Absenteeism

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Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street., 1825 - Absentee landlordism - 159 pages

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Page 88 - The new interest was settled with as solid a stability as any thing in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effects of their fears but of their security. They who carried on this system looked to the irresistible force of Great...
Page 17 - ... after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves ; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue there withal; that in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast...
Page 16 - Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves, they did eat of the dead carrions — happy where they could find them...
Page 89 - Papists (it would be hard to say, singly, which was the most odious) shut up the hearts of every one against them. Whilst that temper prevailed, and it prevailed in all its force to a time within our memory, every measure was pleasing and popular, just in proportion as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people, who were looked upon as enemies to God and man; and indeed as a race of bigotted savages who were a disgrace to human nature itself.
Page 92 - But tell me, I pray you, have they any art in their compositions ? or be they any thing witty or well savoured, as poems should be ? Iren. Yea truly, I have caused divers of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them, and surely they savoured of sweet wit and good invention, but skilled not of the goodly ornaments of poetry ; yet were they sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and comeliness unto them...
Page 17 - ... they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them. They looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves...
Page 27 - ... little became either an honest man, called to such honour, or a nobleman put in such trust. Had you lost but a cow or a garron of your owne, two hundred Kyrneghes would have come at your whistle, to rescue the prey from the uttermost edge of Ulster : all the Irish in Ireland must have given you the way. But in pursuing so weightie a matter as this, mercifull God ! how nice, how dangerous, how wayward have you bin ! One while he is from home...
Page 99 - But soon, ah soon, rebellion will commence, If music meanly borrows aid from sense : Strong in new arms, lo ! giant Handel stands, Like bold Briareus, with a hundred hands ; To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes, And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums, Arrest him, empress ; or you sleep no more...
Page 14 - Then the Irish, whom before they had banished into the mountains, where they lived only upon white meats, as it is recorded, seeing now their lands so dispeopled and weakened, came down into all the plains adjoining, and, thence expelling those few English that remained, repossessed them again, since which they have remained in them, and, growing greater, have brought under them many of the English, which were before their lords.

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