After a silence of a few seconds, the judge asked, in an audible voice, if there was any business to be brought before the court on that night?  He was immediately answered in a solemn tone, by more than one voice, that there was a great deal of business, but that only one case, that of Captain Right against Boland, should be brought before him at that present time.  The judge then desired that the case be gone into.  Whereupon a middle-sized well-set young man, about six-and-twenty years of age, whose name we know, and who sat behind the judge, now brought his chair forward to the table, on the judge’s left hand, and unrolling a roll of paper, read in a low, solemn, but audible tone of voice, a series of charges preferred by the said Captain Right against the said Michael Boland and his sons.

The captain was then called up, and he deposed to different charges against the defendants—­such as taking beforehand, or in reversion, several small farms over the heads of poor but solvent tenants, turning them adrift on the world, and converting their small agricultural farms into one or more large farms for grazing; thereby adding to the number of the destitute, and contracting the supply of agricultural produce—­the payment to his laboring men of only eight-pence a day, which he compounded for in kind—­potatoes, milk, &c, at twice, at least, what those commodities fetched him in the neighboring markets.  These were only a few of the many charges of petty tyranny preferred against Boland; but the last and greatest of all was his Tithe Exactions.

Several witnesses were called up to prove these weighty offences, after which it was asked if the accused party had been served with notices to desist from those high misdemeanors; and if he had engaged any one to speak for him, or in his favor.  After a short pause, a man above the middle size, with snaggy hair and beard, and of a sinister aspect, came up to the table and said, that although he had not been employed or deputed to appear for Mr. Boland and the young masters and misses, his fine sons and daughters, yet justice to the accused compelled him to come forward, and offer a few words in extenuation of the punishment, if any, which should be inflicted for their alleged misdeeds.  “First, then,” he asked, “was it possible that they, the men then present, should be angry or offended at seeing one of their own race and religion spring up from among them, and take his station with the best of the Cromwellian Shoneens that surrounded and oppressed them?  And when he did so spring up, was it any blame to him to avail himself of every means which The Law allowed him to maintain his elevation, though it might be by standing on the shoulders and necks of as good fellows as himself?  What had Mr. Boland done but what others had been doing for ages, and were doing still?  As for the matter of tithes, sure they should be paid to the minister who they never saw nor cared to see, and if Mr. Boland had profit on them, so much the