men were compelled to seek it elsewhere, whilst their sorrowing and heart-broken families were fain to remain and beg a morsel from those who were best acquainted with the history of their expulsion, and who, consequently, could yield to them and their little ones a more cordial and liberal sympathy.  After thus witnessing the consequences of bad management, and worse feeling, in the shape of houses desolate, villages levelled, farms waste, old age homeless, and feeble mothers tottering under their weaker children—­after witnessing, I say, all this, we came to the village called Drum Dhu, being one of those out of which these unhappy creatures were so mercilessly driven.

“A village of this description is, to say the least of it, no credit to the landed proprietors of any country.  It is the necessary result of a bad system.  But we know that if the landlord paid the attention which he ought to pay, to both the rights and duties of his property, a bad system could never be established upon it.  I am far from saying, indeed, my dear Spinageberd, there are not cases in which the landlord finds himself in circumstances of great difficulty.  Bad, unprincipled, vindictive, and idle tenants enough there are in this country—­as I am given to understand from those who know it best—­plotting scoundrels, who, like tainted sheep, are not only corrupt themselves, but infect others, whom they bring along with themselves to their proper destination, the gallows.  Enough and too many of these there are to be found, who are cruel without cause, and treacherous without provocation; and this is evident, by the criminal records of the country, from which it is clear that it is not in general the aggrieved man who takes justice in his own hands, but the idle profligate I speak of now.  Many indeed of all these, it is an act due to public peace and tranquility to dislodge from any and from every estate; but at the same time, it is not just that the many innocent should suffer as well as the guilty few.  To return, however, to the landlord.  It often happens, that when portions of his property fall out of lease, he finds it over-stocked with a swarm of paupers, who are not his tenants at all and never were—­but who in consequence of the vices of sub-letting, have multiplied in proportion to the rapacity and extortion of middle-men, and third-men, and fourth-men—­and though last, not least, of the political exigencies of the landlord himself, to serve whose purposes they were laboriously subdivided off into tattered legions of fraud, corruption, and perjury.  Having, therefore, either connived at, or encouraged the creation of thess creatures upon his property for corrupt purposes, is he justified, when such a change in the elective franchise has occurred as renders them of no political importance to him, in turning them out of their little holdings, without aid or provision of some sort, and without reflecting besides, that they are in this, the moment of their sorest distress, nothing else