the chair;
and a vote of thanks having been passed to Lord W. Fitzgerald, the
meeting separated.

This agitation, which enlisted the attention of so many respectable
persons, was never supported by the people. Had the priests, and
their lay agents, and organs of the press favoured it, it would in all
probability have attained to some degree of importance. The people began
to lose faith in all associations, and the programme of this was not
sufficiently _piquant_ for the political taste of the violent and
bigoted sections of the community. The association met with some favour
in high quarters in England, but not with so much as its promoters
believed would be the case.

_Religious Feuds.--Conflicts between Landlords and Tenants_.--The social
and agrarian warfare continued when the political fires were quenched.
Men were waylaid and murdered on account of their religious opinions
being too prominently expressed for the bigotry of their assassins, and
the utmost religious animosity raged through the land. Landlords who
were active in proselytising, or who in any way showed religious zeal or
earnestness, were subject to insult and injury in every form.

The conduct of the owners of land was not generally forbearing and
praiseworthy, while the laws were all designed to operate in their
favour. The tenantry were not more just than the owners of the soil;
and altogether the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland were most
unhappy. A letter written from Ireland at the close of the year, thus
depicted the state of affairs:--"The evictions and house-levelling do
not cease in activity. At Ardnacrusha, a little hamlet about two miles
from Limerick, twenty houses were levelled on Monday. Thousands of the
fertile acres of Tipperary are waste, and these are increased each day
by further evictions. The case is the same in Limerick and in Clare. We
find daily announcements of large farmers running away, and sweeping
all with them. They grow alarmed lest their turn may soon come, and they
evade the fate of others by leaving the land naked on the landlord's
hands. A few days since, in a district of Clare, while the farmers were
at market with their produce, the landlord's agents descended on the
farmers, with a large body of armed followers, and without legal process
or authority of any kind, it is said, swept away all the stock on the
land to satisfy the landlord's claims. On the other side of the picture
we find that a tenant,