unt for much of the agrarian violence and erroneous
principles which regulate their movements and feelings on that and
similar subjects. For further information on this matter the reader is
referred to the "Hedge School."

With respect to these darker shades of the Irish character, I feel that,
consistently with that love of truth and impartiality which has guided,
and I trust ever shall guide, my pen, I could not pass them over without
further notice. I know that it is a very questionable defence to say
that some, if not principally all, of their crimes originate in agrarian
or political vengeance. Indeed, I believe that, so far from this
circumstance being looked upon as a defence, it ought to be considered
as an aggravation of the guilt; inasmuch as it is, beyond all doubt, at
least a far more manly thing to inflict an injury upon an enemy face to
face, and under the influence of immediate resentment, than to crouch
like a cowardly assassin behind a hedge and coolly murder him without
one moment's preparation, or any means whatsoever of defence. This is a
description of crime which no man with one generous drop of blood in his
veins can think of without shame and indignation. Unhappily, however,
for the security of human life, every crime of the kind results more
from the dark tyranny of these secret confederacies, by which the lower
classes are organized, than from any natural appetite for shedding
blood. Individually, the Irish loathe murder as much as any people in
the world; but in the circumstances before us, it often happens that the
Irishman is not a free agent--very far from it: on the contrary, he
is frequently made the instrument of a system, to which he must become
either an obedient slave or a victim.

Even here, however, although nothing can or ought to be said to palliate
the cowardly and unmanly crime of assassination, yet something can
certainly be advanced to account for the state of feeling by which,
from time to time, and by frequent occurrence, it came to be so
habitual among the people, that by familiarity it became stripped of its
criminality and horror.

Now it is idle, and it would be dishonest, to deny the fact, that the
lower Irish, until a comparatively recent period, were treated with
apathy and gross neglect by the only class to whom they could or ought
to look up for sympathy or protection. The conferring of the elective
franchise upon the forty-shilling freeholders, or in other words