“You are candid, certainly, friend,” said Cashel, half angrily; “but don't you fancy there is rather too much of frankness in saying this to one who has already said he is of the party?”
“Just as he likes to take it,” said the old man, bluntly. “The wise man takes warning where the fool takes umbrage. There 's a fine view for you—see! there's a glorious bit of landscape,” cried he, enthusiastically, as they came to an opening of the wood and beheld the wide expanse of Lough Deny, with its dotted islands and ruined tower.
Roland stood still, silently gazing on the scene, whose beauty was heightened by all the strong effect of light and shade.
“I see you have an eye for landscape,” said the old man, as he watched the expression of Cashel's features.
“I 've been a lover of scenery in lands where the pursuit was well rewarded,” said Roland, thoughtfully.
“That you may; but never in a country where the contemplation called for more thought than in this before you. See, yonder, where the lazy smoke rises heavily from the mountain side, high up there amid the fern and the tall heath, that is a human dwelling,—there lives some cottier a life of poverty as uncheered and unpitied as though he made no part of the great family of man. For miles and miles of that dreary mountain some small speck may be traced where men live and grow old and die out, unthought of and uncared for by all beside. This misery would seem at its full, if now and then seasons of sickness did not show how fever and ague can augment the sad calamities of daily life. There are men—ay, and old men too—who never have seen bread for years, I say, save when some gamekeeper has broken it to feed the greyhounds in a coursing party.”
“And whose the fault of all this?” said Cashel, eagerly.
“It is easy to see, sir,” said the other, “that you are no landed proprietor, for not only you had not asked the question, but you had not shown so much emotion when putting it So it is,” muttered he to himself. “It is so ever. They have most sympathy with the poor who have least the power to help them.”
“But I ask again, whose the fault of such a system?” cried Cashel.
“Ask your host yonder, and you 'll soon have an answer to your question. You 'll hear enough of landlords' calamities,—wrecking tenantry, people in barbarism, irreclaimably bad, sunk in crime, black in ingratitude. Ask the peasant, and he 'll tell you of clearances,—whole families turned out to starve and die in the highways; the iron pressure of the agent in the dreary season of famine and fever. Ask the priest, and he will say, it is the galling tyranny of the 'rich man's church' establishment consuming the substance, but restoring nothing to the people. Ask the rector, and he 'll prove it is popery,—the debasing slavery of the very blackest of all superstitions; and so on. Each throws upon another the load which he refuses to bear his share of, and the end is, we have a reckless gentry and a ruined people; all the embittering hatred of a controversy, and little of the active working of Christian charity. Good-bye, sir. I ask pardon for inflicting something like a sermon upon you. Good-bye.”