oy at his decease." This paragraph, my lord,
taken by itself and unexplained in any way, would at once imply that
the people were inhuman, almost savages, whom Mr. Trench was sent to
tame--that they were insensible to the agent's sudden death, a death
so sudden that it would make an enemy almost relent. Mr. Trench
assigns no cause for this strange proceeding except what we read in
page 64, and what he learned from the chief clerk, viz., "that the
people were much excited, that they were ground down to the last point
by the late agent, and they were threatening to rise in rebellion
against him," &c. One would think that Mr. Trench having learned so
much on such authority, would have set to work to try and find out
the cause of the discontent and apply a remedy. He does not say in his
book that he did so, but seems still unable to understand this to him
incomprehensible proceeding. However, I am of opinion that Mr. Trench
knew the whole of it, if not then at all events before "The Realities"
saw the light, for in a speech of his, when Lord Bath visited Farney
(page 383), he said, "A dog could not bark on the estate without
it coming to his knowledge." And therefore I say that a man so
inquisitive as to find out the barking of a dog on the Bath estate,
who had so many sources of information close at hand, could not have
been long without knowing the causes of the "excitement, threatened
rebellion, bonfires, &c., on the Shirley estate," if he had only
wished for the information. Either he knew the cause of all this when
he wrote his book, or he did not. If he did, I say he was bound
in fair play to tell it to the public; if he did not know it his
self-laudation in his speech goes for nought. But, my lord, with your
permission, I will inform your lordship, Mr. Trench, and the public,
as to some of the causes of so remarkable an occurrence, which could
not pass unobserved by Mr. Trench. At the memorable election of 1826,
Evelyn John Shirley, Esq., and Colonel Leslie, father of the present
M.P., contested the county of Monaghan, and the former brought all
his influence to bear on his tenants to vote for himself (Shirley)
and Leslie, who coalesced against the late Lord Rossmore. The electors
said "they would give one vote for their landlord, and the other they
would give for their religion and their country;" the consequence was,
Shirley and Westenra were returned, and Leslie was beaten. Up to this
time Mr. Shirley was a good la