of manslaughter only, in consideration of the agent’s order.  The agent was not found guilty of anything, nor even tried.  The landlord was supposed to be a model landlord, and his estates were held up at the very time as models; yet evictions had been fearfully and constantly carried out on them.  Mr. Butt has well observed:  “The rules of the estate are often the most arbitrary and the most sternly enforced upon great estates, the property of men of the highest station, upon which rents are moderate, and no harshness practised to the tenantry, who implicitly submit.”  Such landlords generally consider emigration the great remedy for the evils of Ireland.  They point to their own well-regulated and well-weeded estates; but they do not tell you all the human suffering it cost to exile those who were turned out to make room for large dairy farms, or all the quiet tyranny exercised over those who still remain.  Neither does it occur to them that their successors may raise these moderate rents at a moment’s notice; and if their demands are not complied with, he may eject these “comfortable farmers” without one farthing of compensation for all their improvements and their years of labour.

I have shown how the serfdom of the Irish tenant leads to misery.  But the subject is one which would require a volume.  No one can understand the depth of Irish misery who has not lived in Ireland, and taken pains to become acquainted with the habits and manner of life of the lower orders.  The tenant who is kept at starvation point to pay his landlord’s rent, has no means of providing for his family.  He cannot encourage trade; his sons cannot get work to do, if they are taught trades.  Emigration or the workhouse is the only resource.  I think the efforts which are made by the poor in Ireland to get work are absolutely unexampled, and it is a cruel thing that a man who is willing to work should not be able to get it.  I know an instance in which a girl belonging to a comparatively respectable family was taken into service, and it was discovered that for years her only food, and the only food of her family, was dry bread, and, as an occasional luxury, weak tea.  So accustomed had she become to this wretched fare, that she actually could not even eat an egg.  She and her family have gone to America; and I have no doubt, after a few years, that the weakened organs will recover their proper tone, with the gradual use of proper food.

There is another ingredient in Irish misery which has not met with the consideration it deserves.  If the landlord happens to be humane, he may interest himself in the welfare of the families of his tenantry.  He may also send a few pounds to them for coals at Christmas, or for clothing; but such instances are unhappily rare, and the alms given is comparatively nothing.  In England the case is precisely the reverse.  On this subject I speak from personal knowledge.  There is scarcely a little village in England, however poor, where there