towns there is plenty of intemperance; but the majority of emigrants are fit for agricultural work, and get to situations where they soon attain a comfort and prosperity undreamed of at home. The large sums of money transmitted to Ireland to fetch out their relatives and friends is a pleasing and practical attestation of this. They get free education for their children also, and many of them become prosperous American citizens. They become so prosperous that the priests hasten after them in increasing numbers. It used to be said that half the Irish who settled in the States were lost to the Church of Rome. It is not so now, so much the worse for them, as they are more sharply followed and "shepherded" by the wellorganized Popish agencies.

A

CHAPTER V.

ABSENTEEISM.

Edgeworthstown-Statistics of Absenteeism-The Times on
Absenteeism.

BSENTEEISM has always been one of the stock

grievances of Ireland. Dean Swift used to inveigh against the evil, asserting that a full third of the rental of Ireland was transmitted to landlords resident in England, besides large sums carried out of the country by other Irishmen of the upper classes. From the time of Sir William Petty to that of Arthur Young, Absenteeism was always prominent in every report of "the condition of Ireland." In the year 1730 a list of absentees was published, giving the yearly value of their estates and incomes spent out of the country. Other lists, both general and local, were from time to time published. While the penal laws were in force, and while the country continued in chronic disorder and disturbance, there was much excuse for English proprietors, who declined to risk their own lives and the lives of those dear to them by residing on their Irish estates.

That these fears were often groundless, the experience of such landlords as Richard Lovell Edgeworth demonstrated. A touching memorial of this is given by Maria Edgeworth in her memoir of her father, in which she describes the results of his life at Edgworthstown. When Mr. Edgeworth closed his own too brief autobiography, his accomplished daughter thus commenced her portion of the memoir : "With the manuscript of my father's memoirs I found, on the next page to that where his narrative broke off, in his handwriting, the following memorandum: ‘In the year 1782 I returned to Ireland, with a firm determination to dedicate the remainder of my life to the improvement of my estate, and to the education of my children; and further, with the sincere hope of contributing to the melioration of the inhabitants of the country from which I drew my subsistence."" the thirty-five years that remained of his life Mr. Edgeworth had many difficulties to meet, and witnessed perilous times, but his patriotic spirit and lofty sense of duty found ample reward in the end. As he advanced in years," says Miss Edgeworth, "my father had the very great satisfaction of seeing himself surrounded by a respectable, independent, attached, grateful tenantry. He endeavoured to be of use not only to his tenantry, but to all within his influence as a country gentleman; not merely relieving the wants

In

of the poor, but by protecting them as a magistrate from injustice and oppression, by instructing them as to their real interests, showing them the consequences of their bad habits, and exciting and encouraging them by approbation and assistance to improve. In this point of view his residence in Ireland succeeded beyond his hopes. . . . The residence of well-educated landed proprietors contributed to improve not only the pecuniary circumstances, prudence, and moral conduct of the lower classes, but refined and elevated the tastes and manners of all the middle and intermediate classes of gentry, In the course of a quarter of a century, even in our own memory and observation, in our own county and neighbourhood, the whole style and tone of society altered. The fashion has passed away of those desperately tiresome, long, formal dinners, which were given two or three times a year by each family in the country to their neighbours; where the company had more than they could eat, and twenty times more than they should drink; when the gentlemen could talk only of claret, horses, or dogs, and the ladies only of dress or scandal: so that in the long hours when they were left to their own discretion, after having examined and appraised each other's finery, many an absent neighbour's character was torn in pieces merely for want of something to say or do in the stupid circle. But now the gentlemen and ladies

are not separated from the time dinner ends till the midnight hour, when the carriages came to the door to carry off the bodies of the dead; or, till, just sense enough being left to find their way straight to the teatable, the gentlemen could only swallow a hasty cup of cold coffee or stewed tea, and be carried off by their sleepy wives, happy if the power of reproach were lost in fatigue.

"No doubt in other parts of Ireland where gentry have settled, similar improvements in society have appeared. The residence of great English landed proprietors, wherever it has been, must have operated advantageously, by bringing to Ireland, by their intermarrying and wide-spread connexions, numerous visitors, and increasing the much-wanted reciprocal knowledge of each other in both countries."

The changes described by Miss Edgeworth have increased immensely in these later times of ready communication between the two countries. The two nations are now even more united by social than by political ties, and the habits and modes of life in the upper classes are the same in all parts of the kingdom.

Irish absenteeism, however, is still sometimes a topic of unmeasured censure and popular declamation. An official return, recently laid before the House of Commons, gives authentic and accurate