ch have grown up under an exploded system, which all modern
legislation has tended to remedy, but which no legislation can at once
remove. The education of the people, heretofore altogether neglected,
is now being attended to; but years will have passed before any
favourable change can be effected through its instrumentality; and if
things be suffered to progress as they have lately done, evil instead
of good must result from the enlightenment of the people by means of a
system which imparts knowledge without inculcating religion. If you
extend their information, and still leave them under the political
sway of those who induce the more ignorant by the most monstrous
promises, and compel the more instructed and better disposed by
unchecked intimidation, to follow in their wake, it is clear that you
but endow the demagogues with more power, and render the enemies of
order more capable of effecting their designs. The memorable
expressions of one who was the champion of a people's privileges and
the victim of their ferocity, are most true, that "to inform a people
of their rights before instructing them and making them familiar with
their duties, leads naturally to the abuse of liberty and the
usurpation of individuals; it is like opening a passage for the
torrent before a channel has been prepared to receive, or banks to
direct it."[8]

Yes, Ireland is afflicted by evils, but those evils are created not so
much by the defects of the law, or by the neglect and tyranny of the
better classes, as by the total demoralization of the lower. The Irish
peasant, naturally brave, generous, and faithful, is, by the system
under which he is brought up, rendered cruel, merciless, and
deceitful. There may be, and probably are, hardships inflicted by some
of the landlords; but they are produced in most instances by criminal
and precedent acts on the part of the people. In no country in the
world are the rights of property so ill understood or so recklessly
violated: the industrious man fears to surround his cottage with a
garden, because his fruit and vegetables would be carried off by his
lazy and dishonest neighbours; and he is deterred from growing
turnips, which would add to his wealth, from the certain knowledge
that his utmost care cannot preserve them. Amongst no people on the
face of the earth are the obligations of an oath or the discharge of
the moral duties so utterly disregarded: any man, the greatest
culprit, can find perso