upon
paupers, added to the absence of proper education, or the means
of acquiring it, generated, by the fraudulent subdivision of small
holdings, by bribery, perjury, and corruption, a state of moral feeling
among the poorer classes which could not but be productive of much
crime. And yet, notwithstanding this shameful prostitution of their
morals and comfort, for the purposes of political ambition or personal
aggrandizement, they were in general a peaceable and enduring people;
and it was only when some act of unjustifiable severity, or oppression
in the person of a middleman, agent, or hardhearted landlord, drove them
houseless upon the world, that they fell back upon the darker crimes
of which I am speaking. But what, I ask, could be expected from such a
state of things? And who generated it? It is not, indeed, to be wondered
at that a set of men, who so completely neglected their duties as
the old landlords of Ireland did, should have the very weapons turned
against themselves which their own moral profligacy first put into the
hands of those whom they corrupted. Up to this day the peasantry are
charged with indifference to the obligation of an oath, and in those who
still have anything to do in elections, I fear with too much truth. But
then let us inquire who first trained and familiarized them to it? Why,
the old landlords of Ireland; and now their descendants, and such of
themselves as survive, may behold, in the crimes which disgrace the
country, the disastrous effects of a bad system created by their
forefathers or themselves.

In the meantime, I have no doubt that by the removal of the causes which
produced this deplorable state of things, their disastrous effects will
also soon disappear. That the present landlords of Ireland are, with the
ordinary number of exceptions, a very different class of men from those
who have gone before them, is a fact which will ultimately tell for the
peace and prosperity of the country. Let the ignorance of the people,
or rather the positive bad knowledge with which, as to a sense of civil
duties, their minds are filled, be removed, and replaced with principles
of a higher and more Christian tendency. Let the Irish landlords
consider the interests of their tenantry as their own, and there is
little doubt that with the aids of science, agricultural improvement,
and the advantages of superior machinery, the Irish will become a
prosperous, contented, and great people.

It is not