All these are favourable circumstances, and are very
conspicuous in the numerous and healthy families among them.

Reverse the medal: they are ill clothed, and make a wretched appearance,
and what is worse, are much oppressed by many who make them pay too dear
for keeping a cow, horse, etc. They have a practice also of keeping
accounts with the labourers, contriving by that means to let the poor
wretches have very little cash for their year's work. This is a great
oppression, farmers and gentlemen keeping accounts with the poor is a
cruel abuse: so many days' work for a cabin; so many for a potato garden;
so many for keeping a horse, and so many for a cow, are clear accounts
which a poor man can understand well, but farther it ought never to go;
and when he has worked out what he has of this sort, the rest of his work
ought punctually to be paid him every Saturday night. Another
circumstance mentioned was the excessive practice they have in general of
pilfering. They steal everything they can lay their hands on, and I
should remark, that this is an account which has been very generally
given me: all sorts of iron hinges, chains, locks, keys, etc.; gates will
be cut in pieces, and conveyed away in many places as fast as built;
trees as big as a man's body, and that would require ten men to move,
gone in a night. Lord Longford has had the new wheels of a car stolen as
soon as made. Good stones out of a wall will be taken for a fire-hearth,
etc., though a breach is made to get at them. In short, everything, and
even such as are apparently of no use to them; nor is it easy to catch
them, for they never carry their stolen goods home, but to some bog-hole.
Turnips are stolen by car-loads, and two acres of wheat plucked off in a
night. In short, their pilfering and stealing is a perfect nuisance.
How far it is owing to the oppression of laws aimed solely at the
religion of these people, how far to the conduct of the gentlemen and
farmers, and how far to the mischievous disposition of the people
themselves, it is impossible for a passing traveller to ascertain. I am
apt to believe that a better system of law and management would have good
effects. They are much worse treated than the poor in England, are
talked to in more opprobrious terms, and otherwise very much oppressed.

Left Packenham Hall.

Two or three miles from Lord Longford's in the way to Mullingar the road
leads up a mountain, and commands an exceeding