where we found prepared for us a supper of new potatoes and bacon, on which we fared sumptuously, in company with the worthy peasant, and Dwyer, the extraordinary captain of the Wicklow banditti. After sup per we retired to repose in a small apartment above the kitchen; and Dwyer promised that some of his men should take care that our place of retreat was not obtruded upon. THE IRISH PEASANTRY. By the Author of THE first thing which must have struck every one acquainted with the habits and mode of thinking of the Irish peasantry is the prevalence of an opinion inimical to the laws of the land. The once well-founded notion of there being no justice for a Catholic has become hereditary; and its consequence is obvious in an open disre spect for all the legal institutions of the country. Individuals, it is true, are ready enough to avail themselves of the laws, for the purpose of gratifying malice or redressing wrongs; but, while they are thus righting themselves or oppressing their neighbours, they are still, as much as ever, persuaded that Ireland is ruled by arbitrary power, and not by a paternal go vernment. In certain cases they are shrewd enough to discriminate; but respecting the views of the legislature there is only one opinion-and that opinion calculated for every thing but the promotion of harmony and content. However this state of things may startle casual observers, a little reflection will show that it is the natural consequence of circumstances. There still live the sons of those who witnessed all the horrors of the penal laws; Tales of Irish Life.' Perhaps there was more reason in man can never supply. Even in England, where the rights of the subject are watched with a jealousy unknown to other countries, we find too many magistrates acting illegally, arbitrarily, and tyrannically. What, then, must the case be in Ireland, where the provincial press may be said to sleep, and where an aristocratic combination--powerful and extensive-exists to awe into silence the slightest complaint of the peasantry? I speak here, not of individuals, but of the Irish gentry collectively; who, I am sorry to say,* notwithstanding Perhaps this arises from the absence of persons of rank and consequence, whose example, if they resided in their own country, might counteract the bad habits of their inferiors. Absenteeism, even in this respect, is an evil; and indeed I cannot agree with those who represent it, in any one respect, as harmless. individual exceptions, are much inferior, at least in point of humanity and justice, to the same class in this country. English landlords, 'tis true, are not quite so indulgent or so forbearing as they are usually represented; but still they have a habitual reverence for the rights of persons, which is, alas! almost unknown in Ireland. It has been said that the conduct of the servant indicates the character of the master; and it must be confessed that the subordinate agents of power in Ireland resemble very much their superiors. They are tyrants in miniature. Proofs of their delinquency are to be found every where throughout the country; and is it, therefore, any wonder that laws-sonal pique is merged in what is coneven good laws-administered and executed by such agents, are disrespected? Justice, in ordinary cases, is to be had only by chance; but scarce ly at all where the magistrate or his satellites has a political or personal interest in refusing it. This picture is not over-coloured. Things are certainly improved in this respect; but I fear not sufficiently to warrant any qualification of my statement. quently unknown, when thousands— from two neighbouring parishesmeet in hostile array. This pigmy warfare is attended with even worse consequences than the loss of half a dozen lives; it inspires a general spirit of revenge; begets a love of fighting and drinking; and finally promotes a disposition to associate for a redress of real or imaginary grievances, whether these be supposed to proceed from individuals or monopolists-from church or state. It may be, as some sages have thought, that these factions are an indicative of peace; but they should never forget that they ultimately terminate in an illegal combination, in which per It is, therefore, almost morally impossible that the Irish peasantry should pay that respect to the laws which the welfare of society requires, since their execution is intrusted to improper hands. It is useless to enquire here how this was to have been avoided, since we find its effect-a kind of social and political anarchy, in which the people are opposed to government, and individuals opposed to each other. Faction has been subdivided, and, like certain insects, it has vitality in all its parts. The Rockites and the Ribandmen are but a confederacy of the Darcys, the M'Mahons, Two and Three Year Olds, &c. &c.; for, when they are not fighting with the police, theyare quarrelling among themselves. These family factions are not to be considered as remnants of ancient clanship they spring naturally from the suspicion that justice is not to be had. Ill-treated individuals, instead of applying, as in England, to a magistrate, wait for an opportunity of seeking personal satisfaction. Friends interfere on each side; numbers are implicated: and thus the original cause of quarrel is fre : sidered to be the general good. It must, however, be confessed, that the Irish peasantry love fighting, merely for sport; and this national propensity is strangely gratified. Magistrates, in some instances, have refused to interfere from political motives; and I have known more than one justice of the peace protect a faction in consideration of their reaping his harvest for him. These men, for several years, were the terror of a barony; but at length they were conquered by a rival faction, to which their atrocities had given birth. I believe their patron is still in the commission. I have mentioned here only the most prominent of those causes which tend to keep alive, in the peasantry, a hereditary hatred of the government and the laws. It must be unnecessary to enumerate local grievances in proof of a fact which, I think, can hardly be disputed. The feeling is, with few exceptions, universal; and, unhappily, the means hitherto taken to eradicate it, have only helped to confirm opinions inimical to the public welfare. Coercion, on all occasions, was the weapon used by government to suppress discontent. Perhaps there had been no alternative left them. Whether that were the case it is unnecessary for me to inquire; my purpose is to show that its effects were the very opposite of those which a wise legislature would wish to obtain. A fearful exertion of power in despotic countries may terrify men into unwilling obedience; but, bad as things are in Ireland, the people still enjoy too much liberty to have acquired the disposition of slaves, though there be too much slavery for them to feel all the moral obligations of freemen. Every increase of power in the hands of the magistracy only leads to a further abuse; and, under the insurrection laws, the innocent are necessarily confounded with the guilty. The people are harassed by the minions of power, the business of life is interrupted, and the burdens of the peasantry are augmented, while the means of increased exertion are denied them. In the mean time the sanguinary code is in operation; hangings and transportations are hourly taking place; and the misfortune is, that the innocent too often suffer. This, under all the circumstances of the case, is inevitable. The laws are put into execution for the purpose of striking terror into the deluded; and, as the evidence before the officers of the crown is generally of a very doubtful character, they are obliged to decide as it were by chance, and have, it is to be feared, on more occasions than one, condemned to an ignominious death the victim of the perjurer. A people proverbially partial to justice are shocked at such a sacrifice; and the opprobrium attached to such a deed is excited at the expense of the laws. With minds pre-occupied by dislike of govern ment, they seize with avidity on such a proof of injustice; and, in the excess of their execration, forget the many who deservedly suffered, as well as all the circumstances which palliate the conduct of the administrators of the laws. The populace, in their own opinion, are never wrong; and the Irish peasantry have notions respecting equity which lawyers cannot abide by. For instance, they cannot be persuaded that he who assists in doing an illegal deed is as guilty as the actual perpetrator; and nothing is more offensive, in their eyes, than visiting with legal penalties a man merely because he may have been caught in company with an illegal assembly. Tendency (though a word of great potency in the lawyers' vocabulary) is one entirely unknown to them; and they uniformly deny the justice of that punishment which falls on individuals, when others equally criminal are suffered to escape. Besides believing themselves always in the right, and the government always in the wrong, coercion cannot disabuse them of their erronious notions. On the contrary, it has an effect directly opposite; and the victim of the Insurrection Act is viewed by the peasantry as a martyr to their cause. His praise is sung, in very intelligible verse, for years afterwards, at each rustic assembly; and the honours thus bestowed on the criminal has a dangerous tendency in doing away with that salutary opprobrium which would otherwise be attached to an ignominious death. The man who would die, sooner than bring disgrace on his family, feels no shame in offering, as a Whiteboy, his neck to the executioner. By a natural association of ideas, therefore, the peasantry are too apt to extend their sympathy to all delinquents; for it is well known they will protect a man, though they know of and abominate his crime. Coercion certainly has produced, at times, a momentary tranquillity; but the government has ever found that Captain Rock, like the fabulous vampire, is indestructible. They may inflict on him twenty thousand deaths, but the first moonlight night reanimates him into an atrocious existence. The insurrection act, therefore,like the phoenix, only expires to be renewed. To remedy this state of things, I own, is no easy task. Education, unless it commences with the old, is not likely to effect wonders in a hurry; for the political opinions of the father, in most instances, will be those of the son. Besides, education in Ireland, at present, is almost as extensive as it can be made. Something more is necessary than schools; and were I to venture on recommending a measure, it would be one to render more efficient, and less offensive, the constabulary forces now in existence. The magistrates in Ireland are incapacitated, by their habits and education, from being expounders of laws made to govern a free people and such is the well-understood combination among them, that, were they even deprived of their commissions, they would nevertheless exercise a dangerous influence over any officer delegated to supply their places, unless he was of a character and consequence superior to no ordinary temptations. From the state of religious and political parties in Ireland, such men are not likely to be found; and perhaps the government would be acting wisely in placing the administration of local justice, as they have the superintendence of the customs and excise, in the hands of Englishmen. From such a measure the happiest results might be anticipated, were proper persons chosen; for, as I have previously stated, the people of this country are educated in habits of reverence for the rights of the subject, to which the Irish aristocracy are strangers. Were Sir Richard Birnie to sit for a few months in any district of Munster, I will venture to predict that he would soon have the confidence of the peasantry, for of justice they are now as fond as their ancestors were in the days of Sir John Davis. An arrangeinent of this nature, however, would fail to produce all that might be effected, unless the political disabilities under which the Catholics labour were removed; for I am not sanguine enough to hope that Ireland will be happy while a single link of the penal fetters remain to the people. Perhaps even discontent might be banished by allowing Catholics to assist in the making of the laws. The peasantry would then feel that in an act of parliament there must be some reason and justice. Having thus taken a brief view of the condition of the Irish peasantry, and the causes which contribute to the permanency of discontent among them, I cannot conclude without saying a few words on a subject to which is erroneously attributed a variety of evils. There is evidently a disposition in the legislature, and among speculative men, to oppose the present mode of letting farms in Ireland This arises from false information; and those who gave evidence before the Select Committee relative to the subdivisions of lands took a very circumscribed view of the case. They inust have drawn general conclusions from practical instances, and even these instances would not have warranted their conclusions. A father, say they, divides his farm equally among his children; but they forget that a case of this nature proves two things. First-that small farms are difficult to be had; and, secondly, that the evil they wish to infer from such a proceeding is one that quickly produces its own cure. If boys and girls received a part of their father's holding as a portion, every new-married couple would have two farms. If they did not keep these in their own possession, it follows of course that for every small farm formed there would be a small farm to let; and thus every cottier would have an opportunity of enlarging his holding, thereby counteracting the folly of the original distribution. But it is not true that this practice is any thing like general. On the contrary, farms in Ireland are every day increasing in size, and the work of comparative depopulation is going on rapidly, though silently. I have witnessed, within the last ten or fifteen years, the demolition of thousands of cottages, and on various occasions I have been a spectator of scenes such as Goldsmith describes. Not long since I saw fifty habitations levelled on one estate, and all in one parish, by order of the proprietor; and the people of America know well what numbers of the Irish peasantry land annually on their shores. On mountains and in sterile districts cottages have been erected, within the last twenty years, in great abundance; but they have, during the same period, been rapidly decreasing in the fertile valleys. In parts of the country where I resided, for many years, among a dense population, there are now comparatively few people; and in the very town-land where I spent my youth there remains not a single inhabitant. The farms of ten happy families form now the out-farm of a grazier. I could mention a hundred such instances, in the same county, of a decrease in the population. I cannot help thinking that very erroneous notions have gone abroad respecting the rapid increase of the Irish population; and I have observed that people generally get married much younger in England than in Ireland. Among the Irish peasantry there is more foresight and prudence than they get credit for; and, indeed, for one instance of early marriage, in country parts, three are to be found in towns. If we examine the question of population very closely, we shall find that the Irish are not such good breeders as is generally supposed. Abundant proofs remain that Ireland was once densely peopled. Precise data, however, can nowhere be found, until within a period comprised in the last hundred and twenty years. Sir William Petty's survey was mere guess-work, and Mr. Beaumont's map is of equal authority. We come now to details with more pretension to accuracy. In 1731, by a poll-tax return, there was computed to be 2,010,221 people in Ireland. If this was ascertained by a census, we may reasonably conclude that not more than one-third were returned; for the period was peculiarly unfavorable to truth in a thing of this nature. The penal laws were in full force, and reports of Catholics and Protestants conspiring to murder each other were then current. Even were the precise object known and believed, still it would follow that not one-third would be returned. That this was the case appears plain from the Bishop of Dromore's statement, two years afterwards. According to Mr. Bushe, first commissioner of the revenue, whose statement is to be found in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,' the number of houses in Ireland in 1789 was 621,484. Allowing six to each house, this would give a population of 3,728,904. The data on which all Mr. Bushe's tables were founded was evidently erroneous; for in two years afterwards Mr. Wray, inspector of hearth-money, furnished Parliament with details, from which it appeared that the number of houses was 701,102, which, at six to a house, gives 4,206,612. Now it is well known that cities crowded like those in Ireland always averaged more than six to a house. The population, therefore, in 1791, must have been, even according to this statement, more than the above number. But we have a proof of this; for Mr. Wray gave it subsequently as his opinion, that there was no truth of which he was more convinced than that not more than one-half of the exempted houses were returned. The number of such houses was 149,474, which, at six to a house, would give 6 a population of 896,844. That being added to the former number, the total would be 5,103,456. Add to this the surplus number for towns, and we have a population little short of what it is at present. Increase, therefore, has not been so rapid as has been generally supposed; and that the population now advances slowly, if at all, must be evident from the fact that, while the number of new houses built in England in 1821 was estimated at 25,361, not more than 1,350, were reported to have been erected in Ireland. A great deal has been said relative to the system of the forty-shilling freeholders having a tendency to increase the subdivisions of farms. Their numbers, however, according to a return laid before Parliament during the last session, does not appear to be very formidable. To ascertain the precise number now in Ireland is impossible, though it strikes me, from an inspection of documents, that they have not, on the whole, increased for some years back. The following table will show, at one view, the number of persons who voted, forty-shilling freeholders and others, during the last elections at the different places where there was a contest, as well as the number of householders in the respective counties : |