every season brings its partial scourge of both these
evils to various remote and neglected districts in Ireland, has not
been, what it ought long since to have been, an acknowledged and
established fact in the sanatory statistics of the country. Indeed, one
would imagine, that after the many terrible visitations which we have
had from destitution and pestilence, a legislature sincerely anxious for
the health and comfort of the people, would have devoted itself, in some
reasonable measure, to the human consideration of such proper sumptuary
and sanatory enactments, as would have provided not only against the
recurrence of these evils, but for a more enlightened system of public
health and cleanliness, and a better and more comfortable provision of
food for the indigent and poor. As it is at present, provision dealers
of all kinds, meal-mongers, forestallers, butchers, bakers, and
hucksters, combine together, and sustain such a general monopoly in
food, as is at variance with the spirit of all law and humanity, and
constitutes a kind of artificial famine in the country; and surely;
these circumstances ought not to be permitted, so long as we have a
deliberative legislature, whose duty it is to watch and guard the health
and morals of the people.

At the present period of our narrative, and especially on the gloomy
morning following the Prophet's unconscious visit to the grave of the
murdered man, the popular outrages had risen to an alarming height. Up
to the present time occasional outbreaks, by small and detached groups
of individuals, had taken place at night or before dawn, and rather in a
timid or fugitive manner, than with the recklessness of men who assemble
in large crowds, and set both law and all consequences at open defiance.
Now, however, destitution and disease had wrought such woeful work among
the general population, that it was difficult to know where or how to
prescribe bounds to the impetuous resentment with which they expressed
themselves against those who held over large quantities of food in order
to procure high prices. At this moment the country, with its waste,
unreaped crops, tying in a state of plashy and fermenting ruin, and its
desolate and wintry aspect, was in frightful keeping with the appearance
of the people when thus congregated together. We can only say, that the
famine crowds of that awful year should have been seen in order to have
been understood and felt. The whole country was in a