in 1841 the
population of the barony exceeded 44,000 souls, and they contributed
by their industry, to the two absentee proprietors, the enormous
annual revenue of 40,000 l., towards the production of which it does
not appear that either of them, or any person for them, ever invested
a shilling.

Mr. S. Trench was amazed to find 'more than one human being for every
Irish acre of land in the barony, and nearly one human being for every
1 l. valuation per annum of the land.' The two estates join in the
town of Carrickmacross. When Mr. Trench arrived there, March 30, 1843,
to commence his duties as Mr. Shirley's agent, he learned that the
sudden death of the late agent in the court-house of Monaghan had been
celebrated that night by fires on almost every hill on the estate,
'and over a district of upwards of 20,000 acres there was scarcely
a mile without a bonfire blazing in manifestation of joy at his
decease.' Mr. Trench says, the tenants considered themselves
ground down to the last point by the late agent. As he relates the
circumstances, the people would seem to be a very savage race; and
he gives other more startling illustrations to the same effect as he
proceeds. But here, as elsewhere, he does not state all the facts,
while those he does state are most artistically dressed up for
sensational effect, Mr. Trench himself being always the hero, always
acting magnificently, appearing at the right place and at the right
moment to prevent some tremendous calamity, otherwise inevitable, and
by some mysterious personal influence subduing lawless masses, so
that by a sudden impulse, their murderous rage is converted into
admiration, if not adoration. Like the hearers of Herod or of St.
Paul, when he flung the viper off his hand, they are ready to cry out,
'He is a god, and not a man.' Of course he, as a Christian gentleman,
was always 'greatly shocked,' when these poor wretches offered him
petitions on their knees. Still he relates every case of the kind with
extraordinary unction, and with a picturesqueness of situation and
detail so stagey that it should make Mr. Boucicault's mouth water, and
excite the envy of Miss Braddon. Not even she can exceed the author of
'Realities of Irish Life,' in prolonging painful suspense, in piling
up the agony, in accumulating horrors, in throwing strong lights on
one side of the picture and casting deep shade on the other.

It is with the greatest reluctance that I thus allude to the wo