the parish of Templetrive, county Cork, says, 'I recollect a case which may give some idea of the state to which women of the labouring class are sometimes reduced. About five or six years ago, during a time of distress, I gave a kind of soup to some of them every evening. One evening they came before the soup was ready, and waited in the yard. Some cabbage-stumps that were thrown out of the kitchen were lying about: the pigs and fowls had picked them almost quite bare. I saw myself six or seven of the poor women turn their faces towards the wall and cat the stumps the pigs had left.'-p. 161. Little or no employment is open to this class. They occasionally earn a penny or two by spinning; but cannot possibly live on their earnings: frequently resort to the sale of illicit spirits, as a means of livelihood, being screened and countenanced in this, out of compassion, by the neighbours: widows of cottiers and farmers are almost invariably turned out of their holdings on the husband's death by the landlord, utterly unprovided for. The landlords find them troublesome.'- They can seldom pay their rent.' The bailiff of a landlord in Mayo says, 'I have turned out many a widow. I canted (sold under distress for rent) all they had in the world, except perhaps the blanket and a bag of potatoes to set out with.' These unfortunate outcasts are sometimes suffered by the farmers to erect hovels on the skirts of bogs, or in a ditch by the way-side; such hovels being merely a few sticks leaning against a bank and covered with sods. The landlords, however, discountenance the practice, and, without considering what is to become of the wretched inmates, order the hovels to be pulled down.' If not ejected, their fate is little better. Widow M'Coy furnishes an example of the difficulties which, even under these more favourable circumstances, are to be encountered. She thus tells her own story:

'I have been near two years a widow. I have five children. The eldest is seven years old. My husband held two acres of land, which I continue to hold, and for which I pay £1. 7s. 6d. rent; it is considered a bargain. My husband left me a cow of little value. I sold it to pay his funeral expenses. I have no means of support except the land. My friends and neighbours till it for me, planting it with potatoes. My cabin fell in soon after my husband's death. The neighbours built me a new one, but the rain comes through the roof, which is badly thatched, and beats in through the walls, which I had not the means of plastering. I sleep on the ground, which is almost constantly wet, and often have not so much straw as would fill a hat. On a wet night I must go to a neighbour's house with my infant-child, born after my husband's death. I have but a single fold of a blanket to cover my whole family. I have had it for eight years. My children are almost naked. I have myself a bad lump on the shoulder, for which I cannot procure medical assistance. It is getting worse through

the

My

I

the famishing I have had. I do not expect to hold on the land. potato-crop this year was bad; it cannot last me many weeks. stuck to the cabin while I could, but I have now nothing before me for the winter but to walk the world with my children; and they are so young, I must carry three of them.' 'It was agreed,' says the assistant commissioner, by all the by-standers, including two magistrates, two protestant rectors, and several catholic priests, farmers, and shopkeepers, that few widows of the smaller landholders, much less of labourers, can be better circumstanced than this woman, and that she affords a fair illustration of the common case of a widow sinking into beggary, and of the struggles she makes to hold herself above it.'

The gentry, the report says, scarcely ever assist these poor women; but the labourers will often work a day or so for them gratis (Sundays) in getting in the crop of their little land, or building them a hovel; particularly if their husbands have suffered in the cause of the country,' i. e. been executed for shooting a rackrenting agent or a tithe-proctor.-p. 132.

Those who beg usually do so at first away from home: many are driven by distress to prostitution. Some have too much pride to beg, and pine in hopeless misery in some wretched cabin, subsisting on the precarious charity of their neighbours, who are little better off than themselves, till want and disease release them from a life of intolerable hardship. In the single parish of Killaloe, county Clare, the Roman Catholic priest speaks of sixty widows existing in this destitute state. The assistant commissioners visited some of them.

The first was Mary Slattery. On asking for her at her own door, the decency of her appearance caused surprise, but her comfort was only apparent. "I am," she said, "the widow of a pensioner, and have not a single person on this earth to look to. I can get no employment, and," pointing to the fire, "I had not a sod of turf to warm a drink for my sick child, till a neighbour gave me what is in the grate. All I and my family have had to eat to-day was four cold potatoes, and now I have nothing for my supper. I pay one shilling a week rent for this cabin. I let that corner of it to a woman and her four children for one shilling and sixpence a week, and, though she pays me that, the rain comes down through the roof on her, and she never slept a wink last night, trying how she should keep her bed-clothes dry. As God knows my heart, where I spent the night myself was on the hearthstone, crying and praying that God would look down on me and my children."

This is but a sample of many similar scenes which the assistant commissioners themselves witnessed. It is universally admitted that it is utterly out of all question that a labourer should be able to lay by any provision for his wife and family in case of his sickness or

death.

death. It will be seen shortly that it is more than he can do to maintain himself and them when in health and strength.

4. The Impotent through Age.-Labourers usually break down at the age of fifty-five or sixty, from the effects of scanty food and clothing, and exposure to the weather. The same is reported of mechanics. If there is a bridge to be built, there will not be a man above fifty-five upon it.' The cottiers and small holders decline from forty. Poverty bends their spirit and breaks them down.'-p. 203.

6

The aged have usually been supported by their children, who give them a corner, and a bit and sup.' If sickly, and in want of nicer food than potatoes, they may die,' for none other is to be had, and well were it had they enough of that to keep life in them. But the custom of supporting their parents, which used to be the pride of the Irish peasants, is decaying fast from the pressure of the times and incapacity.' Labourers supporting their parents are often reduced to one meal of dry potatoes a day. It comes sometimes to counting the potatoes.' Then, as the second family grows large, the daughter-in-law begins to grumble. She will not see her children starved to feed her husband's parents. Being always at home,' says one witness, 'she is apt to find her husband's father in the way, and you will see the old man cowering in a corner of the chimney, as if he was endeavouring to hide himself from her.'-p. 230. Domestic quarrels arise, the old people's lives are embittered, and they are at length driven out to beg. This is the common process. An old man says himself, 'The few potatoes, sir, I eat, cannot do me good, for I am afraid they are grudged me; and what is more, I grudge them to myself when I see so many young mouths opening for them.'-p. 189. One witness asserts that the turning out of the aged father is now so common, that the contrary is the exception.'-p. 198. Let this statement of facts teach us the true value of the sentimental declamations against a poor-law, as 'making children reckless of supporting their aged parents, and destroying every social virtue,' which Dr. Chalmers and others are so fond of repeating. The social virtues' are stifled in an atmosphere of misery; and selfishness-the instinct of self-preservation -overpowers every other feeling. When it comes to counting the potatoes,' it comes also to be a question with a man whether he would prefer seeing his parents or his children perish before his eyes! And is it to foster the social virtues' that we are to reduce our peasantry to the agonizing choice between such alternatives? Or do we not thereby rather unloose every social tie, and excite the outburst of the most savage, desperate, and demoniac passions? When without children or relatives, the aged labourer, past his

work,

work, is driven to mendicancy at once. When fairly entered on this trade, they generally live better than their sons, who work for their livelihood.-p. 235. The assistant commissioners remark, that the condition of the regular beggar is so far better than that of every description of labourer, that it is only astonishing that every man has not long since thrown away his spade and gone to beg.

When crippled, however, sick, or bedridden, the aged poor who have no relatives drag on a wretched life, upon a few cold potatoes brought them by kind neighbours, till death releases them. Few of the old people have clothes enough to cover them-still less bedding, or even a blanket. 'One old woman, who had got a blanket given her by Mr. Ogilby, had been obliged to convert it first into a gown, and then into a petticoat: this was her only clothing by day and night.'—p. 282.

The bushful poor (pauvres honteux) will sometimes die rather than beg. The Rev. Mr. Gibson mentions the following case:

The wife and family of a man who had been respectable died here of want a short time since. They could not get anything to eat at times more than once in two days. They died rather than beg. I did not hear of the extremity of their distress till too late to save them.'-p. 224.

Cases of this nature are not uncommon. Mr. Riley says: "Two months ago I saw an old woman, eighty years of age, going over the bridge to beg her breakfast. When she got to the top she stopped to rest herself, and when I came up to her she was dead!' -p. 303. Dr. Walsh, the dispensary surgeon of Naas, county Kildare, states it as his decided and deliberate opinion, that many persons in his parish have of late actually died from want of the necessaries of life.

When asked to give an opinion on the propriety of a legal provision for the aged, the farmers and shopkeepers generally approved of it, though the former are greatly alarmed at the idea of a 'new tax. But if the landlords are to be made to pay a fair proportion, they surely must gain by the change, as the burden of supporting the poor now falls almost exclusively upon them. The gentry never give to beggars. High walls surround their demesnes, and a dog is kept at the gates to prevent the entrance of a beggar.' Absentees, even in times of dearth or infectious disease, send over no subscriptions. They send nothing over but latitats and ejectments,' says the Rev. Mr. Burke.-p. 222.

None of us recollect a single instance of an old tenant being supported by his landlord, or being permitted to hold the ground after he ceased to pay the rent. No matter how long a man, or his parents before him, may have held under a gentleman, when he fails of being able to pay the rent, he must walk away.'-p. 205.

We

We hope these statements are too broad-but that they are substantially true, who can doubt?

5. Sick Poor.-No fund exists for the relief of the poor when sick or diseased. If the disease is not contagious, they are charitably tended by friends and neighbours of their own class, who will share their last potato with them. If the disease is contagious, they are either put out of the cabin into a temporary hut, or the rest of the family leave it and them. Any nourishment the neighbours may give is then left at the door, and the creatures crawl out and take it in.'—p. 288. The Rev. Mr. Flood states, ‘I have often known whole families in fever, and not a soul would hand them a glass of water. Many have been disabled for life by scrambling out of bed to get what has been left for them at the door.'-p. 307. 'Many die from want of care and nourishment. They suffer from bad keeping and bad clothing, exposed to the cold and wet, without anything better than a dry potato.'

The day before yesterday,' says a witness examined by the assistant commissioners, a woman from this town was coming from Galway, and took ill on the road. The neighbours thought she had the cholera, and refused to let her into their houses. Her daughter was with her all night. She lay by the side of the ditch, and died in the morning.'-p. 288. Mr. Hamilton has known whole families sink unattended, one after another, of disease, in huts erected for them by the road-side, which they were unable to leave; and he has known two cases of persons dying by the road-side, unsheltered, before such a hut could be erected for them.'-p. 292. Persons attacked with cholera constantly die without any help.-p. 290.

'I have known,' says Dr. Develin of Ballina (Galway), in one family, the mother, the three daughters (one of them married, pregnant), and the son, to be all lying ill of fever at the same time. Their only attendant was the father, an old man, above eighty years of age, who sat up watching them night after night. The only bed that was raised from the ground was given to the son, who was looked to as the future support of the family. The mother and daughters lay, two and two, on straw spread on the damp floor of the cabin, one beside the fire, the other beside the door, which was not nearly large enough to fill the entrance, and was of course almost useless for excluding the air. Outside the door stood the stagnant pool, sending forth the most unwholesome exhalations; there was no one to remove it. They were unable to procure the nourishment proper for their condition. In fact they were destitute of any food but that with which their poor neighbours supplied them, potatoes, and occasionally milk, which they left at the door, being afraid to enter the cabin. Of course the old man could render no efficient assistance. I found him one day kneeling toward the bed, crying over one of his daughters that was dying,