"Several voices immediately called energetically for silence, impressing the culprit with grave ideas at once of his worship's great importance, and the serious nature of the coming sentence.
"'Withdraw the plea of not guilty, and take one of guilty to the felony,' continued the assistant barrister, taking a pinch of snuff and turning round to consult his brother magistrates as to the term of intended incarceration.
"'Don't lose yer time, ye omodhaun!' said the attorney, with an angry look at the prisoner.
"'Will I be allowed to spake one word, yer wortchips?' said the unfortunate culprit.
"'What has he to say?' said the assistant barrister with considerable dignity.
"'Go on, ye fool ye,' urged the attorney.
"'My lord, yer wortchips, and gintlemin av the jury,' exclaimed the culprit, 'sind me out o' the counthry, or into jail, or breakin' stones, or walkin' on the threadmill, or any thing else in the coorse o' nature, as yer wortchips playses; but for the love o' the Virgin Mary, don't make me a Poor-Law Gargin.'" [95]
The most recent legislation of the British government in regard to Ireland, the enactment of the Poor-law and the Encumbered Estates Act, has had but one grand tendency—that of diminishing the number of the population, which is, indeed, a strange way to improve the condition of the nation. The country was not too thickly populated; far from it: great tracts of land were entirely uninhabited. The exterminating acts were, therefore, only measures of renewed tyranny. To enslave a people is a crime of sufficient enormity; but to drive them from the homes of their ancestors to seek a refuge in distant and unknown lands, is such an action as only the most monstrous of governments would dare to perform.
We have thus shown that Ireland has long endured, and still endures, a cruel system of slavery, for which we may seek in vain for a parallel. It matters not that the Irish serf may leave his country; while he remains he is a slave to a master who will not call him property, chiefly because it would create the necessity of careful and expensive ownership. If the Irish master took his labourer for his slave in the American sense, he would be compelled to provide for him, work or not work, in sickness and in old age. Thus the master reaps the benefits, and escapes the penalties of slave-holding. He takes the fruits of the labourer's toil without providing for him as the negro slaves of America are provided for; nay, very often he refuses the poor wretch a home at any price. In no other country does the slaveholder seem so utterly reckless in regard to human life as in Ireland. After draining all possible profit from his labourer's service he turns him forth as a pauper, to get scant food if workhouse officials choose to give it, and if not, to starve by the wayside. The last great famine was the direct result of this accursed system of slavery. It was oppression of the worst kind that reduced the mass of the people to depend for their subsistence upon the success or failure of the potato crop; and the horrors that followed the failure of the crop were as much the results of misgovernment as the crimes of the French Revolution were the consequences of feudal tyranny, too long endured. Can England ever accomplish sufficient penance for her savage treatment of Ireland?