"Before they reached the house of Sporeen, and near the village where the two Irish horsemen had stopped the evening before, they halted and formed themselves into more orderly array. A narrow gully was before them on the road, hemmed in on each side by rocky steeps, here and there overhung with bushes. The commandant bade them be on their guard, for there might be danger there. He was right; for the moment they began to trot through the pass, the flash and rattle of firearms from the thickets above saluted them, followed by a wild yell. In a second, several of their number lay dead or dying in the road. The fire was returned promptly by the police, but it was at random; for, although another discharge and another howl announced that the enemy were still there, no one could be seen. The head of the police commanded his troops to make a dash through the pass; for there was no scaling the heights from this side, the assailants having warily posted themselves there, because at the foot of the eminence were stretched on either hand impassable bogs. The troop dashed forward, firing their pistols as they went, but were met by such deadly discharges of firearms as threw them into confusion, killed and wounded several of their horses, and made them hastily retreat.
"There was nothing for it but to await the arrival of the cavalry; and it was not long before the clatter of horses' hoofs and the ringing of sabres were heard on the road. On coming up, the troop of cavalry, firing to the right and left on the hillsides, dashed forward, and, in the same instant, cleared the gully in safety, the police having kept their side of the pass. In fact, not a single shot was returned, the arrival of this strong force having warned the insurgents to decamp. The cavalry, in full charge, ascended the hills to their summits. Not a foe was to be seen, except one or two dying men, who were discovered by their groans.
"The moon had been for a time quenched in a dense mass of clouds, which now were blown aside by a keen and cutting wind. The heron, soaring over the desert, could now see gray-coated men flying in different directions to the shelter of the neighbouring hills. The next day he was startled from his dreamy reveries near the moorland stream, by the shouts and galloping of mingled police and soldiers, as they gave chase to a couple of haggard, bare-headed, and panting peasants. These were soon captured, and at once recognised as belonging to the evicted inhabitants of the recently deserted village.
"Since then years have rolled on. The heron, who had been startled from his quiet haunts by these things, was still dwelling on the lofty tree with his kindred, by the hall of Sporeen. He had reared family after family in that airy lodgment, as spring after spring came round; but no family, after that fatal time, had ever tenanted the mansion. The widow and children had fled from it so soon as Mr. FitzGibbon had been laid in the grave. The nettle and dock flourished over the scorched ruins of the village of Rathbeg; dank moss and wild grass tangled the proud drives and walks of Sporeen. All the woodland rides and pleasure-grounds lay obstructed with briers; and young trees in time grew luxuriantly where once the roller in its rounds could not crush a weed; the nimble frolics of the squirrel were now the only merry things where formerly the feet of lovely children had sprung with elastic joy.
"The curse of Ireland was on the place. Landlord and tenant, gentleman and peasant, each with the roots and the shoots of many virtues in their hearts, thrown into a false position by the mutual injuries of ages, had wreaked on each other the miseries sown broadcast by their ancestors. Beneath this foul spell men who would, in any other circumstances, have been the happiest and the noblest of mankind, became tyrants; and peasants, who would have glowed with grateful affection toward them, exulted in being their assassins. As the traveller rode past the decaying hall, the gloomy woods, and waste black moorlands of Sporeen, he read the riddle of Ireland's fate, and asked himself when an Œdipus would arise to solve it."
A large number of the peasantry of Connemara, a rocky and romantic region, are among the most recent evictions.
"These hardy mountaineers, whose lives, and the lives of their fathers and great-grandfathers have been spent in reclaiming the barren hills where their hard lot has been cast, were the victims of a series of oppressions unparalleled in the annals of Irish misrule. They were thickly planted over the rocky surface of Connemara for political purposes. In the days of the 40s. freeholder, they were driven to the hustings like a flock of sheep, to register not alone one vote, but in many instances three or four votes each; and it was no uncommon thing to see those unfortunate serfs evicted from their holdings when an election had terminated— not that they refused to vote according to the wish of their landlords, but because they did not go far enough in the sin of perjury and the diabolical crime of impersonation. When they ceased to possess any political importance, they were cast away like broken tools. It was no uncommon thing, in the wilds of Connemara, to see the peasantry, after an election, coming before the Catholic Archbishop, when holding a visitation of his diocese, to proclaim openly the crime of impersonation which their landlords compelled them to commit, and implore forgiveness for such. Of this fact we have in the town of Galway more than one living witness; so that, while every thing was done, with few exceptions, to demoralize the peasantry of Connemara, and plant in their souls the germs of that slavery which is so destructive to the growth of industry, enterprise, or manly exertion—no compassion for their wants was ever evinced—no allowance for their poverty and inability to meet the rack-renting demands of their landlords was ever made."
Perhaps, it requires no Œdipus to tell what will be the future of the Irish nation, if the present system of slavery is maintained by their English conquerors. If they do not cease to exist as a people, they will continue to quaff the dark waters of sorrow, and to pay a price, terrible to think of, for the mere privilege of existence.
During the famine of 1847, the heartlessness of many Irish landlords was manifested by their utter indifference to the multitudes starving around their well-supplied mansions. At that period, the Rev. A. King, of Cork, wrote to the Southern Reporter as follows:—
"The town and the surrounding country for many miles are possessed by twenty-six proprietors, whose respective yearly incomes vary from one hundred pounds, or less, to several thousands. They had all been respectfully informed of the miserable condition of the people, and solicited to give relief. Seventeen of the number had not the politeness to answer the letters of the committee, four had written to say they would not contribute, and the remaining five had given a miserable fraction of what they ought to have contributed. My first donation from a small portion of a small relief fund, received from English strangers, exceeded the aggregate contributions of six-and-twenty landed proprietors, on whose properties human beings were perishing from famine, filth, and disease, amid circumstances of wretchedness appalling to humanity and disgraceful to civilized men! I believe it my sacred duty to gibbet this atrocity in the press, and to call on benevolent persons to loathe it as a monster crime. Twenty-one owners of property, on which scores, nay hundreds, of their fellow-creatures are dying of hunger, give nothing to save their lives! Are they not virtually guilty of wholesale murder? I ask not what human law may decide upon their acts, but in the name of Christianity I arraign them as guilty of treason against the rights of humanity and the laws of God!"