dom and policy of their fyftem. But the experienced know it to be true, and the impartial will own it.

The cultivator of the land feldom holds from the inheritor; between them ftand a feries of fub-landlords and tenants, each receiving a profit from his leffee, but having no further intereft or connexion with the foil; the laft in the feries muft provide for the profits of all-he therefore parcels out, at rack rents, the land to his miferable tenant. Here is no yeomanry-no agricultural capitalist; no degree between the landlord and labourer; the words "peafantry" and " poor" fynonimously employed.

XXV. Their dwellings are of primitive and eafy conftruction-the walls and floors of clay, the roof of fod or thatch: within are two unequal divifions; in the fmaller, filthy and unfurnished, you will hardly fuppofe the whole family to fleep; in the larger, on a hearth, without grate or chimney, a fcanty fire warms rather by its fmoke, than its blaze, and difcolours whatever it warms. Glazed windows there are none, the open door amply fufficing for light and air, to thofe

who are careless of either.

Furniture they

neither have, nor want ;-their food and its preparation are fimple, potatoes or oaten cakes, four milk, and fometimes falted fish. In drink they are not fo temperate: of all fpirituous liquors they are immoderately fond, but most of whiskey, the distilled extract of fermented corn. In many diftricts, by an ingenious and fimple procefs, they prepare this liquor themselves, but clandeftinely, and to the great injury of national morals and revenue. Were they allowed, by private diftillation, to indulge their tafte for inebriety, their own vice would more effectually fubdue them than centuries of war.

XXVI. Their dress is mean and fqualid; particularly of the females, whom you would not always. distinguish from men by their attire.

Of per

Both fexes

fonal cleanliness they have no care. wear, in winter and fummer, long woollen coats or cloaks, derived from, and fimilar to, the fagum of their ancestors. The children are generally half, and fometimes altogether naked, living, without diftin&tion of fexes, in dirt and mire, alınost with the cattle. Yet from this nakedness and

filth, they grow up to that ftrength and stature for which they are admirable.

XXVII. The peafantry of Ireland are generally of the Roman Catholic religion, but utterly and difgracefully ignorant-few among them can read, fewer write. The Irish language, a barbarous jargon, is generally, and in fome diftricts exclufively spoken and with it are retained cuftoms and superstitions as barbarous. Popish legends

and Pagan tradition are confounded and revered: for certain holy wells and facred places they have extraordinary refpect: thither crowd, the fick for cure, and the finful for expiation, and their priests, deluded or deluding, enjoin those pilgrimages as penance, or applaud them, when voluntary, as piety. The religion of fuch a people is not to be confounded with one of the fame name profeffed by the enlightened nations of Europe. The University of Paris has fome tenets, in common, perhaps, with the Irish papift, but does it believe that water reftores the cripple, enlightens the blind, or purifies the guilty ?

XXVIII. In agricultural purfuits they are neither active nor expert: hereditary indolence

would incline them to employ their lands in pafturage, and it is often more eafy to induce them to take arms, for their country, or against it, than to cultivate the earth, and wait upon the seasons. Even at this day the fons of the old inheritors are fufpected of being more ready to regain their pof feffions by their blood, than by their labour. Their very amusements are polemical; fighting is a paftime which they feldom affemble without enjoying; not, indeed, with iron weapons, but with clubs, which they always carry, and frequently and skilfully ufe. When not driven by neceffity to labour, they willingly confume whole days in floth, or as willingly employ them in riot; ftrange diversity of nature, to love indolence and hate quiet to be reduced to flavery, but not yet to obedience.

XXIX. Who will call this people civilized, or wonder that they are turbulent ?-Who confide in the empiric promifing to cure fo complicated a diforder by a single specific ?-It is but too plain that there is something to be lamented, and, if poffible, changed, in the character of the nation-much in its habits-more in the accidental circumftances in which it languifhes; and it is

F

alfo evident, that no individual remedy can reach and reform evils fo heterogeneous. Party indeed is blind, and ignorance adventurous; but when the state of Ireland is hereafter difcuffed in the Imperial Senate, we truft that few may be found of the prejudiced, and none of the ignorant.

XXX. Friendly-on principles and conditions hereafter to be developed-to catholic emancipation, I cannot believe it panaceatic-alone beneficial-alone neceffary, It will be a partperhaps great-probably small-of any enlightened fyftem of Irish policy; but it is not itself a system.

Who can be emancipated, and from what? At moft fix Lords-one hundred and fifty commoners and twenty ecclefiaftics-from four or five difabilities, which reach not-intereft not the mass of their community. Theorists trace from the political exclusion of the peer, the mental debasement of the peafant-truly, perhaps, in a people affluent and enlightened ;-truly in small and polished states; falfely in a great mafs of penury and ignorance. Difpel the gloom-enrich the penury, the crowd may then-and not ùll then