heir consciences are relieved from the incubus of the Establishment!

_To Isaac Butt, Esq., LL.D._

'My dear Butt--If every other man in the world entertained doubts of
my sincerity, you, at least, would give me credit for honesty and
just intentions. I write to you accordingly, because my mind has been
stirred to its inmost depths by the perusal of your address in my
native city of Limerick. I do not regard the subject of your address
as a political one. It ought to be regarded solely as a question of
humanity, justice, common sense, and common honesty. I wish my lot had
never been cast in rural places. As a clergyman I hear what neither
landlords nor agents ever hear. I see the depression of the people;
their sighs and groans are before me. They are brought so low as
often to praise and glorify those who, in their secret hearts, are the
objects of abhorrence. All this came out gradually before me. Nor did
I feel as I ought to feel in their behalf until, in my own person and
purse, I became the victim of a system of tyranny which cries from
earth to heaven for relief. Were I to narrate my own story it
would startle many of the Protestants of Ireland. There are good
landlords--never a better than the late Lord Downshire, or the living
and beloved Lord Roden. But there are too many of another state of
feeling and action. There are estates in the north where the screw is
never withdrawn from its circuitous and oppressive work. Tenant-right
is an unfortunate and delusive affair, simply because it is almost
invariably used to the landlord's advantage. Here we have an election
in prospect, and in many counties no farmer will be permitted to think
or act for himself. What right any one man has to demand the surrender
of another's vote, I never could see. It is an act of sheer felony--a
perfect "stand-and-deliver" affair. To hear a man slavishly and
timorously say, "I must give my votes as the landlord wishes," is an
admission that the legislature, which bestowed the right of voting on
the tenant, should not see him robbed of his right, or subsequently
scourged or banished from house and land, because he disregarded a
landlord's nod, or the menace of a land agent. At no little hazard of
losing the friendship of some who are high and good and kind, I write
as I now do.--Yours, my dear Butt, very sincerely,

'THOMAS DREW.

'Dundrum, Clough, County Down,
September 7, 1868.'

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