ns to prove an _alibi_; the most atrocious
assassin has but to seek protection to obtain it. Where in the
civilized world, but in Ireland, can you find a "sliding-scale" of
fees for the perpetration of murder?

And why is this so? Because the religious instruction of the people
has been totally neglected; because their priests have become
politicians, and stopping at nothing to accomplish their objects, they
teach the peasantry by private precept and example to disrespect and
disregard those doctrines which they publicly inculcate; because their
bishops, pitchforked from the potatoe-basket to the palace, become
drunk with the incense offered to their vulgar vanity, and the
patronage granted in return for their unprincipled political support,
instead of checking the misconduct of the subordinates, stimulate them
to still further violence,[9] and stop at nothing which can forward
their objects; because the opinions of the people are formed on the
statements and advice of mendicant agitators who have but one object
in view, their own pecuniary aggrandizement; because a rabid and
revolutionary press, concealing its ultimate designs under the
praiseworthy and proper motive of affording protection to the weak,
seeks to overturn all law and order, and pandering to the worst
passions of an ignorant and ferocious populace, goads them, by the
most unfounded and mischievous statements, to the commission of crime,
and then adduces the atrocity of their acts as a proof of the
injustice of their treatment. Every murder is palliated, _because_ it
arises from "the occupation of land." Every brutal assassination is
paraded as "a fact" for Lord Devon, and is recommended to that
nobleman's attention; not that the helpless and unoffending family of
the victim may be afforded redress, but that the executioner of their
parent may obtain commiseration. No matter what the conduct of the
tenant may have been--no matter what arrears of rent he may have
owed--to evict him is a crime, which, in the eyes of those
unprincipled journalists, seems to justify an immediate recourse to
"the wild justice of revenge." The rights of property are said to be
guaranteed by the law--while the exercise of those rights is rendered
impossible by the combination of unprincipled men, and the force of a
_morbid_ public opinion. He who would think it "monstrous" that a
merchant should be debarred from the right of issuing execution
against his creditor, shudders with