"'Is this system of eviction,' said I to the driver, pointing to a small cluster of unroofed cabins we were passing at the moment, 'good or bad?' 'Well! yere Arn'r!' he replied, 'ut's good and ut's bad. Ut's good for them that hould large lands, bad for the small. Ut laves nothing for tham but the workhouse.'"—P. 121.
The tendency of the system which looks to the exportation of raw produce and the exhaustion of the soil is always toward the consolidation of the land, because the exportation of population, whether from Ireland, India, or Virginia, always follows in the wake of the exportation of food and other raw commodities.
"Among the men were only four that could fairly be called 'able-bodied;' each of them told me he had been evicted by Lord Lucan. I asked the master what had become of the rest. His answer was very instructive. 'Most of them,' said he, 'if they can scrape up half-a-crown, go to England, from whence, after some little time, they send from 2s. 6d. to 10s. and, as soon as their families get that, they are off to them.'
"'Does the father go first?' I thoughtlessly asked.
"'Oh, no! we keep him to the last. One daughter went off to England from here a short time ago, and sent 7s. 6d. That took out the mother and another sister. In a few weeks the mother and sister sent enough to get over the remaining two sons and the father. Total of the family, 6.'"—P. 127.
In the above passage we have the equivalent of the exportation of the negro from the Northern Slave States. Husbands and wives, parents and children, are forced to fly from each other, never to meet again unless those who emigrate can save means to send for those who are left behind.
"We were now joined by the head-steward—a sedate, highly intelligent, respectable-looking Scotchman, who has been in Ireland thirteen years. He told me that the number of persons that had been ejected was about 10,000, of whom one-tenth were employed by Lord Lucan, who had given most of them cottages."
"We passed a cabin, and, closing my umbrella and leaving it on the car, I walked in.
"'Will yere Arn'r take a sate?' said a woman about thirty-eight, with a fine, open countenance, her eyes being listlessly fixed on the daylight.
"I sat down. On her lap was an infant. Three bare-footed children, as if hatching eggs, sat motionless on the edge of a peat fire, which appeared to be almost touching their naked toes; above the embers was demurely hanging a black pot. Opposite sat, like a bit of gnarled oak, the withered grandmother. The furniture was composed of a dingy-coloured wooden wardrobe, with a few plates on the top, and one bed close to the fire. There was no chimney but the door, on the threshold of which stood, looking exceedingly unhappy, four dripping wet fowls; at the far end of the chamber was a regular dungheap, on which stood an ass.