"'Where is your husband, my good woman?' I said to the youngest of the women.
"'In England, yere Arn'r,' she replied, 'saking work.'"—P. 132.
"Seeking work!" and yet Ireland abounds, in the richest land uncultivated, and mineral wealth untouched, because the system forbids that men should combine their efforts together for the improvement of their common condition.
"After trotting on for about a mile, and after I had left Lord Lucan's property, I came as usual to a small village of unroofed cabins, from the stark walls of which, to my astonishment, I saw here and there proceeding a little smoke; and, on approaching it, I beheld a picture I shall not readily forget. The tenants had been all evicted, and yet, dreadful to say, they were there still! the children nestling, and the poor women huddling together, under a temporary lean-to of straw, which they had managed to stick into the interstices of the walls of their ancient homes.
"'This is a quare place, yere Arn'r!' said a fine, honest-looking woman, kindly smiling to me, adding, 'Sit down, yere Arn'r!'
"One of her four children got up and offered me his stool.
"Under another temporary shed I found a tall woman heavy with child, a daughter ahout sixteen, and four younger children—her husband was also in England, 'sakin work.' I entered two or three more of these wretched habitations, around which were the innumerable tiny fields; surrounded by those low tottering stone walls I have already described.* * *—P. 136.
"They were really good people, and from what I read in their countenances, I feel confident, that if, instead of distributing among them a few shillings, I had asked them to feed me, with the kindest hospitality they would readily have done so, and that with my gold in my pocket I might have slept among them in the most perfect security.
"The devotional expressions of the lower class of Irish, and the meekness and resignation with which they bear misfortune or affliction, struck, me very forcibly. 'I haven't aten a bit this blessed day, glory be to God!' said one woman, 'Troth, I've been suffering lhong time from poverty and sickness, glory be to God!' said another. On entering a strange cabin, the common salutation is, 'God save all here!' On passing a gang of comrades at labour, a man often says, 'God bless the work, boys!'"—P. 137.
The extirpation of the people results necessarily in the decay of the towns, as is here shown:—