fighting---mirth and
misery--orange and green. I would have written to you a month ago, but,
that such a course was altogether out of my calculation. The moment I
arrived, I came to the determination of sauntering quietly about, but
confining myself to a certain locality, listening to, and treasuring
up, whatever I could see or hear, without yet availing myself of Lord
Cumber's introductions, in order that my first impressions of the
country and the people, might result from personal observation, and not
from the bias, which accounts heard here from either party, might be apt
to produce. First, then, I can see the folly, not to say the injustice,
which I ought to say, of a landlord placing his property under the
management of a furious partisan, whose opinions, political and
religious are not merely at variance with but, totally opposed to, those
whose interests are entrusted to his impartiality and honesty. In the
management of a property circumstanced as that of Castle Cumber is,
where the population is about one-half Roman Catholic, and the
other half Protestant and Presbyterian, between us, any man, my dear
Spinageberd, not a fool or knave, must see the madness of employing a
fellow who avows himself an enemy to the creed of one portion of the
tenantry, and a staunch supporter of their opponents. Is this fair, or
can justice originate in its purity from such a source? Is it reasonable
to suppose that a Roman Catholic tenantry, who, whatever they may bear,
are impatient of any insult or injustice offered to their creed, or,
which is the same thing, to themselves on account of that creed,--is it
reasonable, I say, to suppose that such a people could rest satisfied
with a man who acts towards them only through the medium of his fierce
and ungovernable prejudices? Is it not absurd to imagine for one moment
that property can be fairly administered through such hands, and, if
not property, how much less justice itself. You may judge of my
astonishment, as an Englishman, when I find that the administration of
justice is in complete keeping with that of property; for, I find it an
indisputable fact, that nineteen magistrates, out of every twenty, are
Orangemen, or party men of some description, opposed to Roman Catholic
principles. And, yet, the Roman Catholic party are expected to exhibit
attachment to the government which not merely deprives them of their
civil rights, but literally places the execution of the laws in the