, the Duke of Sussex said he had
the honour of bearing an Irish title, and, with the permission of the
company, he should tell them an anecdote of what he had experienced on
his travels. When he was at Rome he went to visit an Irish seminary, and
when they heard who it was, and that he had an Irish title, some of them
asked him, 'Please your Royal Highness, since you are an Irish peer,
will you tell us if you ever trod upon Irish ground?' When he told them
he had not, 'Oh, then,' said one of the Order, 'you shall soon do so.'
They then spread some earth, which had been brought from Ireland, on a
marble slab, and made him stand upon it.] and as soon as the sods came
into town, he set each man upon his sod, and so then, ever after, you
know, they could fairly swear they had been upon the ground. [This was
actually done at an election in Ireland.] We gained the day by this
piece of honesty [See GLOSSARY 26]. I thought I should have died in the
streets for joy when I seed my poor master chaired, and he bareheaded,
and it raining as hard as it could pour; but all the crowds following
him up and down, and he bowing and shaking hands with the whole town.

'Is that Sir Condy Rackrent in the chair?' says a stranger man in the
crowd.

'The same,' says I. 'Who else should it be? God bless him!'

'And I take it, then, you belong to him?' says he.

'Not at all,' says I; 'but I live under him, and have done so these two
hundred years and upwards, me and mine.'

'It's lucky for you, then,' rejoins he, 'that he is where he is; for was
he anywhere else but in the chair, this minute he'd be in a worse place;
for I was sent down on purpose to put him up, [TO PUT HIM UP: to put him
in gaol] and here's my order for so doing in my pocket.'

It was a writ that villain the wine merchant had marked against my poor
master for some hundreds of an old debt, which it was a shame to be
talking of at such a time as this.

'Put it in your pocket again, and think no more of it anyways for seven
years to come, my honest friend,' says I; 'he's a member of Parliament
now, praised be God, and such as you can't touch him: and if you'll take
a fool's advice, I'd have you keep out of the way this day, or you'll
run a good chance of getting your deserts amongst my master's friends,
unless you choose to drink his health like everybody else.'

'I've no objection to that in life,' said he. So we went into one of the
public-houses kept open for my master;