“Neither shall I,” replied “the anonymous” “However, to come to other matters, pray what kind of a town is this of Ballytrain?”

“It is by no means a bad town,” replied Fenton, “as towns and times go.  It has a market-house, a gaol, a church, as you have seen—­a Roman Catholic chapel, and a place of worship for the Presbyterian and Methodist.  It has, besides, that characteristic locality, either of English legislation or Irish crimes—­or, perhaps, of both—­a gallows-green.  It has a public pump, that has been permitted to run dry, and public stocks for limbs like those of your humble servant, that are permitted to stand (the stocks I mean) as a libel upon the inoffensive morals of the town.”

“How are commercial matters in it?”

“Tolerable.  Our shopkeepers are all very fair as shopkeepers.  But, talking of that, perhaps you are not aware of a singular custom which even I—­for I am not a native of this place—­have seen in it?”

“What may it have been.” asked the stranger.

“Why, it was this:  Of a fair or market-day,” he proceeded, “there lived a certain shopkeeper here, who is some time dead—­and I mention this to show you how the laws were respected in this country; this shopkeeper, sir, of a fair or market-day had a post that ran from his counter to the ceiling; to this post was attached a single handcuff, and it always happened that, when any person was caught in the act of committing a theft in his shop, one arm of the offender was stretched up to this handcuff, into which the wrist was locked; and, as the handcuff was movable, so that it might be raised up or down, according to the height of the culprit, it was generally fastened so that the latter was forced to stand upon the top of his toes so long as was agreeable to the shopkeeper of whom I speak.”

“You do not mean to say,” replied his companion, who, by the way, had witnessed the circumstances ten times for Fenton’s once, “that such an outrage upon the right of the subject, and such a contempt for the administration of law and justice, could actually occur in a Christian and civilized country?”

“I state to you a fact, sir,” replied Fen-ton, “which I have witnessed with my own eyes; but we have still stranger and worse usages in this locality.”

“What description of gentry and landed proprietors have you in the neighborhood?”

“Hum! as to that, there are some good, more bad, and many indifferent, among them.  Their great fault in general is, that they are incapable of sympathizing, as they ought, with their dependents.  The pride of class, and the influence of creed besides, are too frequently impediments, not only to the progress of their own independence, but to the improvement of their tenantry.  Then, many of them employ servile, plausible, and unprincipled agents, who, provided they wring the rent, by every species of severity and oppression, out of the people, are considered by their employers valuable and honest servants, faithfully devoted to their interests; whilst the fact on the other side is, that the unfortunate tenantry are every day so rapidly retrograding from prosperity, that most of the neglected and oppressed who possess means to leave the country emigrate to America.”