tion's property; but to hold up to view the system as it pervades a large portion of the land, torturing and exacting, trampling and decimating the unprotected people; and thus to arouse the constitutional might of the assailed and too long suffering inany, to united exertion for a thorough reformation of the laws of land. A mass of evidence, of information, and of facts lies at this moment before us; how shall we select from them, or arrange them? How shall we give the tithe of them within reasonable space? We cannot; it must suffice to take them as they come in order of time, reserving for recurring opportunities, which we shall not fail to find, the continuation of our melancholy narrative. There exist no materials for any thing like an adequate summary of the details of dispossession, in any single county. Returns of the number of ejectments sued out in the superior courts, during a certain period, by the landlords of a few of the most disturbed districts, were made by order of the govern priciously dealt with-might be stung by individual tyranny into mad and vain resolves, forgetful of the odds against him, and that no revenge, however terrible or guilty, he could take, would perceptibly modify the general evil. But this conviction, which improved habits of life and the spread of education have latterly done so much to confirin, withheld many an injured man from violence in the worst of times; and the comparative facilities existing then for obtaining a new holding, when a man was driven from his ancient home, turned away the wrath of the outcast, and gave him an alternative to think of. That too was something; but that is now fast disappearing, and in many cases it is already wholly gone. An arrogant and overbearing fraction of the community, who assume to themselves the title of lords of the soil, have reduced their old caprice to regular system. They do things now by rule, and upon no fickle or mercygiving principle. They are educated and enlightened oppressors now,-have learned political economy, or pretend to have,ment, and used by Lord Morpeth in the deand are covenanted and agreed together among themselves, to clear, that is to depopulaté the land. If a tenant votes against his owner's wishes, he must take the consequences a ditch for a bed, and begging for a livelihood. If his offence be the worship of his father's God, the proprietor of his conscience believes-believes !-it to be his duty to drive from the place of his early dwelling and matured affection, from the only spot on earth where he has a certain means of life, the old tenant of the estate, and to supplant him with imported strangers of the favoured creed. There is a still worse crime in these wise, humane, and lordly men's estimation-that of being a small holder. The poor man is an offence unto them; his existence is intolerable in their sight; God hath said the poor shall never cease out of the land; but certain landlords of Ireland say they shall. Said we not well that life and property was fast becoming insecure in Ireland ? But the proof-the proof, cries some apologist of peculiar ignorance on the other side of the Channel, or of peculiar effrontery on this side. Ah, you shall have it till you rue the hour you asked for it. We are not about to darken the bad fame of this man or the other; we have no individual injuries to wreak, no personal anger to give vent to. Our object is a public and a national one, -to tell, as a faithful tribune of the people, what they are suffering, not here or there, on Lord Harass'em's estate, or Mr. Evic bates on the state of crime in Ireland, which took place in the course of last session. But these were far, infinitely far short of exhibiting in their true extent, the fearful workings of the system. Under the recent statutes, giving extended jurisdiction to the Assistant Barrister's court, ejectments may be brought at Quarter Sessions against all persons accused of "overholding," as the legal phrase hath it, if the rent does not exceed £50 a year. Every body knows that within this limit fall three fourths of the tenantry of the kingdom. When therefore we are told the number of ejectments in the superior courts, we are told practically nothing of what is really going on throughout the country, in this the most important matter that the country can be informed about. law business of the people is done at Quarter Sessions, and not in the Four Courts, Dublin; we know that the extent of law proceedings in the latter relative to land and its tenure, is already too great for the peace of the country; but great though they be, they are as cypher, compared with those which take place in the local tribunals. The Here then we pause to ask, what is the reason that a liberal government, professedly existing on the popular breath, and lawofficered by men well acquainted with this vital truth of society and its fate in Ireland, what is the reason that now six years have been suffered to roll ignorantly by, without any efficient means being taken to rip open and lay bare this mystery of misery? Or if are presented with the fearful spectacle of nearly one thousand families menaced with the loss of that, by whose undisturbed possession alone they can feel the ineans of existence secure. But let us look a little closer at the picture. The county whereof we are speaking now, is one of comparatively small dimensions. Its population does not exceed 150,000, a number which is usually estimated as composing 28,000 families. And what have we then? One family out of every twenty-eight threatened in the brief space of half a dozen years with extirpation. Each of these families is necessarily known to, and connected with many others. The sympathy of friendship-of neighbourhood, the administration have neither the energy nor the will to do this duty to our people-to do this, which it were no mighty or expensive boon to grant, but literally nothing beyond the doing of an easy act of common justice towards us-why is it that parliament is not called upon by some of our independent members for Ireland, to institute a bold and searching inquiry into the subject? This is the kernel of Irish policy; and all the rest, till this be come at, is but scraping and rinding of the shell. This is the previous question to Lord Stanley's Bill. For until this matter of the unmutual, unreciprocal, and unequal relation of landlord and tenant be ascertained, as the first step to a thorough change of their respective positions, and until of relationship, is strong in the hearts of that change be set about and perfected, fran- our countrymen. Such feelings may be chise and registration disquisitions are little contrary to landlord-made law-may be at better than a stupid playing of the old game variance with the tranquil decimation or enof political blindman's-buff. As to the mere slaving of a people: what business have the statistical facts, any member of the House of people with sympathies for the aggrieved, or Commons could obtain for asking for it, a indignation at wrong? their duty in this return of the number of civil bill ejectments, world is to drudge, to emigrate, and die ;-to brought in each county in Ireland, during be kept at home for domestic purposes, the last half dozen years; and it is hardly too while faggots are worth forty shillings a much to say, that whoever would take the year, or to be exported like swine, and trouble of procuring such a return, would" other beasts," when votes become no longer render his constituents and his country preeminent service. Meanwhile let us glance at a few specimens of the working of agrarian combination as it is carried on by a portion of the aristocracy. We shall omit mentioning names in the following recitals, for a very plain and sufficient reason. Our object is not to gratify local feelings of resentment or indignation; which, however just and natural, are wholly vain for any purposes of general or permanent remedy, and rather tend to absorb and waste the energy of each district in passionate utterance of its peculiar wrongs, than lead it to seek the sympathy and cooperation of each other equally suffering district, that all may take united measures of mutual help and aid. For the people's sake, we mourn over every ebullition of violence, whose echo we are forced to hear. In one of the counties of Leinster, there were no fewer than one hundred and ninetyfive ejectments brought in the superior courts between 1833 and 1838. We infer, not only from the grounds already stated, but also from the result of a good deal of enquiry we have made in various counties upon the subject, that the number of ejectments brought in the quarter sessions courts by civil bill, are, at the lowest calculations, four times as numerous as those sued forth of the superior tribunals. Thus, then, we marketable. "Beasts" is no phrase of ours, -not even in the bitterness of our scorn and ridicule of the system we arraign, would we dare to trifle so far with the honour of our race, or so forget the homage which we owe to the good and wise Creator of our race, as to be guilty of that impious nickname. But all decency is laid by when the madness of social tyranny begins, and reason and expostulation are waste of time. It is power and impunity which make oppression reckless and talkative; let us pardon and forget the individual fool; but let the epithet and the applause it won, as expressive of the spirit that actuates the system, be remembered and reiterated until that system be put an end to for ever. Perhaps it will be said that threats are not deeds, and that however unhappy the menace of ejectment may render a large portion of the community, it is only an assertion of proprietory rights, and is not to be taken as an index to actual dispossession; in other words, service of ejectments upon all the tenants of a townland is nothing more than the cracking of the driver's whip in a slave plantation; is it indeed? Within the confines of the county we have been adverting to, there stood not very long ago a considerable village, wherein between forty and fifty families had their home. Some of them were poor, and pro bably enjoyed as sparingly the comforts of life as commonly falls to the Irish peasant's lot. But many of them also were in comfortable circumstances, living in houses built of stone, and bringing up their children, to use their own phrase, with notions of decency. Their fathers had dwelt around the same spot for many generations; and they were instinctively fond of the old place. That once thriving and populous hamlet exists no more. Every family therein was, by the absolute and resistless decree of one man, driven from their homes, and none shall ever light a fire upon these hearths again. With the exception of one house and the barrack of the constabulary, not a single dwelling was left standing. Where yesterday there was the hum of toil, the light laugh of childhood, and the quiet talk of age, there is silence now; desolation reigns; the inhabitants are gone, and the place thereof knoweth them no more. At the lowest calculation two hundred human beings were thus driven into exile, or compelled to seek a prowling livelihood by mendicancy in their native land. It only remains to be added, that no pretence of insolvency was made as the reason of their arbitrary dispossession. In another and somewhat larger county of the same province, the number of ejectments issued during the same period, namely from 1833 to 1838, in the superior courts alone, considerably exceeded 200; and estimating the civil bill proceedings of the same kind by the proportion already noticed, we have at the least as numerous a class of sufferers here as in that above mentioned. By way of illustration of the abuses in detail, which the existing laws of tenantry give room for, we shall mention a case that occurred in the county in question within the last three years. Three respectable small farmers had held under a middle man for very many years; but the latter, having become improvident, fell into arrear and was justly evicted. The subtenants came thenceforth to hold directly from the owner in fee, and upon the occasion of their being for the first time recognized as tenants by him, they were distinctly told that they should get new leases if they maintained their good character, and improved their holdings. This was sworn to upon the trial which subsequently took place, and not controverted; it was likewise proved incontestably that they had improved, and had built comfortable houses on their little farms, and no allegation whatsoever was made of their misconduct in any respect. But the landlord had formed the resolution in his own wise head that their farms needed consolidation, as the cant is; and though they had relied upon the promise of leases, and had paid up the rent to the day, he had the power to evict them as yearly tenants by a mere notice to quit, notwithstanding the prescriptive title that upwards of twenty years' possession had morally given them. The Now we have selected this case as one devoid of any peculiar circumstances of political or religious oppression, because we know it to be a fair and admitted sample of the operation of the existing law, universally throughout the kingdom. And on this we take our stand and say,-here is the root of that insecurity that inevitably tends to demoralize, degrade, and impoverish the nation. It signifies not one farthing, whether the same law acting, as in England, upon a social condition wholly and utterly different, is found to work no similar evil. variety of employments which exists in England, renders it impossible for landlords to trifle with the good humour of their tenantry. One half the population of England are engaged in other pursuits than agriculture; agriculture with four-fifths of our population is the only means of existence. If a tenant is aggrieved in England, he throws up his holding, and it lies, perhaps, for years unoccupied, the landlord is taught a lesson for life, and the rest of his tenants live on and improve securely. So far from the possession of leases being thought indispensable by the tenant, there are numerous districts in England where they are practically unknown. And thus it happens, from the disparity of circumstances, that the law which in lawyer's lingo sounds the same there and with us, works all the difference, in practice, of social peace and social war,of personal liberty and prædial thraldom. As to the abstract or intrinsic righteousness of the English law itself, we have neither time nor patience to do more than say, that in every such matter, whose excellence or evil consists solely in its applicability to the wants it is applied to, the pretence of abstract justice is nothing more nor less than abstract fudge. The land laws of England may work well in England for aught we know; and if they do, Heaven forbid that we should be suspected of having the remotest wish to see them altered: we take it for granted that our shrewd and thrifty neighbours understand what is good for them, better than any other set of men on the face of the earth ever did or ever will comprehend it. But so in like manner do we; and we are not, therefore, to be baffled, when we demand a change that the experience of generations has proved so indispensible to our safety and welfare,-by the pert quip of Counsellor Hungry, or the assimilating chatter of Mrs. Expectant. But we pass on to a third illustration of the system. There is a certain property in the fine county of which we are now about to speak, which never has belonged to a bigoted or politically unpopular family. About five and twenty years ago the owner of it desired to create, as it was called, an interest in the county, with a view to the representation. Accordingly he granted nearly 300 forty-shilling freeholds, which, as the district was then populous, was an easy matter to do. Soon afterwards, however, he succeeded in obtaining the object of his ambition elsewhere, and from that hour this liberal, for he was on the hustings and in the house of Commons an undoubted liberal, began the work of clearance. Notices to quit, and ejectments for rent and title, were kept up without mercy or intermission, 'till no vestige remained of the once thronging hill-side and valley. A whole townland is engrossed by one man now; and there are idiots who will tell you that the change of a human population into an inhabitancy of oxen and sheep, is an evidence of giant-stride prosperity! after we shall name the "Insecurity of the People," to rest in silence until we shall see active and earnest measures taken, or practically, at least, begun for the permanent protection that we stand in need of; and as the knowledge of the whole bitter truth is the first step to be taken in the work of Land Reform, as it is in every similar work of real reformation, we purpose to continue, in future numbers, our examples and illustrations of the state of property and its tenure in Ulster, Connaught, and Munster. Meanwhile, a few words as to other Leinster counties. In one of the most populous of them, the number of ejectments served under the authority of the superior courts, in the six years from 1833 to 1838, both inclusive, was only 170, while in another adjacent thereto, of yet larger dimensions, the corresponding proportion was kept up during the same interval to a still greater amount. But the community who have suffered most, taking into consideration their fewness, comparatively speaking, are those who dwell in one of the spots which Providence would seem to have most specially intended for the happiness and comfort of man. The soil is more than Irish in its fertility; and along its borders pour the deep and affluent tides of inland navigation. But a few men, gifted The melancholy consequence of the fatal with irresponsible social power, and carried system in this particular instance, was the or- insanely away by the dictates of prejudice ganization of lawless and desperate bands, and passion, and unrestrained by the advice who kept the entire neighbourhood in awe, as unreproved by the good example of their up to no very distant period. They threat- brethren aristocrats, who in this and other ened vengeance upon any who should take the afflicted countries seem appointed, like the vacant land; and it is a memorable and in- prophet of old, to stand between the doomed structive fact, that one considerable tract lay and the living, that the plague of depopulaso long tenantless on this account, that it tion may partially be stayed, these numeracquired and bore the name for many years ically insignificant, though, by the accident of "the waste land." But this was in times of birth and the misfortune of monopolising gone by, it may be said; what of all this to land laws, too mighty men, have shaken all the purpose now? Alas, there are too many popular confidence in property and its tenure, of the landlords of Ireland whom no expe- and will, if they be not timely hindered, rience seems to have any effect upon. In bring society, in that beautiful and once the principal town of this very county, not mirthful district, to anarchy and ruin. The three months ago, we happen to know that a number of ejectments there, during the pegentleman was unable to get bills of sale riod already named, was, in the superior printed for several days, because, as the courts, above two hundred,— -a fearful numworkmen stated in excuse, they were engaged ber, bearing in mind the gross population. in manufacturing "Notices to Quit, for At what amount shall we venture to predifferent gentlemen." sume the notices to quit, and ejectments under £50 rent, brought, in the same mournful period, under the local jurisdictions? Nor are we at liberty to believe that at the end of that period any cessation or respite was permitted to society, wherein it might forget its wrongs and recover its lost patience. Within the last two years, on a single property in that county, thirty fami We pass on to another county, still keeping within Leinster, beyond whose limits we perceive that time and space will not suffer us to travel on the present occasion. Our yearnings after the fate and sympathy of the South, the West, and the North, cannot in the same hour be exemplified; but we do not mean to suffer this great subject, which here mand of those great changes in the relation of landlord and tenant as established by law, that the growth of civilization every where is already developing, but which our condition peculiarly requires. If the people. of England are indifferent to such things, what is that us? We know what we want, and what we want we are grown too many not to have for asking, if we only have the sense to ask it in a proper tone. lies were turned out of their holdings on the same day, and their houses levelled with the ground. The scene, as graphically described by an eye-witness, we shall not here repeat. It were utterly impossible to write it, or to read it, without feelings which we fear need no art or eloquence to be kept alive among our countrymen; and such feelings centred, as in details like those we have now in view they must needs be, upon the heads of one or two individuals, we cannot think either useful or in any way desirable. Again we repeat, the system, as a system, is the thing, and the only thing to be effectually assailed. The law, which gives first a monopoly of the land to a few, and then invests them with irresponsible and illimitable powers, makes men oppressors as necessarily and as inevitably, as moral effect follows moral cause. It is not the peculiar viciousness of the men. Are not these very men, in other respects, and in all the unpoisoned relations of society, honourable, upright, and humane? All of them may not be so, but the majority un-ism by night, and logical remonstrances by doubtedly are. Why? because they are not there placed in a false position by the laws of the land. Fellow countrymen ! think well and deeply on these things. Fellow countrymen! with you, and you alone, rests your own peaceable and blood-guiltless emancipation from this terrible oppression,-one which in nought, that is truly good or worthy, benefits your oppressors, but makes you "poor indeed." It is for you to change, by the calm force of irresistible opinion, the evil parts of long neglected, long unreformed laws. But oh! think as a great and uprisen people, of the attitude and demeanour that bents you. By all the sufferings ye have endured with noble fortitude,-by all the steadfastness wherewith ye have hoped even against hope, and against accumulated provocations to despair,-by the name and lineage we bear in common,-by all we have in unison as Irishmen,-by every impulse of pride and grief, and glory, we do adjure ye, to lay aside the ineffectual resort of personal revenge, and to unite in firm and resolute de Remember '82! For fifty years our fathers had been seeking for their rights, and whispering about their rights, and writing pamphlets, or reading the most conclusive logical proof that they were entitled to have their rights, and all the usual palaver of political poltroonery; and all that time they got nothing but kicks and curses, which they in some measure deserved. At length it came into their heads to say to one another,-"maybe it were well to try what a different tone would do; suppose we agree to forget our old differences of creed and faction; suppose we put an end to whiteboy day, and folding our arms constitutionally, announce to our oppressors that we have made up our minds as to what we are entitled to, and that we intend to have it." It was said, and it was done. '82 was won without a blow. A calm and united people is the most horrible vision misgovernment ever saw. It takes the very breath from it; its whole witchery and conjuration is employed to dispel its appearance; whywhy is it that the cunning of perverse enchantment still prevails to shut out from us the only revelation of popular power, happiness, and prosperity ? Remember also '29! Then, for the second time in our history, was the might and majesty of the nation made known, peaceably, triumphantly, in vindication of its supreme authority. The men of '29, like the men of '82, were unanimous and in earnest; and their calm determination terror-struck the heart of despotism; and the moral power of physical force being timely manifested, rescued us from the dread alternative of a civil war. |