. The military were often in
requisition to seize carts of corn under process of removal, or to
enforce the expulsion of some tattered, hungry, sick, woe-stricken
family from their miserable holding into the "wide wide world,"
houseless and hopeless. Frequently the parish allowed an outcast of this
description at the rate of seven-eighths of a penny per day to sustain
existence. An English periodical writer truly and compassionately
remarked, "nothing like Irish misery exists under the sun." Whatever
the disturbances generally prevailing, a very great number of the people
offered no resistance to the law; they obeyed and died. Mr. P. Scrope*
truly observed that the people bore these hardships "with a patience
and resignation which it is heart-breaking to witness, and which one
scarcely knows whether to praise or to blame."

* "Notes of a tour in England, Scotland, and Ireland, with a
view to inquire whether our labouring population be really
redundant."

Yet Mr. Crope, while he denounced the state of the law in Ireland as
affecting landlord and tenant, in terms which attracted the attention
of the country, and of foreign lands, described the difficulties of
landlords in a way just to the class and to his subject. "A moment's
consideration," he says, "will show the futility of expecting any mercy
to be shown to these poor people by those whom the law at present arms
with the power of destroying them. It sounds very well to English ears
to preach forbearance and generosity to the landowners. But it should
be remembered that few of them have it in their power to be merciful or
generous to their poor tenantry. They act under compulsion, usually
of the severest kind. They are themselves engaged in a life and death
struggle with their creditors. Moreover the greater number of
the depopulators are mere agents for absent landlords or for the
law-receivers under the courts acting for creditors, and bound by the
established rules and avowed practice of the Court of Chancery itself
(the fountain and head of justice) to make the utmost of the property
entrusted to them, without regard to any other consideration than the
pecuniary interest of the parties, which is committed to their care.
Those landlords who have yet some voice in the management of their
estates, seeing the highest court of judicature in the realm sanction
this principle of action, think themselves justified--most of them,
indeed, are compelled by t