‘Hang sorrow and cast away care, The parish is bound to find us!’”
“This very security of property which is the most precious of an independent man’s rights,” said Effingham, “seems to be the most pernicious thing in the world to the indigent. One may fairly call it so in relation to them, for they seem to consider the produce of the rate as their property.”
“It is really so,” replied Burke. “They know it to be the lawful property of the pauper body, and that the only question is how it is to be distributed? As long as they know this, they will go on multiplying the claims upon it till nothing is left with which to satisfy them.”
“It is very odd,” said Effingham, “that none of the checks that have ever been tried have done any good; they seem rather to have made the matter worse.”
“I do not think it strange, Effingham. None of the remedies have struck at the root of the evil, and none could therefore effect lasting good.
The test is just this: do they tend to lessen the number of the indigent? Unless they do this, they may afford relief to a generation, or shift a burden from one district to another, or from one class of producers upon another; but they will not improve the system. Look at the experiments tried! First, paupers were to wear a badge, a mark of infamy. Of course, the profligate and hardened were the readiest to put it on, and those who had modesty and humble pride refused it, and obtained help only through the compassion of overseers, who evaded the regulation so perpetually, that it was abolished as useless. While it lasted, profligate pauperism increased very rapidly. Next came the expedient of workhouses, in which the poor were expected to do more work, and be fed less expensively than in their own houses. But here again the rogue and vagabond class reaped the advantage, the houses being detested by the sober and quiet; and the choice of the latter to pine at home, rather than be shut up in a workhouse, occasioned a diminution of the rate for some time; but that time has long been over, and now the maintenance of a pauper costs three or four times as much in a workhouse as out of it, there being no inducement to the paupers to work, and but little to their managers to economise. And this is just what any one might have foretold from the beginning, if he had seen what experience has plainly taught us, that indigence must spread while numbers increase, and while the subsistence-fund, on which they are to be supported, is consumed unproductively.”
“But why unproductively?” said Effingham. “I cannot help thinking that there must be some mode of management, by which manufactures might be carried on by paupers with pretty good success.”
“Suppose it to be so, according to what I imagine you to mean by success,—suppose a certain quantity of produce to be achieved and disposed of,—this is in itself a great evil. Capital raised by forcible means, arbitrarily applied, and made to bring a return from an artificial market, can never be so productive as if it found a natural channel; and its employment in this artificial manner is a serious injury to individual capitalists. In the neighbourhood of a workhouse where work is really done, a manufacturer, while paying to the rate, bitterly feels that he is subscribing the means by which his trade is to be stolen from him. It is adding insult to injury to set up in the faces of rate-payers workhouse manufactures, which are to have a preference in the market to their own. In all these cases, however, the object fails.
To all remedies yet tried, the same fundamental objection applies: they all encourage the increase of population, while they sink capital. What we want is the very reverse of this,—we want a reproduction of capital with increase, and a limitation of numbers within a due proportion to this fund.”
“What do you think, then, of the methods proposed for the amelioration of the system?”
“Which? There are so many.”
“The cottage system, for one.”
“It will not bear the test. Under no system does population increase more rapidly;—witness Ireland; and in addition to the worst evils that afflict Ireland, we should have that of a legal claim to support, which effectually prevents the due improvement of capital. Cottages would prove no better than workhouses, depend upon it.”
“Well, then, what do you think of assessing new kinds of property?”
“Worse and worse! This would be only casting more of our substance into the gulf before its time. It would be helping to increase the number of paupers; it would be encouraging the unproductive consumption of capital; it would be——” “Like pouring water into one of your dropsical patients,” said Effingham, smiling.
“Just so, Effingham; and it needs no great skill to foresee the result in both cases.”
“Then there are Benefit Clubs,” replied Effingham. “Some think that if they were made obligatory by law, they might soon supersede the poor-rate. What do you think of them?”
“No man approves such societies more than I, as long as they are voluntary; but fellowship of this kind would lose its virtue, I doubt, by being made compulsory. There are no means that I know of, of compelling a man who will not earn to store his earnings; and the frugal and industrious will do it without compulsion, as soon as they understand the matter: so that in fact the worst classes of society would be left as free to roam, and beg, and steal, as if the institution did not exist.”
“But Friendly Societies and Benefit Clubs will bear your test. They tend to the increase of capital, and, by encouraging prudence, to the limitation of numbers.”
“True; and therefore I wish they were in universal operation among the working classes; but this must be by voluntary association. It will be a work of time to convince our whole population of their advantages; and even then the less industrious part will rather depend on the poor-rate, if it still subsists. We must have recourse to some speedier method of lessening our burdens, giving all possible encouragement to Friendly Societies in the mean time.”
“What method? It seems to me that relief is already given in every possible way.”
“Aye; there is the mistake, Effingham. People think they give relief in giving money.”
“I seldom give money,” replied Effingham.
“No; but you give what money will buy, which is, begging your pardon, worse than ineffectual. Now, if you have no objection, I should like to know how much you spent on coals and blankets the first Christmas you settled here, and how much last year?”
“I began with devoting five pounds a-year to this purpose; but it increased sadly. I stopped short two years ago at twenty pounds; but it grieved me to the heart to do so, for more objects remain now unsupplied than I supplied at first.”
“Probably; and are these new applicants strangers from other parishes brought round you by your bounty, or are more of your near neighbours in a condition for receiving charity?”
“Dale reproaches me with having brought an inundation of paupers from a distance; but really our own population has increased wonderfully.”
“And the more support you offer them, friend, the more surprisingly they will increase, if there can be anything surprising in the case. Surely you do not mean to go on giving coals and blankets?”
“What can I do? You would call me cruel to withdraw the gift, if you could see the destitution of the poor creatures. I am completely at a loss how to proceed. If I go on, poverty increases; if I stop, the people will freeze and pine before my eyes. What a dilemma!”
“Much like that of government about its pauper subjects. I should recommend the same method to both.”
“To fix a maximum, I suppose; to declare the amount beyond which relief shall not be given? I have tried that, and it does not succeed. Twenty pounds a-year is my maximum, and is known to be so; but every one hopes to have a portion of it, and reckons upon his share nearly as confidently as if all were sure of it.”
“Of course; and there is the additional evil of admitting the principle of a claim to support, which is at the bottom of the mischief.—No; to fix a maximum is to unite the evils of the maintenance and the abolition of the pauper system; and both are bad enough singly. If I were you, and if I were the government, I would immediately disavow the principle in question, and take measures for ceasing to act upon it. If I were you, I would explain to my neighbours that, finding this mode of charity create more misery than it relieves, I should discontinue it in the way which appears to inflict the least hardship. I would give notice that, after the next Christmas donation, no more coals and blankets shall be given except to those aged and sickly people who at present look for them; and that no new applicants whatever shall be placed on the list, the object being to have the charity die out as soon as possible.”
“But I shall be railed at wherever I turn my face. I should not wonder if they pull my house about my ears. They will rob my poultry-yard, and burn my ricks. They will——” “Very like the situation of government!” exclaimed Mr. Burke. “The very same difficulties on a smaller scale. Friend, you must bear the railing for a time, since it comes as a natural consequence of what you have already done. I am sure so benevolent a man as you would rather endure this personal inconvenience than add to the misery around you. You are capable of heroism in retrieving a mistake, Effingham. As for your house and other property, you must take measures to protect it. You must firmly and gently repress tendencies to violence which arise, as you now perceive, from an error of your own.”
“I will consider, resolve, and act; and that without delay, for the evil is pressing,” said Effingham.
“I wish government would do the same,” replied Mr. Burke. “We hear much of consideration, but the resolve is yet to be made; and how long the act may be in following, it is impossible to guess. Meanwhile, we are going headlong to ruin as fast as you would do if you answered all the petitions for charity which would be brought upon you by unbounded readiness to give. Your private fortune would be gone in a twinkling, and so will vanish our national resources.”
“What period would you fix for abolishing the rate?”
“The best plan, in my opinion, yet proposed, is this:—to enact that no child born from any marriage taking place within a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child born within two years from the same date, shall ever be entitled to parish assistance. This regulation should be made known, and its purpose explained universally; and this, if properly done, might, I think, prevent violence, and save a vast amount of future distress. The people should be called together, either in their places of worship or elsewhere, in such a manner as to attract the whole population to listen, and the case should be explained to them by their pastors or others. It is so plain a case, and so capable of illustration, that I see no great difficulty in making the most ignorant comprehend it.”
“And yet the details are vast.”
“Vast, but not complicated; so the whole might be conveyed in a parable which any child can understand. I think I dare undertake to prove to any rational being that national distress _cannot_ be relieved by money, and that consequently individual distress cannot be so relieved without inflicting the same portion of distress elsewhere. A child can see that if there is so much bread in a country and no more, and if the rich give some of the poor two shillings a day that they may eat more bread, the price of bread will rise, and some who could buy before must go without now. Since no more bread is created by this charity, the only thing done is to take some of it out of the reach of purchasers to give it to paupers.”
“True: the only real charity is to create more bread; and, till this can be done, to teach men to be frugal of what they have.—I happen to know a case which illustrates your doctrine. Owen, who lives in this village, earned ten shillings a week before the last scarcity. He bought eight shillings’ worth of flour for his family, and had two to spare for other necessaries. During the scarcity, he received fourteen shillings a week from his parish, in addition to the ten he earned; but the price of corn had risen so much that he now gave twenty-two shillings out of his twenty-four for the same quantity of flour; so that he had still two shillings left for other necessaries; and thus, was no richer with twenty-four shillings than he had been with ten.”
“If there had been many such cases,” observed Mr. Burke, “the price of corn would have been even higher than it was. The best charity to the public as well as to this man would have been to teach him that he had better look after other kinds of food, and not insist on such an abundance of flour. Do not you think he could have understood this? and if he could, why should not his brethren understand the state of the pauper system, and be brought to acquiesce in the measures now necessary to be taken?—If the regulation I have described had been made when first proposed, there would have been much less difficulty than now. If not done now, there is no saying how soon it may be out of our power to do anything. We are now borne down, we shall soon be crushed, by the weight of our burdens.”
“We must hasten to give our testimony,” said Effingham: “I, by withdrawing my donations, and declaring why; you, by——but you have given yours, I suspect. I see now the reasons of your resigning your offices at both the charitable institutions where I and others took so much pains to get you in. I was more than half angry at it when I thought of our canvass, and all the disagreeablenesses belonging to it;—and all done and endured for nothing. But I see now how it is. I can only hope that your going out of office may do more good than your going in; and what more can I say?”
“Nothing more gratifying to my self-complacency, I am sure,” said Mr.
Burke, smiling. “I have had my recompense already in finding that many more than I expected attend to my reasons, and take them into consideration as a matter of real importance. My hopes sometimes mount so high as to flatter me that all Great Britain may soon be effectually employed upon the problem—HOW TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF THE INDIGENT.”
CHAPTER IX.
COUSIN MARSHALL’S END.
It was some years before any tidings came of Ned that could be depended upon. At length a countryman called on the widow Marshall one market-day, saying that he had had a world of trouble in finding her out in the small place she had got into outside the city, but was determined not to meet Ned Bridgeman again without having seen her and delivered Ned’s packet into her own hand. Mrs. Marshall had nobody living with her now but her youngest daughter, who happened not to be at home at this hour; and as Mrs. Marshall could not read, she was obliged to wait till evening to know what was in the letter, and what the guinea was for which the packet contained. She obtained great satisfaction from the countryman concerning Ned, sent him her love and blessing, and the promise of an answer to his letter when there should be an opportunity of sending one, which might happen by means of the present messenger within six months. Many times before the evening did cousin Marshall open the letter, and examine it, and admire as much of it as was apparent to her; viz. the evenness of the lines and the absence of blots. The guinea, too, was a very good sign. The letter proved that his workhouse schooling had not been lost upon him; and the money, that her methods of education had taken effect. Her answer, written down by her daughter, was as follows:— “Dear Ned, “Your letter was very welcome to us, since you could not come yourself. I do not wonder you met with hardships and difficulty in settling. Such is the way with many people in these days who wish to be beholden to nobody; but such generally meet with their deserts at last, as I am glad to hear you have. We have put your guinea into the Savings Bank for you, my dear boy, as, thank God! we none of us want it at present, and there was half-a-guinea of yours there before. Now I dare say you are wondering how it came there? It is the half-crown of wages you left behind you at Titford that Mr. Burke took care of, and it has grown into half-a-guinea by not being touched, which I hope will be good news to you. I quite approve your wish about the Friendly Society, knowing how my husband did the wisest thing in belonging to one, and at times could have got through in no other way. There is nothing about your sisters that should give you any scruple. Sally, poor thing, is very contented in the Asylum; and, as the people there are fond of her, has fewer troubles than many that have their eyesight. I have not seen so many tears from her since she went in as when my Susan read your letter to her, and she sends you her love. Ann is pretty well off in service, having nothing to complain of but her mistress’s temper, with which she will contrive to bear, I hope, for she has a sweet one of her own. She will write to you herself, and tell you as much as we know about Jane, which is but little, and that little very sad. She is quite lost, I fear; but you may depend on my keeping my eye upon her. I thank you, my dear boy, for your questions about me and mine. My children have all left me but the one that holds the pen, and she is going to marry too. I hope she will have an easier life than her sisters, who are much put to it with their large families. I begin to feel myself growing old when I see so many grandchildren about me; and perhaps it is owing to that that I feel far more troubled about how their parents are to get through than I ever did for John Marshall and myself, when we had another little family added, as it were, to our own eight. But God preserve me from failing in my trust!—trusting as I wish to do, not to other people’s charity, but to one’s own labour and thrift, which has His blessing sooner than the other. Many a merciful lesson has been given me about trusting,—one since I had your letter. On Saturday, my eldest grandson and daughter were both out of work. To-day is Monday, and they have each got a place. Indeed God Almighty is very good to us. But Susan is tired, not having kept up her schooling, I am afraid, so well as you.
However, it looks a long letter, though I have many more things to say to you if you were here. Old as I call myself, I may see you on this side the grave, or will try to think so till you say not. Till then, I send you my love and blessing, which I hope you know you have had all this long while.”
The close of cousin Marshall’s very long life was not altogether so serene as the character of its days of vigour might seem to deserve. Her children were so burdened with families of their own that they could offer no further assistance than that she should lodge with them by turns. She was positive, however, in her determination to live alone; and a small room in a poor place on the outskirts of the city was her dwelling. In one way or another she earned a little matter, and lived upon it, to the astonishment of some who received twice as much from the parish and could not make it do. Her adopted children found the utmost difficulty in making her accept any assistance, clearly as it was her due from those to whom she had been a mother in their orphan state. It grieved Ned to the heart to see her using her dim sight to patch her cloak for the twentieth time, when he had placed at her disposal the guinea and half, with all that had accumulated upon it, in the Savings Bank.
“Not yet. When I want it. I can do for myself still,” were always her answers; and though, without consulting her, he laid in coals and bought clothes for her during the two only visits that he was able to make to that neighbourhood, and though these presents were, after some scruples, accepted, he never could prevail upon her to use the little fund during his absence for her daily comforts. She was somewhat unpopular among her neighbours, who did not relish her occasional observations on the multiplication of alehouses, or her reports of what a comely, robust man her John Marshall was, for all he had seldom a pint and pipe to refresh himself with when his day’s work was done. Nobody was more openhearted and sociable; but he could not afford both ale and independence,—to say nothing of charity; and everybody knew he was a father to the orphan.—The neighbours observed that he was certainly very kind to the parish; but that, for their parts, they could not afford to give charity to the parish. It was more natural for the parish to give to them. Such degeneracy as this roused cousin Marshall to prophesy evil. She was rather too ready with her forebodings that those who thus spoke would die in the workhouse, and with her horror at the warning seeming to create no alarm. But what roused her indignation above everything was the frequent question how, after all her toils and savings, she was better off than her cousin, Mrs. Bell? Mrs. Bell had never more heard of her husband, and had at length been taken into the workhouse with her family; of whom one daughter had followed Jane’s example, and gained her point of a pauper marriage; one son was an ill-doing pauper labourer; and another, having been transported for theft, was flourishing at Sydney, and likely to get more money than all cousin Marshall’s honest children put together. Mrs. Bell was proud of this son’s prosperity, and would not have been sorry to hear any day of the other getting transported in like manner.—Now and then it occurred to cousin Marshall that there was little use in answering those who could ask such a question as wherein she was better off than Mrs. Bell; but it oftener happened that her replies were given in a style of eloquence that did not increase her popularity.—Death came at last, in time to save her from the dependence she dreaded, though not from the apprehension of it.
In crossing her threshold, one winter’s day, with her apron full of sticks, she tripped and fell. She seemed to sustain no injury but the jar; but that was fatal. She survived just long enough to see the daughter who lived in the neighbourhood, and make a bequest of her Bible to one child, her bed to another, her few poor clothes to a third, pointing out the corner of her chest where was deposited the little hoard she had saved for her burial.
“God has been very good to me and mine,” she said. “They tell me I have not always said so; but I meant no mistrust. I may have been too much in a hurry to go where ‘the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest:’ but it is all right now that I am really going at last. Thank God! I can say to the last that He has been very good to me.”
She left her blessing for every one by name, and died.
Mr. Burke met the funeral train coming out of the churchyard, and immediately knew Ned, long as it was since they had met.
“Your cousin Marshall’s funeral!” he exclaimed. “My wife and Louisa and I inquired for her in vain, a long while ago, and supposed she had been dead some time. She must have been a great age.”
“Eighty-one, sir.”
In answer to Mr. Burke’s inquiries how she had passed her latter days, and in opposition to Ned’s affectionate report of her, a neighbour observed, with a shake of the head, that she was awfully forsaken at times.
“It was but the day before she died, sir, that she complained that the Almighty had forgotten her, and that she was tired of looking to be released.”
Ned brushed his hand across his eyes as he observed that her neighbours were not capable of judging of such a woman as cousin Marshall, and not worthy to find fault with what she let fall in her dark moments.
“My wife said at the time, however,” replied the man, “that it would be well if a judgment did not come upon her for such words; and, sure enough, by the same hour the next day she was dead; and not in a natural way either.”
Mr. Burke smiled at Ned, who gravely observed that his cousin had lived too late to be done justice to. By what he had heard her tell, he judged that a hundred years ago she would have been honoured and tended in her old age, and saved all she had suffered from fear of the parish, and have had it told on her tombstone how many children she had bred up by her industry. It would not be difficult, for that matter, to put up a tombstone now; but where would be the use of it, unless it was honoured?
The want lay there.
“I hope,” said Mr. Burke, “that we may as reasonably say that your cousin lived too early as that she lived too late. The time will come, trust me, when there will be end of the system under which she has suffered. It cannot always be that the law will snatch the bread from the industrious to give it to the idle, and turn labour from its natural channel, and defraud it of its due reward, and authorise the selfish and dissolute to mock at those who prize independence, and who bind themselves to self-denial that they may practise charity. The time will come, depend upon it, when the nation will effectually take to heart such injustice as this. There is much to undo, much to rectify, before the labours of the poor, in their prime, shall secure to them a serene old age; but the time will come, though by that day yonder grave may be level with the turf beside it, and there may be none to remember or speak of Cousin Marshall.”
_Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume._ In a society composed of a natural gradation of ranks, some must be poor; _i.e._ have nothing more than the means of present subsistence.
Any suspension of these means of subsistence, whether through disaster, sickness, or decrepitude, converts the poor into the indigent.
Since indigence occasions misery, and disposes to vice, the welfare of society requires the greatest possible reduction of the number of the indigent.
Charity, public and private, or an arbitrary distribution of the subsistence-fund, has hitherto failed to effect this object; the proportion of the indigent to the rest of the population having increased from age to age.
This is not surprising, since an arbitrary distribution of the subsistence-fund, besides rendering consumption unproductive, and encouraging a multiplication of consumers, does not meet the difficulty arising from a disproportion of numbers to the means of subsistence.
The small unproductive consumption occasioned by the relief of sudden accidents and rare infirmities is necessary, and may be justifiably provided for by charity, since such charity does not tend to the increase of numbers; but, with this exception, all arbitrary distribution of the necessaries of life is injurious to society, whether in the form of private almsgiving, public charitable institutions, or a legal pauper-system.
The tendency of all such modes of distribution having been found to be to encourage improvidence with all its attendant evils,—to injure the good while relieving the bad,—to extinguish the spirit of independence on one side,—and of charity on the other,—to encourage peculation, tyranny, and fraud,—and to increase perpetually the evil they are meant to remedy,—but one plea is now commonly urged in favour of a legal provision for the indigent.
This plea is that every individual born into a state has a right to subsistence from the state.
This plea, in its general application, is grounded on a false analogy between a state and its members, and a parent and his family.
A parent has a considerable influence over the subsistence-fund of his family, and an absolute control over the numbers to be supported by that fund; whereas the rulers of a state, from whom a legal provision emanates, have little influence over its subsistence-fund, and no control whatever over the number of its members.
If the plea of right to subsistence be grounded on the faults of national institutions, the right ought rather to be superseded by the rectification of those institutions, than admitted at the cost of perpetuating an institution more hurtful than all the others combined.
What, then, must be done to lessen the number of the indigent, now so frightfully increasing?
The subsistence-fund must be employed productively, and capital and labour be allowed to take their natural course; _i.e._ the pauper system must, by some means or other, be extinguished.
The number of consumers must be proportioned to the subsistence-fund. To this end, all encouragements to the increase of population should be withdrawn, and every sanction given to the preventive check; _i.e._ charity must be directed to the enlightenment of the mind, instead of to the relief of bodily wants.
If not adopted speedily, all measures will be too late to prevent the universal prevalence of poverty in this kingdom, the legal provision for the indigent now operating the extinction of our national resources at a perpetually increasing rate.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, STAMFORD-STREET.
Ireland PREFACE.
------- Though it is my business to treat of the permanent rather than of the transient causes of the distress of Ireland,—of her economy rather than her politics,—I have been perplexed by some of the difficulties which at present beset all who would communicate with the public on her behalf.
It is impossible to foresee while writing what may have happened, before our thoughts are printed, to change the aspect of affairs, and modify the counsel we would offer. No pains have been spared to ascertain the correctness of the data on which my story is constructed; yet I have felt through the whole course of it that I might finally resolve to keep it back as useless, there being a strong probability that it might, a few weeks hence, appear antiquated in comparison with the treatises which may then be wanted. I cannot but trust, however, that leisure will soon be spared from the consideration of emergencies for an investigation into the long subsisting causes of Irish distress; that the painful labour of punishing crime may give place to the more hopeful task of superseding it; and that the government may ere long turn from enforcing obnoxious laws to fostering the resources of the country.
Many will think with me that the title of this story is too grand for its contents; and more may be disappointed on finding how few are my personages, and how little I have dealt with the horrors of the time.—The purpose of my title is to direct the work into the hands of those whom it most concerns; and my personages are few because it is my object to show, in a confined space, how long a series of evils may befall individuals in a society conducted like that of Ireland, and by what a repetition of grievances its members are driven into disaffection and violence. As for the incidents of the tale, my choice was influenced by the consideration, not of what would best suit the purposes of fiction, but of what would most serve the cause of the Irish poor. A much more thrilling and moving story might have been made of conspiracy, rebellion, and slaughter by weapon and by gibbet; but these scenes want no further development than may be found in our daily newspapers; while the silent miseries of the cottier, the unpitied grievances of the spirit-broken labourer cannot have been sufficiently made known, since they still subsist. These miseries, protracted from generation to generation, are the origin of the more lively horrors of which everybody hears. Let them be superseded, and there will be an end of the rebellion and slaughter which spring from them.
Now that it is the fashion with a certain portion of society to denounce every exposition of state impolicy as inflammatory, I may be exposed to the common charge of attempting to excite the disaffection, some of whose causes I have attempted to expose. Since it is no longer a secret, however, that Ireland has been and is misgoverned, and since the readiest method of winning back the discontented to their allegiance is to allow those things to be grievances which are felt to be so, and to show a disposition to afford redress, I cannot but hold the part of true loyalty to be to expose abuses fearlessly and temperately, and to stimulate the government to the reparation of past errors and the improvement of its principles of policy. Such should be my loyalty if I had access to the councils of the state; and such it is now that I can speak only as a wellwisher to Ireland, and an indignant witness of her wrongs.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE 1. Irish Economy 1 2. Irish Liabilities 15 3. Irish Adventure 34 4. Irish Crime 61 5. Irish Retribution 74 6. Irish Responsibility 91 7. Irish Impolicy 104 8. Irish Fatality 119 9. Irish Disaffection 127 IRELAND.
IRISH ECONOMY.
The Glen of the Echoes,—a title which conveys more to an English ear than its Irish counterpart, is one of the most obscure districts of a remote county of the Green Island, of which little is heard on this side the Channel except during the periodical returns of famine, when the sole dependence of its miserable population is on public benevolence.
This glen probably owes its name to its vicinity to the sea, whose boisterous waves, keeping up a perpetual assault, have worn the coast into deep bays from the North Cape to Mizen-head, and whose hoarse music is chaunted day and night, summer and winter, from steep to steep along the shore. It is a rare thing for a traveller in the western counties of Ireland to behold a calm sea. Whatever the features of the land may be,—whether he passes through meadows and oat-fields, with villages and towns in the distance, or over black mountains and across shaking bogs, where a mud cabin here and there is the only vestige of human habitation,—the Atlantic is still swelling and lashing the cliffs, as if bringing its mighty force to a perpetual war against the everlasting hills. Such a traveller would have pronounced that the Glen of the Echoes was designed for no other purpose than to give perpetual tidings of this warfare; for no place could be more wild in aspect, or less