out that. Then where was the generosity?
The order was that the men were to be dismissed on Saturday, the 20th of
March, and Colonel Jones's vast bounty consisted in paying them the day
he dismissed them, instead of compelling them to loiter about two or
three days waiting to be paid. It well became Colonel Jones, indeed, to
brag of such an act, in face of the many inquests at which such verdicts
as this were returned:--"Died of hunger, in consequence of not being
paid by the Board of Works, a fortnight's wages being due at the time of
death."

Some time previous to this, the Irish Secretary said in the House of
Commons that there was an organized combination amongst the people not
to till their farms. Such a combination could hardly exist to any
considerable extent, but there can be little doubt that a strong feeling
had sprung up in the minds of the people against tilling their farms,
not because they were opposed to tillage, but for quite another reason:
they felt that whatever labour they might expend upon their farms would
be thrown away, as far as they were concerned, because they knew full
well that the landlords would seize the produce of their farms for rent,
so that after expending their labour they would be still left to
starve,--in fact, that they would be tilling the land for others instead
of for themselves. Rents at the time were, of course, over due, and the
landlords' power to seize was unlimited. At a meeting of the Claremorris
deanery it was declared, that the assertion in the House of Commons,
that there was a systematic combination not to till the ground, was a
great calumny; and further, that there should be legal security that the
people would get the fruit of their labour in autumn. A petition to
Parliament from Ballinrobe says:--"Your petitioners have read with the
utmost alarm the letter of the Secretary of the Board of Works,
directing that twenty out of every hundred should be put out of
employment on Saturday, the 20th inst., as we are convinced that death
by starvation to thousands will be the result of such a fatal measure.
That we pray your honourable House, to direct the Board of Works to have
the persons now employed on the public works transferred to labour on
their own holdings, at the same rate of wages as if on the public works,
from the 25th of March, inst., to the 1st of May next, enabling them, at
the same time, to have seed on reasonable terms sufficient to sow their
little farm