“On the road to Edgeworth-Town we were struck with the miserable state of the poor Irish. Many live in huts without either window or chimney, the door serving every purpose of ingression and of egression. The poor women and children were generally without shoes and stockings; the men, however, almost always wear both, and even in the midst of summer appear dressed in great coats. Though Sunday, we saw many parties dancing in the roads and fields, the men in their great coats, and carts and wagons passed along apparently as much as on any other day. Every time the coach stopped it was surrounded by beggars, apparently in the lowest possible state of misery.
“With a few exceptions, everything appears to be neglected. The land is miserably cultivated, and worse fenced, and the houses seem falling into ruin. You see gates with one hinge, and no fastening, tied up by means of ropes or haybands; windows reduced from a proper size to a single pane of glass, the remainder of the window, as it was broken, having been stopped up with a flat stone, a piece of wood, plaster, or a turf. In many places half the houses are in a state of ruin, and quite uninhabited. We learned that many had been reduced to this state at the time of the riots.”
At Edgeworth-Town they lodged in the best inn of which the place could boast. Nevertheless under the bed they found put away a store of old shoes:—
“After breakfast we went with Mr. Edgeworth to see his school. It consists of about 160 boys, of all classes, from the sons of beggars to the children of some of the most wealthy men in the neighbourhood. They are classed without any distinction but that of merit, and to destroy every difference in appearance, all the boys wore pinafores as a kind of uniform. Out of school, however, some distinction is made. The sons of gentlemen and respectable tradesmen have a separate playground, and the boarders are divided among two or three houses, according to their rank in society.
“About three-fourths of the boys had neither shoes nor stockings, but they all appeared clean, happy, and contented.
“The plan of the school in some measure resembles the Lancasterian, only that Mr. Edgeworth accomplishes much more than I have ever seen done in a Lancasterian school. Every boy pays a little for his education—viz., from 1d. to 5d. per week, according to his circumstances. Mr. Edgeworth has a nursery of four or five acres, in which the poor boys are allowed to work, in order to enable them to pay for their education, for the washing of their pinafores, &c. There are two masters with salaries, one of whom has the general superintendence of the school in Mr. Edgeworth’s absence, the other teaches the classics. The weekly payments of the boys defray every expense of the establishment, except the rent, within about a hundred a year. The boarders pay the masters of the houses at which they lodge for all expenses attending their maintenance.”
So eager were some of the boys to earn money by working over-time, that Mr. Edgeworth was forced to limit the hours of this kind of labour. A penalty was fixed for any one who should venture to begin work before the appointed time. Shortly before the arrival of the two visitors, a boy had been found on a summer morning hard at work as early as two o’clock. He was saving up money to buy his mother a garment of which she stood greatly in need. Not only was the breach of rule forgiven, but high honour was done to the young offender. “The mode taken was characteristic alike of man and country. When the required sum was made up, and the garment purchased, this being hung from the top of a pole, was borne in triumph through the single street of the town, all the boys marching in procession, with their landlord at their head.”
“The boys, as far as we could ascertain in the course of a week’s close inspection, are exceedingly orderly, attentive, and well behaved. Mr. Edgeworth states that he finds the children of the peasantry much more docile than those of gentlemen, and the English more tractable than the Irish.
“The hay-harvest was now about, and the boys spent considerable part of the day in the park making the hay. They worked in classes, under the direction of monitors, and proceeded with the utmost order and regularity; they very soon turned the grass of several acres.
“Mr. Edgeworth spends a good deal of time in joking with his boys. We saw him act before them the drunken, idle, low, but shrewd Irishman, and many other characters for the instruction and entertainment of his boys. They laugh with him, and, for the time, master and scholars appear to be on the most familiar terms.