t. Mick Sullivan, a specimen of the labouring
class, was the owner of a cabin in which Mr. Gibson found two starved
and naked children; this man was obliged to pay a rent of L1 15s. a year
for that cabin, and L2 5s. for half an English acre of potato garden, or
rather for half an acre of mountain bog. He paid for these by his labour
at 6d. a day. It took one hundred and sixty days' clear work to pay for
them, and of course his potato garden was no use to him this year. Mr.
Gibson valued the furniture in another cabin, John Griffin's, at 15d. A
week before Mr. Gibson's visit, the parish priest had found in the same
district, a mother dividing among three of her children that nourishment
which nature only intended for their infancy. And this was the moment at
which the Government relief was withdrawn, because the harvest had come
in. It is not matter for wonder that the Rev. Secretary of the Mallow
Belief Committee indignantly asks, "Is not the social condition of the
Hottentot, who was once thought to be the most wretched of mankind,
superior to that of Mick Sullivan, or John Griffin, whose furniture you
might purchase for fifteen pence? I will not compare the condition of
such an Irish peasant to that of the red man of North America, who, with
his hatchet and gun and bearskin, and soft mocassins, and flashy
feathers, and spacious wigwam (lined with warm furs, and hung about with
dried deer and buffalo), may well contemn the advantages of our poor
countryman's civilization. The Irishman has neither the pleasure of
savage liberty, nor the profit of English civilization."[120] "I think,"
adds Mr. Gibson, "the present the proper time for noticing the panegyric
passed by Lord Monteagle on the gentry of this country for their
liberality.[121] He gives two or three examples; but they may be the
exceptions, instead of the examples of the class; and as his Lordship is
one of the class he seeks to protect, his testimony cannot be received
as impartial. I shall now furnish you with more satisfactory data, from
which to draw a conclusion. According to the Poor Law Valuation, the
yearly rental of Rahan, the parish a part of which I have already
described, is L5,854. From those who hold the possession in fee of this
pauper parish, we received thirty-five pounds; from a gentleman farmer
we received three pounds; in all, thirty-eight pounds. If this is
benevolence, the inhabitants of Rahan would soon starve upon it. If it
had not been fo