e is attempted, _because "he refused to assist a tenant to
turn out his brother's widow while her husband lay on his bed of death,
hardly allowing the body to get cold, when he insisted that he should
help him to add the widow's holding to his own."_[9]

Mr Wilson of Clare, a gentleman whose exertions to improve the
condition of his tenantry are fully detailed in the Devon _Blue-Book_;
who allowed the entire cost for subsoiling and fencing; who provided all
the materials for his tenants' houses, requiring only that they should
perform the labour, for which they were subsequently to be allowed on
their rents; who founded an agricultural school and benevolent fund, and
visited and inspected the improvements which he paid for; while, we say,
Mr Wilson, (a Roman Catholic, too,) who performed all his duties as well
as we could wish them performed, is threatened with death, and obliged
to desert his property, and fly his country, and for what? why, simply
because he dared, in the distribution of a farm containing one hundred
and forty acres, to reserve four for the use of a faithful servant,
whose honesty and attachment he wished to reward; and because, as we are
told by the member for Ennis, "_he was fond of a draining and subsoiling
system, which he wished to have practised, but which his tenants did not
like_." "The fact was," (the candid, if not discreet, Mr Bridgeman is
reported to have said,) "_the people who sent those notices had no
intention to assassinate Mr Wilson at all--they sent the notices,
thinking to frighten him out of his subsoiling_." Now, we have the
admission of this favourite "Joint off the Tail," that the people are
not anxious for those improvements, which we are told here they so much
long for; that they do not wish to improve the condition of their land
or their homesteads, even when they are paid for doing so; and that the
recompense which those men meet with who endeavour to induce them to be
industrious, by paying them for doing their own business, and who seek
to procure them employment at home, instead of sending them to England
or Scotland to seek it, is notice of assassination to frighten them from
giving employment, and, no doubt, death if they persevere. But is Mr
Bridgeman reported to have expressed any condemnation of the conduct of
those men?--Not a bit of it; and yet he is one of the set of brawlers
against the evils of absenteeism, one of the persons who attribute the
poverty of the pea