t a stain upon their name, or bring a blush to the face of their
relations. But now it is not so: the mendicant sets out to beg, and in
most instances commences his new mode of life in some distant part of
the country, where his name and family are not known.

Indeed, it is astonishing how any man can, for a moment, hesitate to
form his opinion upon the subject of poor laws. The English and Scotch
gentry know something about the middle and lower classes of their
respective countries, and of course they have a fixed system of
provision for the poor in each. The ignorance of the Irish gentry, upon
almost every subject connected with the real good of the people, is only
in keeping with their ignorance of the people themselves. It is to be
feared, however, that their disinclination to introduce poor laws arises
less from actual ignorance, than from an illiberal selfishness. The
facts of the case are these: In Ireland the whole support of the
inconceivable multitude of paupers, who swarm like locusts over the
surface of the country, rests upon the middle and lower classes, or
rather upon the latter, for there is scarcely such a thing in this
unhappy country as a middle class. In not one out of a thousand
instances do the gentry contribute to the mendicant poor. In the first
place, a vast proportion of our landlords are absentees, who squander
upon their own pleasures or vices, in the theatres, saloons, or
gaming-houses of France, or in the softer profligacies of Italy, that
which ought to return in some shape to stand in the place of duties
so shamefully neglected. These persons contribute nothing to the poor,
except the various evils which their absence entails upon them.

On the other hand, the resident gentry never in any case assist a
beggar, even in the remote parts of the country, where there are no
Mendicity Institutions. Nor do the beggars ever think of applying to
them. They know that his honor's dogs would be slipped at them; or that
the whip might be laid, perhaps, to the shoulders of a broken-hearted
father, with his brood of helpless children wanting food; perhaps, upon
the emaciated person of a miserable widow, who begs for her orphans,
only because the hands that supported, and would have defended both her
and them, are mouldered into dust.

Upon the middle and lower classes, therefore, comes directly the heavy
burden of supporting the great mass of pauperism that presses upon
Ireland. It is certain that the