sed that a man in
his station of life could practise usury or even extortion to any
considerable extent, we feel it necessary to inform them that there
exists among Irish farmers a class of men who stand, with respect to the
surrounding poor and improvident, in a position precisely analogous to
that which is occupied by a Jew or moneylender among those in the higher
classes who borrow, and are extravagant upon a larger scale. If, for
instance, a struggling small farmer have to do with a needy landlord or
an unfeeling agent, who threatens to seize or eject, if the rent be not
paid to the day, perhaps this small farmer is forced to borrow from one
of those rustic Jews the full amount of the gale; for this he gives him,
at a valuation dictated by the lender's avarice and his own distress,
the oats, or potatoes, or hay, which he is not able to dispose of in
sufficient time to meet the demand that is upon him. This property, the
miser draws home, and stacks or houses it until the markets are high,
when he disposes of it at a price which often secures for him a profit
amounting to one-third, and occasionally one-half, above the sum lent,
upon which, in the meantime, interest is accumulating. For instance, if
the accommodation be twenty pounds, property to that amount at a ruinous
valuation is brought home by the accommodator. This perhaps sells for
thirty, thirty-five, or forty pounds, so that, deducting the labor of
preparing it for market, there is a gain of fifty, seventy-five, or a
hundred per cent. besides, probably, ten per cent, interest, which is
altogether distinct from the former. This class of persons will also
take a joint bond, or joint promissory note, or, in fact, any collateral
security they know to be valid, and if the contract be not fulfilled,
they immediately pounce upon the guarantee. They will, in fact, as a
mark of their anxiety to assist a neighbor in distress, receive a pig
from a widow, or a cow from a struggling small farmer, at thirty or
forty per cent, beneath its value, and claim the merit of being a friend
into the bargain. Such men are bitter enemies to paper money, especially
to notes issued by private bankers, which they never take in payment.
It is amusing, if a person could forget the distress which occasions the
scene, to observe one of these men producing an old stocking, or a long
black leathern purse--or a calf-skin pocket-book with the hair on, and
counting down, as if he gave out his he