nough for either dinner or
breakfast.' All his children were as badly off as himself--not half
enough of potatoes, and often nothing to drink with them, as he could
only afford the milk of one stripper for his family.' He had no fish,
'and very little of any thing.' This was the substance of his story,
translated to us by an interpreter, Mr Connell; and yet he was a large
holder, though his bed was of straw--his cabin falling to pieces--and
the mud outside percolating to the interior, where it was trodden into a
filthy, adhesive, earthy glue, by the feet and hooves of the semi-naked
children, pigs, fowl, and cattle." Now, can there be a more perfect
picture of desolation and misery than this man's case presents? Could
any rational person raise a doubt as to the truth of the sufferer's
representations?--his potatoes were rotten, "and he proved it by taking
them _indiscriminately from a heap_." Nothing could be more
conclusive--"here there could be no deception"--and the graphic sketch
which the talented gentleman drew of this wretched wight, would no doubt
have formed the groundwork of many leading articles in the influential
journal for which he reported, had he not been undeceived before he had
time to forward his dispatch, and _undeceived, too, by no less an
authority than Mr Sullivan himself_. At the conclusion of the very
letter which contains this harrowing picture, we find the commissioner
writing--"Whilst sitting at the hotel at Cahirceveen, Mr Trant, a
magistrate of the county, entering the room, informed me that Thomas
Sullivan of Aaghenming, whose house I visited on the preceding day, and
whose testimony I have already given, was outside, and _wished to make
evidence on oath that he had quite misinformed me as to his condition_;
in other words, that he was desirous of swearing that he had been
telling me lies. Sullivan was called in, and it appeared that he was
quite ready to take an affidavit. I took from Mr Trant, who acted as
interpreter, the following explanation of Sullivan's previous
statements--'_He imagined that I and your commissioner were coming from
government to enquire into the state of the potato crop, and he
therefore exaggerated the badness of its condition and his own poverty,
as much as possible._' He now wished to say, '_That he was not nearly so
badly off as he had stated; that he had plenty of potatoes and
milk--that he had a bed-tick which was in the loft when we inspected his
cottage_.'"[