s too painful--and after avoiding
it as well as I could, we proceeded on our little tour of observation.

"How easy it is for the commonest observer to mark even the striking
characters that are impressed on the physical features of an estate
which is managed by care and kindness--where general happiness and
principles of active industry are diffused through the people? And,
on the other hand, do not all the depressing symbols of neglect and
mismanagement present equally obvious exponents of their operation, upon
properties like this of Castle Cumber? On this property, it is not every
tenant that is allowed to have an interest in the soil at all, since the
accession of M'Clutchy. He has succeeded in inducing the head landlord
to decline granting leases to any but those who are his political
supporters--that is, who will vote for him or his nominee at an
election; or, in other words, who will enable him to sell both their
political privileges and his own, to gratify his cupidity or ambition,
without conferring a single advantage upon themselves. From those,
therefore, who have too much honesty to prostitute their votes to his
corrupt and selfish negotiations with power, leases are withheld, in
order that they may, with more becoming and plausible oppression, be
removed from the property, and the staunch political supporter brought
in in their stead. This may be all very good policy, but it is certainly
bad humanity, and worse religion, In fact, it is the practice of that
cruel dogma, which prompts us to sacrifice the principles of others to
our own, and to deprive them of the very privilege which we ourselves
claim--that of acting according to our conscientious impressions. 'Do
unto others,' says Mr. M'Clutchy and his class, as you would not wish
that others should do unto you.' How beautifully here is the practice
of the loud and headlong supporter of the Protestant Church, and its
political ascendancy, made to harmonize with the principles of that
neglected thing called the Gospel? In fact as we went along, it was easy
to mark, on the houses and farmsteads about us, the injustice of making
this heartless distinction. The man who felt himself secure and fixed by
a vested right in the possession of his tenement, had heart and motive
to work and improve it, undepressed by the consciousness that his
improvements to-day might be trafficked on by a wicked and unjust agent
tomorrow. He knows, that in developing all the advanta