? because, six years ago, he dispossessed an insolvent tenant, "forgiving his arrears, and paying him his own valuation for his interest;" while the life of Sir David Roche is attempted, because "he refused to assist a tenant to turn out his brother's widow while her husband lay on his bed of death, hardly allowing the body to get cold, when he insisted that he should help him to add the widow's holding to his own."[9]

Mr Wilson of Clare, a gentleman whose exertions to improve the condition of his tenantry are fully detailed in the Devon Blue-Book; who allowed the entire cost for subsoiling and fencing; who provided all the materials for his tenants' houses, requiring only that they should perform the labour, for which they were subsequently to be allowed on their rents; who founded an agricultural school and benevolent fund, and visited and inspected the improvements which he paid for; while, we say, Mr Wilson, (a Roman Catholic, too,) who performed all his duties as well as we could wish them performed, is threatened with death, and obliged to desert his property, and fly his country, and for what? why, simply because he dared, in the distribution of a farm containing one hundred and forty acres, to reserve four for the use of a faithful servant, whose honesty and attachment he wished to reward; and because, as we are told by the member for Ennis, "he was fond of a draining and subsoiling system, which he wished to have practised, but which his tenants did not like." "The fact was," (the candid, if not discreet, Mr Bridgeman is reported to have said,) "the people who sent those notices had no intention to assassinate Mr Wilson at all—they sent the notices, thinking to frighten him out of his subsoiling." Now, we have the admission of this favourite "Joint off the Tail," that the people are not anxious for those improvements, which we are told here they so much long for; that they do not wish to improve the condition of their land or their homesteads, even when they are paid for doing so; and that the recompense which those men meet with who endeavour to induce them to be industrious, by paying them for doing their own business, and who seek to procure them employment at home, instead of sending them to England or Scotland to seek it, is notice of assassination to frighten them from giving employment, and, no doubt, death if they persevere. But is Mr Bridgeman reported to have expressed any condemnation of the conduct of those men?—Not a bit of it; and yet he is one of the set of brawlers against the evils of absenteeism, one of the persons who attribute the poverty of the peasantry to the neglect of their landlords, and one of those who will strenuously oppose the enactment of laws which would give security to the gentry and protection to the farmer, and, by restraining the violence of the labouring classes, lead to the pacification and prosperity of the country. But such a condition of things is just what Mr Bridgeman, and those like him, wish to avoid. In a wholesome state of society, men of his station in life could never have been pitchforked into Parliament. If agitation ceased they must again betake themselves to the tillage of their farms, according to ministerial doctrine, and be compelled to become industrious when they ceased to be PROTECTED.

Mr Clarke is shot in Tipperary, because he came to reside on his land; and his murder was plotted and executed, not because he did harm or injustice to any one, but because he ventured to do what Lord Grey and others, who "pick their teeth" in safety here, insist that Irish gentlemen should do—he dared to live on his own land. The approver—in whose house the assassination was planned, and in which the assassins resided while waiting an opportunity to destroy their victim—declared, in his examination on their trial, "that he was a good friend to him," and that he never knew him to distrain any man for rent, and yet he gave him no notice; and the intended murder was openly spoken of before a numerous family of children—ay, girls of fifteen years of age were privy to it; and yet no compunctious feelings touched their hearts. One of them, in giving her testimony, admitted that she knew what the men meant to do when they were leaving the house; and that, when she heard the shot, she was convinced that her landlord had been murdered.

In passing sentence on two of the persons convicted of this dreadful outrage at Nenagh, on the 3d, Judge Ball said—"With regard to you, Patrick Rice, I have searched in vain through the evidence for something that might suggest a motive for joining in the conspiracy. There was no evidence that you had any dealing or transaction with the unfortunate murdered man. There was no connexion between you in any way, and not the slightest ground for resentment or provocation that could be traced. As for you, Hayes, (the other prisoner,) your case is much the same. You were a tenant of Mr Clarke's; there is evidence that he expressed some wish that you or your mother should give up a house; and he offered you every facility to build a house elsewhere, and to supply you with materials, and the means of removing them, with his own horses and drags. It has been said that this desire of his might have suggested a motive for the murder; but when the evidence comes to be given, I find that you and your mother, instead of expressing displeasure, expressed a readiness to give up the house after harvest." Here is a man murdered for merely proposing change of locality, which must be accompanied, as a matter of course, by better accommodation. This is his only crime, and yet it is sufficient to secure his destruction. What a grateful people are the Irish!—how patiently they endure wrong!—and what a picture of their morality do the details of this horrid assassination afford!

But it is not alone the landlords who become obnoxious to the peasantry, when they seek to do them good by giving them profitable employment. The same hostility is extended to others who attempt the same object, if they endeavour to get "a fair day's work for a fair day's wages." Mr M'Donald, the superintendent of the Killaloe Slate Quarries, was shot at and desperately wounded in the presence of three men, who refused to arrest the assassin, for no other reason than because he endeavoured to have justice done his employers; and the following extract from the report of the Irish Mining Company of Ireland, contains the particulars of as wanton an outrage as can well be conceived:—

"At Earlshill Colliery, possession of which was recovered on 4th of April last, considerable progress had been made in sinking two engine-pits, one of which was sunk forty-four yards, the other twenty-six yards, on the 20th October, when the steward in charge of the works, Martin Morris, was shot at and severely wounded on his return from the colliery to his house; and although large rewards have been offered for information that might lead to the conviction of the authors and perpetrators of the outrage, they have not been made amenable to justice. And your board having reason to believe that the outrage was contemplated with a view to impede free action by your agents in the proper management of the works, and having been satisfied, on minute inquiry, that there was no cause of complaint on the part of the men employed against the steward or manager of the works; and some of the men employed on contract, subsequent to the outrage committed on Martin Morris, having received threatening notices to resign their contracts on pain of death, your board deemed it advisable, means not having been yet devised for affording due protection to the men employed, to order that the works should be suspended on the 20th December; and the works have been suspended accordingly. The working of South Balinaslick Colliery has been suspended for the same reason—Martin Morris having had charge of the underground works in both collieries. If your board and its agents in the management of those works had neglected the moral duties of such an establishment as yours in this important district, some excuse might be offered by the Guild for the outrage committed—the first, however, your board has had to complain of during twenty years that your works have been in operation; but the following facts prove that the company's duties have been duly and literally attended to. The men are promptly paid weekly—contractors as well as daily labourers. The contractors at Earlshill, at the period in which the outrage was committed, earned on an average 2s. 6d. per day, some so much as 3s. The average rate earned at the entire of the company's works at the same period was 2s. 1d. per day, whilst the customary rate of wages paid to farm labourers in the district is but from 8d. to 10d. per day. When circumstances admitted, houses of a better description than usual in the district have been erected for the men; schools have been provided at the principal works, and several of the children and adults educated. They are now employed as stewards and clerks. When it has been necessary to levy fines for inattention, the amount has been uniformly applied, at this season of the year, in providing comforts for the deserving men's families. In times of scarcity, good and cheap food has been provided, and distributed at low prices; and at all times the men and their families have the advantage of good medical aid when required. Under those circumstances your board feel confident that the perpetrators of the outrage on Martin Morris—a man deservedly raised from the ranks to a place of trust in his native village—will not be permitted to remain unpunished; and that the projected extension of the works will soon be resumed, with advantage to the well-disposed workmen, and through them to the company and the country."

Neither is this a solitary instance. The contractors on the Shannon improvements and many of the railroads, where the labourers earned 9s. a-week, were compelled to suspend their operations because those turbulent people turned out for wages so exorbitant that no contractor could afford to pay them; and not only stopped working themselves, but forced those who were anxious to earn a livelihood to give up also. We are told that the Irish peasantry wish for employment on any terms; yet, when it is offered them at their very doors, and when they can earn wages such as never before were paid them, they shoot the stewards, and compel the abandonment of the undertakings.

Mr Collis, a gentleman who entertains very strong opinions in favour of the peasantry, is obliged to admit, in his evidence before Lord Devon's Committee, what is borne testimony to by many others, the existence of a reign of terror exercised by the labourers over their employers. Alluding to a visit which he paid to the College estates, and an interview he had with the people, he says—"I must also mention that I heard that day from respectable occupying tenants, one in particular in the lower class of life, and also from his wife when he was absent, that she was dread of her life; that her husband was in distress, and set part of his farm, and that he could not with safety take it into his hands again; that the labourers he employed could not be controlled—they would work as they pleased; and if a new man was engaged, he might do well at first, but would soon fall into their ways; and that if he, or the farmers generally, were to dismiss the parties, they would be revenged in some way or other."

To show the state of intimacy which subsists between this gentleman and the peasantry, and how implicitly they confide their feelings and intentions to him, and how competent he must be to speak to both, and how unlikely to misrepresent them, we copy the following passage, which to our countrymen may exhibit a rather extraordinary state of society. Mr Collis and the neighbours had been discussing the conduct of a certain gentleman, and the question is put—"Did they say any thing about the landlord?" "They did; from the statements made I said something about his being shot. They said he had been fired at three times; and when I said I thought Tipperary boys were better marksmen, some person in the crowd said, 'he would get it yet.'" We should be glad to know if this gentleman did afterwards "get it," or if Mr Collis thought it necessary to communicate his own charitable suggestion, or the benevolent intentions of his tenantry. How coolly they answer and talk over those little matters in "virtuous and religious Ireland!" All the witnesses who have spoken to the point bear proof to the idleness of the labourers, and their desire to work as little as they can. Even Mr Balfe, the chairman of O'Connell's "Grievance Committee," acknowledges "that they expect to give labour for it (con-acre rent), and they do not think they are bound to work well when that labour goes to pay for their potato rent." While Mr Beere, after stating that poverty is not the cause of crime in Tipperary, as respectable persons are engaged in it, answers to the question—"What do you think is the reason for those farmers having to do with every thing that is bad?" "I think that many of them are driven to that line of conduct in order to protect their property."—"Do you think that those farmers you speak of, holding fifty or sixty acres, are compelled to encourage those proceedings for fear of damage to their own property?" "I do, positively."—"Does that lead them to give protection frequently to known offenders?" "Yes, it does; they dare not refuse them."—"By what class of persons are those outrages generally committed?" "They are generally committed by the servant boys." And the Irish papers present every day repeated instances of the same spirit:—

"On Tuesday evening last, a large armed party came to the house of a farmer named Connolly on the lands of Ballinderry, county Westmeath, within a mile of the town of Moats, and demanded why he had turned away two servant boys he had, and directed him to send off the two boys he had since. They then ordered the two men in his employment to be off, or it would be worse for them—an order, such is the state of the country, which was promptly obeyed."

"On Wednesday night last, a threatening notice was posted on the gate of a respectable farmer named Egan, ordering him at once to dismiss two Connaught men he had employed, and to take back his former labourers, whom he was obliged to dismiss for idleness."

"On the morning of the 16th, an armed party attacked the house of Pat Leray, of Stratlanstoun, and beat Leray and his son in a severe manner. The only reason assigned for this is, that Leray went to plough some land for his landlord, Captain Robinson of Rossmead."

"The same morning, the house of Pat Woods was attacked by the same party, and for the same cause of offence. Woods and his mother were severely beaten."

---

Now, those outrages have been perpetrated, not in any of the five condemned counties, but in Westmeath, where almost every proprietor is resident. What a state of society do they exhibit? Ruffians assailing men because they dared to change their servants, and beating old women solely because their sons were on good terms with their landlords. And those daring violations of the law were enacted in the open day by a party of thirty men, well armed with both pistols and bludgeons. A tithe of the outrages committed in Ireland are not only never heard of in this country, but never even reported to the police. Such is the power of those banded assassins—such the terror which they inspire—that their victims submit to their decrees in silence rather than bring further misfortunes upon their families. Sir James Graham, in his statement, mentioned the case of a man dying of his wounds, who refused to identify his murderers out of regard for the safety of his relatives and friends. A person of the name of Gleeson, who came into his land twenty years ago, was dreadfully beaten, and ordered to give up his farm; and, although five of his sons were present, not one of them informed the police. "Had they done so," says Sir James, "there is but little doubt the perpetrators would have been arrested. I have heard it said, and I do believe," (continued the most moderate of exponents,) "that, in the five counties, the great body of the people are tainted. I believe the bands are small, though perfectly organized; but the number of persons comprising these lawless bands is small compared with the great body of the people. But still evidence cannot be obtained, and the law is by reason of this inoperative. And if these small bands prevent the exercise of the law, these outrages remaining unchecked, the bulk of the population will not heed the law." And whose fault is it that those counties are tainted, and that the law in Ireland has ceased to be respected? Why, chiefly the fault of the government, of which the right honourable gentleman is so prominent a member. Had they acted as they should have done when they were placed in power, the state of that wretched country would be now widely different from what it is. Lord Normanby's jail deliveries, and the arrangements of his law-officers in regard to the formation of the juries, laid the foundation of the system of terror. Convicted malefactors were enlarged by "the gracious Viceroy," and the guilty received effectual protection from their accomplices in crime, who were admitted to the jury-box by his patriotic officials—the laws were rendered inoperative, and combination spread, and outrages multiplied. When the Conservative government were placed in power, the well-disposed expected that crime would have received a check; and the turbulent and seditious were prepared to submit to the blow, had it been immediately and fearlessly dealt them; but the opportunity was allowed to pass. The disaffected recovered from their temporary panic—atrocities became again the order of the day, and the assailed submitted in silence, because they saw no hope of obtaining redress. The Ministers permitted monster processions, after they had suppressed monster meetings. The friends of order and of the British constitution were disheartened and discountenanced; and, as a necessary consequence, the opinions of the agitators gained ground. Their organization became complete, and their power irresistible.

The uncalled-for contest in which the Peel administration have chosen to engage with the agricultural interest of England, has added to the mischief. Their unexampled political tergiversation has deprived them of the support of almost all their former adherents; and now, when they see the evil consequences of the vacillating policy which they have pursued with regard to Ireland, and are desirous of repressing the enormities which they have permitted to accumulate around them, their mouthpiece is obliged to recount a mass of horrors sufficient to curdle the blood of the most unfeeling, without daring to give utterance to one burst of honest indignation, lest by doing so he should deprive his government of the only assistance by means of which they can hope to accomplish their free-trade projects; and with a full knowledge that neither life nor property are secure in Ireland, they are compelled to succumb to the threats of their temporary allies, and virtually to abandon even the emasculated measure which they dared to introduce, by consenting to postponements which must deprive it of all moral weight, and still further encourage vexatious opposition. But can the ministers suppose that the Irish liberals support them for any other purpose than that of attaining their own ends? Whatever may be their ultimate effects upon the condition of this country, it is clear that the repeal of the corn-laws, and the alterations in the tariff, must be most hurtful to Ireland.

No one can entertain a doubt but that pork will be raised, and bacon cured, to such an extent in America, as to deprive the Irish cotter of the assistance he has heretofore derived from his pig, and that foreign butter will supplant his in the English market: and that, in consequence, Irish lands must greatly fall in value, unless they be applied to the rearing and fattening of cattle; and such being the case, what a prospect have both the Irish gentry and the Irish people before them,—ruin, if the small farmers are allowed to continue in occupation; and desolation and insurrection if they be removed. The government express an anxiety to secure the employment of the people on the reclamation of waste lands, and they propose to advance the money to enable the proprietors to pay them; but, at the same moment, by removing protection, they render it certain that such proceedings must be attended with a total loss. Whatever may be said by theorists, the profit to be derived from reclamation of waste lands in Ireland is at least but problematical. The repeal of the corn-laws must render any such attempt ruinous; and, as if it were not enough to expose the Irish farmer to foreign competition, the ministry are now trying, and "they hope with success," to destroy the home market; by substituting Indian corn, which can never be raised in the country, in place of oats and potatoes, which have hitherto constituted the food of the people. Now, putting out of consideration the interest of the gentry, what, we may ask, is to become of the Irish farmer and of the Irish labourer, if the crops which yield profit to the one, and employment to the other, were to be superseded by a species of grain which their climate cannot produce.

The Irish Radicals are quite aware of the misfortunes which the ministerial measures will inflict upon their country; yet they urge the government to their adoption, in the hope of being able to profit by means of the discontent and ruin which they must effect.

But if we are surprised at the conduct of the government in complacently witnessing, for four years, the existence of a state of things in a portion of the United Kingdom itself, which was a "serious disgrace to the age, and to the government, and the country in which we live," without endeavouring, by the enactment of more stringent laws, to correct it, the evasions, by means of which they now seek to palliate their neglect, and the strange want of perspicacity which they display in not being able to discover the real source of mischief, or their timidity in not daring to denounce it, must naturally excite our astonishment. Let any man read the reported speech of the Home Secretary, and from it he would never be able to discover that there existed at this moment, in that portion of the empire, so disgraced by crime and distracted by dissensions, an Association whose whole occupation is to disseminate falsehood and preach sedition—an organized band of men who levy tribute on their dupes, and who, in return for their pence, administer political poison to the minds of their victims—a political body, whose interest it is that acrimony, and ill-will, and civil strife, should prevail; because in the storm of passions which they evoke, they reap the harvest of pelf on which they live—whose acts have been pronounced by the tribunals of their country to be illegal, and whose leaders have been denounced by this individual minister as "convicted conspirators"—an Association whose doctrines, preached by a political priesthood and enforced by a sanguinary mob, have rendered life and property insecure, and the quiet existence of independence and industry impossible.

The ministry admitted the extent of this evil, when they prosecuted "the political martyrs;" yet now, when the power of the Conciliation Hall conspirators is more dangerous, because more time has been given them to consolidate their strength—in laying before Parliament the condition of Ireland, and in referring to the causes by which it has been produced, her Majesty's servants affect an utter ignorance of the existence of a body which they heretofore thought it necessary to arraign, and by their silence tacitly exculpate from all blame those men at whose doors they formerly, and with justice, laid all the blood which has been shed, and all the crime which has been committed in Ireland.

See the quibbles by which the Home Secretary seeks to make the coercion measure which he advocates a sort of collateral support to the corn-law question, which he desires to pass:—"Now, sir, in reference to this measure which I am about to propose, painful as it is, and unconstitutional as I admit it to be, I must say that I, for one, foreseeing some time ago that the necessity for some such measure would shortly arrive, felt that I could not reconcile it to my conscience and sense of duty to be a party to it, when, at the same time, with the great increase of crime, I saw the extreme physical distress of the people of Ireland, arising from a deficiency of that which they had been accustomed to make their principal food. I felt, I say, that it was of vital importance that provision should first be made, by an effort on the part of the government, to relieve the physical wants of the people before this measure should be brought forward; and I resolved that I could not be a party to the measure unless I had the sanction of my colleagues to a bill which would have the effect of opening the corn trade, and placing articles of the first necessity within the reach of the people of Ireland." But this cannot avail the right honourable gentleman; for his own returns show that the amount of crime was infinitely greater up to the month of August 1845, when provisions were most abundant, and the prospects of the new harvest most cheering, than now, when it suits his convenience to notice its existence, or to sustain the potato panic. "When the greatest increase of crime existed," he could not possibly have anticipated "the extreme physical distress of the people," because no such distress was then heard of. But because his object was to make the suppression of crime auxiliary to other measures of the government, he takes no step to accomplish it until he comes backed by the exaggerations of political knaves, and the reports of philosophical quacks, to prove his case, in order that the humanity of his auditory may be excited; and that, before he is called upon to coerce, he may be permitted to repeal the corn-laws, on the pretence of relieving "the physical wants of the people."

We are far from denying that a great loss has been sustained in the potato crop; but that loss does not in reality affect the food of the people so much as would appear at first sight; for the cattle and pigs which used to get sound potatoes in other years, were exclusively fed on diseased ones in this: neither has the rot been attended with pecuniary loss to any considerable extent; for the diseased part being removed, the remainder was as fit to use as the soundest potato; and more pigs were reared and fatted than usual on the rotted portions, and they never fatted better or bore a higher price. But, (and this fact has been studiously suppressed by Sir Robert Peel,) even admitting that the loss has been great, there could be no famine. The crop of oats exceeded by a third any crop known in the memory of man, and the price of oats in October last exceeded the average price at that season for many years past by nearly one-half. Consequently rather more than half the quantity which the tenantry required to sell in other years to make up a given sum, answered the same purpose on this; and even such of the tenantry as paid their rents had an unusual quantity left after disposing of what enabled them to meet their engagements; and this has been converted into meal and stored in their houses, or remains in stack in their haggards. Now, oatmeal always constitutes a principal ingredient in the food of every Irish peasant from this season forward; and yet the ministers never once alluded to the great quantity of oats which they must know to be in the country, nor to the fact that there has been, as the season advanced, a steady and progressive decline in its price. In the Dublin market, on the 18th November 1845, oats brought from fourteen to sixteen and sixpence the barrel; on the 28th of March 1846, it sold from twelve to fifteen shillings; while at the same period in the last year, when no famine was anticipated, it fetched twelve shillings; and there can be no doubt but it will experience a still further fall as the season advances, for potatoes now are, on the whole, lower than they were a month ago; and the holders of meal will soon begin to perceive that they cannot realize the prices which the exaggerations of the government led them to expect, and they will supply the markets more freely.

It is extraordinary to see how people here can be humbugged. Mr O'Connell, some time since, produced in the House a return from a priest, which professed to give the state of his parishioners, as regarded the amount of food each family possessed. In this document it was stated, (and the announcement was received with loud cries of "hear, hear,") that a certain number of families had not a week's provisions; and no doubt this was true; and the same reverend gentleman, or any other in any part of Ireland, might make just the same report at the same period in any year, even when potatoes sold for eightpence the cwt.:—All the class of small cotters have generally used the produce of their con-acres at this season, and they commence to buy—the work which they always have in abundance in the spring enabling them to pay. They purchase weekly; and the fact that a certain number of them had not a week's provisions, at the time this return was made, in their possession, no more implies the presence of famine in that particular locality, than the fact, that the labourers in London have generally no greater supply proves the existence of a scarcity in the metropolis. Both parties purchase weekly, and consequently have never more than a week's provisions by them.

No doubt, there is a deficiency of provisions in particular neighbourhoods; but, take the kingdom all over, there is a sufficiency; and if the government had not, for their own purposes, magnified the danger, the pressure on the people would now be less than it is.

We express surprise that the assertions of Mr O'Connell and the agitators continue to be credited by the people, although they have been a thousand times rejected and belied; but her Majesty's ministers exhibit a still greater extent of gullibility, if they really, as they affect to do, believe in the statements made by the Radical members and their organs of the press, after the repeated instances in which those statements have been proved to be erroneous. On the 20th November, the Mansion-house Committee proclaimed to all the inhabitants of the British empire, and in the presence of an all-seeing Providence, "That in Ireland famine of a most hideous description must be immediate and pressing, and pestilence of the most frightfull kind, and not remote, unless immediately prevented." And on the 17th of December, Mr O'Connell announced, that "Some say the crop will last till April. Even those most sanguine admit that we will have a famine in April—others say the crop will last till March—others that it will not last beyond February—others that a famine will come on before the month of January is over—for my own part, I believe the last;" yet, here we are, thanks to a beneficent Providence, now approaching the 1st of May, neither suffering from famine nor from pestilence, with almost all the crops sown, and with well-supplied and steadily-falling markets; and yet the Premier eagerly grasps at any new exaggeration of those men, for the purpose of supporting his own overdrawn pictures of fresh distress.

But there is, in reality, neither that distress nor that scarcity in Ireland which we are taught to believe exist there. The people are fond of coarse food, which we think unfit for men, but they prefer it—witness the various insinuations of the paupers against the use of Indian corn flour.

That the Irish consider the constant use of "bread and meat" as an infliction, is proved by a rather ludicrous account given of their feelings on this head in his evidence before Lord Devon's Committee, by Mr Thomas Glennon, No. 418, part second. After telling the Commissioners that many persons had emigrated from his neighbourhood to South America, "that they had succeeded there, and sent large remittances to their friends through his hands," he is asked—"Have they sent any statement how the climate agrees with them?" "It agrees very well with them, and the only difficulty they find is, that they have not potatoes to eat; the bread and meat, and constant eating, is what disagrees with them." Now, surely, if we ought to consult the political prejudices of the Irish people when legislating for them, as the Premier says we should do, we ought not altogether to disregard their culinary tastes, or force them to eat a diet which they dislike, only because we prize it ourselves.

The extraordinary blunders which some of those enthusiastic men who undertake to legislate on Irish subjects so frequently commit, would excite feelings of ridicule, if the observations in which they see fit to indulge were not calculated to produce mischief in quarters where their insignificance is not known, and where their flippant fallacies may be mistaken for facts. Thus, Mr Poulett Scrope exclaims,—"What! are 130 work-houses, capable of containing 100,000 people, to be considered sufficient to supply accommodation for 2,800,000 destitute paupers?" If the honourable gentleman took the trouble of consulting documentary evidence, he would have found that they were much more than sufficient. It is true that the commissioners reported that there were in a population of 8,000,000, 2,800,000 in a state of destitution, and they proposed that 100, subsequently they suggested that 130 houses, capable of containing 100,000 persons, should be built for their accommodation. In the 9th report of those gentlemen, we find that, in the quarter ending December 1842, eighty-six houses, built to contain 73,960 paupers, were in operation in Ireland, and that on the average, only 27,000 persons availed themselves of the relief they afforded, "about one-third the number they were capable of accommodating." In the report for 1843, we see that in ninety-two houses, built to contain 78,160, in which relief had been administered from the 10th January 1844, the average number of inmates was 31,578, and the gross number to whom relief had been afforded during the year, was 53,582. And in the 11th report, the last published, "in 105 houses which were open from January 1844 to January 1845, the gross number relieved was 68,371, and the average number of inmates 37,780, although those 105 houses were capable of accommodating 84,000 individuals."[10] Thus we have it clearly proved, that those houses never at any time contained one-half, and very seldom more than one-third of the numbers they were constructed to accommodate—and yet Mr Scrope waxes furious because more houses are not built, while those already erected are not half occupied.

Lord George Bentinck, to whose opinions and to whose statements great weight is deservedly attached, expresses his dissatisfaction at the working of the Irish Poor-law, because while £5,000,000 is expended annually in this country in succouring 16,000,000, only £250,000 is spent in Ireland in giving relief to 8,000,000 of the people. But if his lordship took time to consider, he would see that the disproportionate expenditure was not caused by any restrictions which the Irish law imposed, but by the unwillingness of the Irish people to take advantage of its enactments. If he had recourse to the returns of the commissioners, he would have found, that while in the year ending January 1844 the gross number of those who received parochial relief in Ireland was 53,582, the number of those who received similar relief in England amounted to 4,279,565, considerably more than one-fourth of the population, of whom 958,057 actually entered the Bastiles. Thus we have nearly the sixteenth part of the population seeking in-door relief in England and Wales, and not the one hundred and twentieth part in Ireland. But the small numbers admitted in Ireland, and the small expenditure incurred in succouring the poor in that country, is not the fault of the law. It sets no limit to the benevolence of the guardians. Neither is it the fault of those who administer it; for the guardians being almost all thorough-paced patriots, of whom the great majority pay under ten shillings annually to the tax, never reject applicants, and frequently solicit persons to become candidates for admission. And when we consider that those who, we are told, "dwell in ditches and live on weeds," and to whom "beds and blankets are rare luxuries," have only to apply for shelter where they can have good beds and better diet than the commissioners assure us they are even accustomed to at home, we cannot but express surprise at the taste of our neighbours, who prefer dirt and starvation to cleanliness and abundance; and our sympathy for persons who bewail their sufferings, and yet will not accept the proffered relief, must be greatly diminished.

The truth is, and facts such as those prove it, that though there is more squalid filth and raggedness in Ireland, (for those are national tastes,) there is much less of real misery or distress in that country than exists in England.

To make their coercive policy palatable to their present supporters, the ministry announce the immediate introduction of a bill to regulate the arrangements between landlord and tenant, and to secure the latter adequate compensation for any improvements he may have effected. It is always better for governments to leave the adjustment of private rights to the parties concerned in them. But if they are to be guided in their legislation by the evidence given before the land-commissioners, and not by the report which it pleased those gentlemen to adopt, there never was a case in which such interference was less called for. We do not find in the whole mass a solitary well substantiated instance in which an improving and rent-paying tenant was dispossessed by the landlord for the purpose of availing himself of the additional value which had been given to his land. And Mr Stewart, an extensive agent and land-valuator, declared in his examination, "that he considered improving tenants had, at the expiration of their tenures, a just claim upon the consideration of their landlords—a claim," he continues, "which, in a great number of instances coming under my own observation, I never yet knew to be disregarded." Can the government believe that contingent and trifling rewards for levelling old ditches, and for building ill-constructed houses, will be sufficient to satisfy men who, according to Mr Maher's sworn testimony, "desire no such improvements, even when they are paid promptly for their execution;" or that drainage will be effected, in the hope of their being allowed a paltry consideration in case they are dispossessed, "by persons who threaten with death those who are willing to give them at once the full value of their labour?" Not a bit of it. Any attempt to legislate on the subject will only increase the present difficulties. If you give the tenant a right to execute such improvements as he pleases, and guarantee him remuneration, who is to be the umpire between the occupier and the landlord?—"a commissioner." Well, where are you to get respectable men to act in such a capacity, with the certainty that if they decided honestly, they would become unpopular, and secure the reward of death? And if you take those commissioners from the class of small farmers, and pay them by the business they transact, why, then, there will be no limit to jobbing and dishonesty—each of them will bid for popularity and increase of income, by deciding in favour of the tenant, and against the landlord, in all instances—and litigation and confusion without end will be the consequence. As to Mr O'Connell's other remedies—extension of municipal reform, and increase of representation—grant them, and what could the change effect? No extension of municipal reform can possibly make the corporations more revolutionary than they are—with one solitary exception (Belfast), his influence and his principles prevail in all. They are all at his beck, "good men and true." What more would he have? What more could any alteration in the law effect for him? And as to the increase in the Irish representation, what benefit could that be to the country, when, admitting that the number of members were increased, the additional ones would only swell the amount of those who altogether, and purposely, absent themselves from their duties, under the sanction of their constituents, and by the express dictation of their leader.

With the facts which we have laid before them—with the proofs which we have adduced from their own authorities, to show that there is neither injustice nor oppression practised on the Irish people, that their distress is to a great extent simulated, and their poverty the fruits of their own misconduct—we ask the government, will they continue to allow themselves to be misled by the mistatements of interested and designing men, who, while accounting for the state of Ireland, assert one thing and swear another; will they legislate for that country on the suggestions of persons who make a boast of their hatred of England, and openly express their desire for her humiliation—who, with loyalty on their lips, seek Repeal because they know it must produce separation; and who hesitate not to advocate measures which they feel must be ruinous to all classes of their fellow-countrymen, because they hope to accomplish, through the agency of the British ministry, what they have hitherto been unable to effect by flattery or by force—the alienation of the loyal and well-disposed from the British connexion?

There is a remedy for the ills of Ireland, and a simple and an efficacious remedy it will be found to be, if adopted. Enforce obedience to the laws, and establish security of life and property, no matter at what sacrifices or by what means. The more severe and uncompromising the measure by which those objects shall be sought to be effected, the more prompt will be the success, and the more merciful the operation. Freedom of action once attained, you may safely leave the gentry and the people to make their own arrangements, and count with certainty on the rapid improvement of the country, and the full development of its resources, provided only you maintain that fair degree of protection which can alone enable Ireland to compete with more favoured countries.

The Association must be suppressed: it will be folly to expect peace or tranquillity while that pestilent body is in existence; smite it "hip and thigh," and you at once cut off the fruitful sources of discontent and crime. Stop the rent, and at one blow you annihilate the profligate press, which turns the minds of the people from their legitimate avocations, which panders to their prejudices, and excites them to outrage. Of what use will it be to confine the peasant to his house by night, if you allow him to be beset during the day by the noxious publications which contain the treason of the Conciliation Hall?

Will it be just to tax the unfortunate farmers when they are compelled to become participators in crime, and to shelter the guilty for the purpose of obtaining that protection from outrages which the government are too negligent or too impotent to afford them? The plan which it is proposed to adopt, of recompensing those who suffer in person or property by a tax levied on the locality in which the crime was committed, has been long in operation,[11] and found to be utterly inefficacious. What is the use of an additional police force, when all the exertions of those men will be rendered ineffectual by the insufficiency of the laws which you refuse to strengthen? The guilty cannot be affected by taxation, for they hold no land; they cannot be punished by the ordinary laws, for they have established a system which baffles their operation; but once enact effective Law, and proclaim down the Association—show the people that you are determined to maintain social order and to suppress insubordination—then, but not till then, will you rally the good in defence of justice, and deter the guilty from the commission of crime.

---

THE MODERN PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

The Fragment of a Dream.

Chapter I.

How Scapegrace first made acquaintance with Scrip.

As I walked through the wilderness of 'Change Alley, I lighted on a certain coffee-house, where there was a box in the corner, and, falling asleep therein, I dreamed a dream.

I dreamed, and behold I saw a man bearing a burden on his back, walking up and down the Alley in grievous plight; and ever and anon he put his hands into his breeches pockets, as if in search of something, but drew out nothing. Then he turned his pockets inside out, and cried—"Wo is me! what shall I do?"

And, as he turned his back to me, I saw his burden, which was large and heavy; and thereon was writ, in large characters, the word "Debt:" and drawing near, methought the bag was stuffed quite full of mortgages, bonds, bills, post-obits, and suchlike, wherewith he appeared to be weighed down even to the ground.

And, as he made his moan, and strove to unloose his burden from his back, behold another man came up to him, who also bare his burden upon his back; but, though it seemed larger and heavier than his fellow's, he wore a smiling countenance, and skipped along as lightly as if his pack had been filled with feathers; and, drawing near to the first man, he thus accosted him:—

"How now, neighbour Scapegrace, wherefore so in the dumps? Thou seemest to have a sore struggle with thy load, which, sooth to say, seems a heavy one. Can I lend thee a helping hand?"

"In good faith, neighbour Stagman," answered Scapegrace, "so long as this burden sticks to my back, I shall have no peace or rest, by night or by day, for I know not how long I may be left at large; and men say that, even now, one Gripeman hath a writ out against me, at the suit of Mr Legality, and that I shall be hauled away to prison incontinently. Bail, as thou knowest, I can find none; for Easyman, who stood surety for me aforetime, is bankrupt, and thou, Stagman, hast not a penny in thy purse—if thou wert ever so much inclined to befriend me."

"Nay, not so fast, friend," replied Stagman; "matters have gone better with me of late than thou wouldst suppose; and perchance, if thou wilt listen to me, I can put thee on a way to get quit of this thy burden!—or, if thou wouldst rather do as I do, to fill thy pockets, keep thy burden still, and yet dance under it as lightly as if it were no burden at all."

"Of a truth," said Scapegrace, "I long to hear how these things may be."

"Know then," said Stagman, "that of late all the world have gone crazed after a new fashion of travelling, or rather flying, discovered by Mr Ironman, by means of which the traveller reacheth his journey's end ere he well knoweth that he hath begun it, smoking his pipe, or reading the newspaper all the way, as he skimmeth along over hills and valleys, sloughs and morasses."

"These be pleasant tidings," cried Scapegrace.

"And profitable likewise," answered Stagman, "for all that are concerned in these new highways; for now-a-days none will take the old roads, which are fast becoming full of ruts and pitfalls, fearful to behold, and all must soon resort per force to those made by Mr Ironman, who levieth a heavy toll on all passengers at various wicket-gates which he hath set up along the road. Now, as Ironman required some friends to assist him with money in making his roads, he hath formed various goodly companies, who lend him their money in the mean time, and share thereafter in the tolls levied from the pilgrims that use the road. If thou couldst but be joined to one of these companies, as I have been, thy burden might soon be lighter. And even now there is a new road about to be begun, which I doubt not would make thee rich in brief space, if thou wert but a sharer therein."

"Whither goeth this road?" asked Scapegrace.

From the town of Little-go, by Hap-hazard, towards Cent-per-cent, and thence to the great city of Eldorado," answered Stagman. "Thereafter, if the traffic answer, we contemplate a branch rail to Utopia."

"But methought," said Scapegrace, "that road of which thou speak'st was full of rocks, and deep pits, and swamps, and quagmires, and other frightfuls. I do remember me of a certain Slough of Despond, Wherein Sundry Travellers Were Bemired to purpose, and some hardly escaped with their lives."

"The Slough of Despond, quotha!" cried Stagman; "a certain man, called in the vulgar tongue a Contractor, undertakes to fill it up, and to lay a double line of rails, with sidings, across it in a fortnight."

"Truly, we live in strange times, neighbour," said Scrapegrace. "But then the Hill of Difficulty?"

"Is no difficulty after all," interrupted Stagman; "we pass right through the centre of it by a tunnel in two minutes, so that you need never know there was a hill there. The strata are all clay and sandstone, exceeding well fitted for boring."

"Then the Valley of Humiliation, and the road which leads there-through?" asked Scapegrace.

"We go slap across it in the twinkling of a bedpost, by a handsome viaduct of thirty arches on the skew principle," said Stagman.

"Lo, you now!" said Scapegrace, marvelling—"Surely, however, the road is rugged and hilly?"

"Thou wouldst say, the gradients are bad; not so, there is none worse than one in the hundred—quite as good as the Caledonian."

"I know not that road," said Scrapegrace.

"So much the better for thee," answered Stagman gravely.

"But, neighbour, how do you contrive to carry your road through other men's grounds?" said Scapegrace.

"We promise to share the profits with them," said Stagman, "and so keep them quiet; or put them on the Provisional Committee, with power to audit their own accounts. Sometimes, no doubt, we are put to our shifts for a time, as was the case with Squire Despair of Doubting Castle, who opposed us on the standing orders, and threatened to throw us out in committee; but, as it ended in our buying Doubting Castle at his own price, and paying him handsomely for intersectional damage besides, he soon withdrew his opposition, and is now an active promoter of the line. Indeed, I know not any one who can give us further trouble, except it be old Pope, who says the road will ruin his villa, and be the death of any of his bulls that get upon the line; but as we know that he is as poor as a church rat, and will never show face in the committee, we mind him not, and, in truth, I have no doubt the committee will find the preamble proved."

"Find what?" enquired Scapegrace;—"methinks, Stagman, thou dealest in strange words, and usest a jargon hard to be understood of men."

"Find the preamble proved," answered Stagman; "which means we shall be empowered to make the road."

"I suppose then, neighbour," said Scapegrace, "there will be great resort of travellers to this same Cent-per-cent, and much toll levied thereat?"

"The passenger traffic, the prospectus says, will be enormous," answered Stagman; "and the minerals along the line are of course inexhaustible."

"But tell me, neighbour, is this same mode of travel as pleasant for the wayfarers as thou sayest?"

"Exceedingly pleasant for the survivors," answered Stagman. "Doubtless it sometimes happens that a carriage or two will run over a precipice, or the down-train from Little-go may run into the up-train from Hap-hazard, whereby some dozen lives may go amissing; but such accidents are unavoidable, and it is satisfactory to know that on these occasions there never yet has been the slightest blame imputable to any one concerned—the stoker being invariably a most respectable man, and the utmost attention paid to the signals."

"Nay now, neighbour Stagman," said Scapegrace; "all this is mighty comfortable and encouraging, and I long much to have share with thee in this same business."

"I know not," said Stagman, "whether that may be; for the way is narrow, and many there be that would go in thereat. But look you, neighbour, I have promised to do you service if I can, and I will tell you how to set about it. There is an ancient friend of mine, who hath stood me in good stead before now, his name is Mr Scrip; he hath holpen many a one in worse plight than thou art; so that by his aid, from being poor and needy, they have become well to do in the world in a short space. Let us go together to him; he dwelth in Paper Buildings hard by; it may be that he will stand thy friend, and help thee out of this thy difficulty."

So methought the men went both together, and, knocking at the door of Mr Scrip, they were shown into his apartment, which was all garnished with slips of paper, whereon were strange figures and characters written, which no man could read or understand. He wore a coat of many colours, the pockets of which appeared to be stuffed with papers, bearing the like figures; he was always looking either up or down, and he moved to and fro continually, as if he could not sit still in one place for a moment.

"Mr Scrip," said Stagman, "you must know here is a friend of mine who is presently sore bestead, and lacketh thine aid. He would fain have of thee some of those wonderful papers of thine, whereby so many have become so suddenly rich; and, for the sake of our old acquaintance, I pray you pleasure him in this matter."

Then methought Mr Scrip looked fixedly upon Scapegrace, and shook his head consumedly. "The applications," said he, "are so numerous, that the Provisional Committee have been compelled to decline many from the most respectable quarters, and in all cases greatly to restrict the amount allocated." But observing that Scapegrace appeared much discomfited at these words, he said, after a time—"Howbeit, as the man is a friend of thine, and this is the first time he hath come to me, I will for this once do for him according to his wish." So, putting his hand into his nether raiment, he pulled out certain slips of paper, and put them into Scapegrace's hand, saying—"Take these, and put them into the purse thou bearest with thee; they are called after my name: a fortnight hence thou wilt pay to me a deposit of twenty crowns thereon, but thereafter thou mayst sell them for ten times that sum."

"Alas," cried Scapegrace, "for now I am utterly undone! I have not a crown in the world, and how can I pay the deposit?"

"Nay, neighbour, have a good heart," cried Stagman, drawing him into a corner; "long before the fortnight comes, we shall have sold these papers to some other man, who will pay the twenty crowns for thee, and give thee a hundred beside for thy pains. At the worst, thou hast but to burn thy papers and be seen no more of men, which, if Gripeman should lay hold on thee, would happen in any wares. Take the papers, be of good comfort, thank Mr Scrip for his kindness, and tell him thou wilt call another day with the twenty crowns."

So Scapegrace took the papers, and they thanked Mr Scrip, and went their way.