hat the facility with which these outrages have been
committed has only been equalled by the difficulty of punishing them. A
murder, perpetrated at noonday, in the sight of many persons, cannot be
proved in a court of justice. The spectators are never witnesses; and it
has been inferred from this, that the outrage is national, and that the
heart of the populace is with the criminal. But though a chief landlord,
or a stipendiary magistrate, may occasionally be sacrificed, the great
majority of victims are furnished by the humblest class. Not sympathy,
but terror, seals the lip and clouds the eye of the bystander. And this
is proved by the fact that while those who have suffered have almost
always publicly declared that they were unable to recognize their
assailants, and believed them to be strangers, they have frequently, in
confidence, furnished the police with the names of the guilty.

Thus, there is this remarkable characteristic of the agrarian anarchy
of Ireland which marks it out from all similar conditions of other
countries: it is a war of the poor against the poor.

Before the rapid increase of population had forced governments to study
political economy and to investigate the means of subsisting a people,
statesmen had contented themselves by attributing to political causes
these predial disturbances, and by recommending for them political
remedies. The course of time, which had aggravated the condition of the
Irish peasantry, had increased the numbers, the wealth, and the general
importance of those of the middle classes of Ireland who professed the
Roman Catholic faith. Shut out from the political privileges of the
constitution, these formed a party of discontent that was a valuable
ally to the modern Whigs, too long excluded from that periodical share
of power which is the life-blood of a parliamentary government and the
safeguard of a constitutional monarchy. The misgovernment of Ireland
became therefore a stock topic of the earlier Opposition of the present
century; and advocating the cause of their clients, who wished to become
mayors, and magistrates, and members of the legislature, they argued
that in the concession of those powers and dignities, and perhaps in
the discreet confiscation of the property of the Church, the only cures
could be found for threatening notices, robbery of arms, administering
of unlawful oaths, burglary, murder, and arson.

Yet if these acts of violence were attributable to de