to the rapacity and extortion of middle-men, and third-men, and
fourth-men--and though last, not least, of the political exigencies
of the landlord himself, to serve whose purposes they were laboriously
subdivided off into tattered legions of fraud, corruption, and perjury.
Having, therefore, either connived at, or encouraged the creation of
thess creatures upon his property for corrupt purposes, is he justified,
when such a change in the elective franchise has occurred as renders
them of no political importance to him, in turning them out of their
little holdings, without aid or provision of some sort, and without
reflecting besides, that they are in this, the moment of their sorest
distress, nothing else than the neglected tools and forgotten victims of
his own ambition. Or can he be surprised, after hardening them into
the iniquity of half a dozen elections, that he finds fellows in their
number who would feel no more scruples in putting a bullet into him
from behind a hedge, than they would into a dog? Verily, my dear Simon
Spinageberd, the more I look into the political and civil education
which the people of Ireland have received, I am only surprised that
property in this country rests upon so firm and secure a basis as I find
it does.

"On arriving at Drum Dhu, the spectacle which presented itself to us was
marked, not merely by the vestiges of inhumanity and bad policy, but by
the wanton insolence of sectarian spirit and bitter party feeling.
On some of the doors had been written with chalk or charcoal, "Clear
off--to hell or Connaught!" "Down with Popery!" "M'Clutchy's cavalry
and Ballyhack wreckers for ever!" In accordance with these offensive
principles most of all the smaller cottages and cabins had been
literally wrecked and left uninhabitable, in the violence of this bad
impulse, although at the present moment they are about to be re-erected,
to bear out the hollow promises that will be necessary for the
forthcoming election. The village was indeed a miserable and frightful
scene. There it stood, between thirty and forty small and humble
habitations, from which, with the exception of about five or six, all
the inmates had been dispossessed, without any consideration for age,
sex, poverty, or sickness. Nay, I am assured that a young man was
carried out during the agonies of death, and expired in the street,
under the fury of a stormy and tempestuous day. Of those who remained,
four who are Protestants, an