Irish landlords know this, and that they
are reluctant to see any law enacted which might make the performance of
their duties to the poor compulsory. This, indeed, is natural in men who
have so inhumanly neglected them.

But what must the state of a country be where those who are on the way
to pauperism themselves are exclusively burdened with the support of
the vagrant poor? It is like putting additional weight on a man already
sinking under the burden he bears. The landlords suppose, that because
the maintenance of the idle who are able, and of the aged and infirm who
are not able to work, comes upon the renters of land, they themselves
are exempted from their support. This, if true, is as bitter a stigma
upon their humanity as upon their sense of justice: but it is not true.
Though the cost of supporting such an incredible number of the idle
and helpless does, in the first place, fall upon the tenant, yet, by
diminishing his means, and by often compelling him to purchase, towards
the end of the season, a portion of food equal to that which he has
given away in charity, it certainly becomes ultimately a clear deduction
from the landlord's rent. In either case it is a deduction, but in
the latter it is often doubly so; inasmuch as the poor tenants must
frequently pay, at the close of a season, double, perhaps treble, the
price which provision brought at the beginning of it.

Any person conversant with the Irish people must frequently have heard
such dialogues as the following, during the application of a beggar for
alms:--

Mendicant.--"We're axin your charity for God's sake!"

Poor Tenant.--"Why thin for His sake you would get it, poor crathur, if
we had it; but it's not for you widin the four corners of the house. It
'ud be well for us if we had now all we gave away in charity durin' the
Whole year; we wouldn't have to be buyin' for ourselves at three prices.
Why don't you go up to the Big House? They're rich and can afford it."

Mendicant, with a shrug, which sets all his coats and bags in
motion--"Och! och! The Big House, inagh! Musha, do you want me an' the
childhre here, to be torn to pieces wid the dogs? or lashed wid a whip
by one o' the sarvints? No, no, avourneen!" (with a hopeless shake of
the head.) "That 'ud be a blue look-up, like a clear evenin'."

Poor Tenant.--"Then, indeed, we haven't it to help you, now, poor man.
We're buyin' ourselves."

Mendicant.--"Thin, throth, that's lucky, so it is! I