, a few miles to the east of
Boland's house, was observed to be more than usually thronged with men,
on foot and on horseback, passing, as it were, to and from Limerick, and
strangers, apparently, to all the inhabitants and to each other. Shortly
after nightfall, the hill of Kilteely was seen covered with men and
horses, and within an old ruined house on the top of the hill a
dim light was seen to occasionally flitter. This ruin was full of
respectably dressed men, and at one end of it, on chairs, and at a
table, provided for the occasion, sat twelve of the most respectable of
them, and a portly important-looking gentleman on an elevated chair at
the end of the table. Two or three candies were burning, and some slips
of paper were on the table.

After a silence of a few seconds, the judge asked, in an audible voice,
if there was any business to be brought before the court on that night?
He was immediately answered in a solemn tone, by more than one voice,
that there was a great deal of business, but that only one case, that
of Captain Right against Boland, should be brought before him at
that present time. The judge then desired that the case be gone into.
Whereupon a middle-sized well-set young man, about six-and-twenty years
of age, whose name we know, and who sat behind the judge, now brought
his chair forward to the table, on the judge's left hand, and unrolling
a roll of paper, read in a low, solemn, but audible tone of voice, a
series of charges preferred by the said Captain Right against the said
Michael Boland and his sons.

The captain was then called up, and he deposed to different charges
against the defendants--such as taking beforehand, or in reversion,
several small farms over the heads of poor but solvent tenants, turning
them adrift on the world, and converting their small agricultural farms
into one or more large farms for grazing; thereby adding to the
number of the destitute, and contracting the supply of agricultural
produce--the payment to his laboring men of only eight-pence a day,
which he compounded for in kind--potatoes, milk, &c, at twice, at least,
what those commodities fetched him in the neighboring markets. These
were only a few of the many charges of petty tyranny preferred against
Boland; but the last and greatest of all was his Tithe Exactions.

Several witnesses were called up to prove these weighty offences, after
which it was asked if the accused party had been served with notices t