le, your honor, found out that it was I
that ped them, an' I was glad, of coorse, to fly for my life. I'd thank
you, sir, to keep what I tould you to yourself, for even if it was known
in this neighborhood that I ped them, I wouldn't be safe."

"You don't know Hourigan, then?"

"How could I, sir, and me a sthranger?"

"Faith, and whether you do or not, it seems to me there's a strong
family likeness between you and him."

"Maybe so," the fellow replied, with a grin. "I hear my father say that
he sartinly was down in this counthry when he was sowin' his wild oats:"
and with this observation he passed on with the horse he was leading.

CHAPTER VIII.--An Unreformed Church

--The Value of Public Opinion--Be not Familiar with the Great

Recent circumstances have, unfortunately, shown us the danger of
tampering with, and stimulating, the blind impulses of ignorant
prejudice and popular passion beyond that limit where the powers
of restraint cease to operate with effect. At the period which our
narrative has now reached, and for a considerable time before it, those
low rumblings which stunned and frightened the ear of civilized society,
like the ominous sounds that precede an earthquake, were now followed by
those tremblings and undulations which accompany the shock itself.
But before we describe that social condition to which we refer, it is
necessary that we should previously raise the vail a little, which time
has drawn between us and the condition of the Established Church, not
merely at that crisis, but for a long period before it. This we shall
do as briefly as possible, because we feel that it is an exceedingly
unpleasant task to contemplate a picture which presents to us points of
observation that are, from their very nature, painful to look upon--and
features so secular and carnal, that scarcely any language could
exaggerate, much less distort them.

The Established Church in Ireland, then, in its unpurged and unreformed
state, was very little else than a mere political engine for supporting
and fostering British interests and English principles in this country;
and no one, here had any great chance of preferment in it who did not
signalize himself some way in favor of British policy. The Establishment
was indeed the only bond that bound the political interests of the two
nations together. But if any person will now venture to form an opinion
of the Irish Church from her gorgeousness and immense wealth