[13]. Here I wish to observe the distinction which occurs to me as existing between the attachment of the Scottish Highlanders to their lairds and the ardent love of the Irish peasantry to their landlords—(I mean, in my early days, when their landlords loved them.)
With the Highlanders—consanguinity, a common name, and the prescriptive authority of the Scottish chief over his military clan, (altogether combining the ties of blood and feudal obedience) exerted a powerful and impetuous influence on the mind of the vassal. Yet their natural character—fierce though calculating—desperate and decisive—generated a sort of independent subserviency, mingled with headstrong propensities which their lairds often found it very difficult to moderate, and occasionally impossible to restrain when upon actual service.
The Irish peasantry, more witty and less wise, thoughtless, enthusiastically ardent, living in an unsophisticated way but at the same time less secluded than the Highlanders, entertained an hereditary, voluntary, uninfluenced love for the whole family of their landlords. Though no consanguinity bound the two classes to each other, and no feudal power enforced the fidelity of the inferior one, their chiefs resided in their very hearts:—they obeyed because they loved them: their affection, founded on gratitude, was simple and unadulterated, and they would count their lives well lost for the honour of their landlords. In the midst of the deepest poverty, their attachment was more cheerful, more free, yet more cordial and generous, than that of any other peasantry to any chiefs in Europe.
The Irish modes of expressing fondness for any of the family of the old landlords (families which, alas! have now nearly deserted their country) are singular and affecting. I witnessed, not long since, a genuine example of this, near the old mansion of my family.—“Augh then! Musha! Musha! the owld times!—the owld times!—Ough! then my owld eyes see a B—— —before I die. ’Tis I that loved the breed of yees—ough! ’tis myself that would kiss the track of his honour’s feet in the guther, if he was alive to lead us! Ough! God rest his sowl! any how! Ough! a-vourneen! a-vourneen!”
Yet these peasants were all papists, and their landlords all protestants:—religion, indeed, was never thought of in the matter. If the landlords had continued the same, the tenantry would not have altered. But under the present system, the populace of Ireland will never long remain tranquil, whilst at the same time it is increasing in number—an increase that cannot be got rid of:—hang, shoot, and exile five hundred thousand Irish, the number will scarcely be missed, and in two years the country will be as full as ever again.
It is not my intention to enumerate the several modes recommended for reducing the Irish population, by remote and recent politicians; from Sir William Petty’s project for transporting the men,—to Dean Swift’s scheme of eating the children, and the modern idea of famishing the adults. A variety of plans may yet, I conceive, be devised, without applying to either of these remedies.
MY EDUCATION.
My godfathers—Lord Maryborough—Personal description and extraordinary character of Mr. Michael Lodge—My early education—At home—At school—My private tutor, Rev. P. Crawley, described—Defects of the University course—Lord Donoughmore’s father—Anecdote of the Vice-Provost—A country sportsman’s education.
A christening was, formerly, a great family epocha:—my godfathers were Mr. Pool of Ballyfin, and Captain Pigott of Brocologh Park; and I must have been a very pleasant infant, for Mr. Pool, having no children, desired to take me home with him, in which case I should probably have cut out of feather a very good person and a very kind friend—the present Lord Maryborough, whom Mr. Pool afterwards adopted whilst a midshipman in the navy, and bequeathed him a noble demesne and a splendid estate near my father’s. My family have always supported Lord Maryborough for Queen’s County, and his lordship’s tenants supported me in my hard-contested election for Maryborough in 1800.