--every thing but relief, compassion, or even inquiry.

It has been supposed that, in addition to his organization and command of the White-boys, my father also lent his powerful aid to the Oak-boys and Hearts-of-Steel; the former of whom took arms the following year, 1763, to get rid of a species of Corvée, called the six days labour, and the latter, some years afterwards, in consequence of various acts of oppression on the estate of an absentee nobleman-like those by which the agent of Lord Courtenay lately drove the county of Limerick into revolt.

As the two latter insurrections were composed chiefly of Northern Protestants, some over strict Catholics have doubted whether my father would condescend to meddle with them. But the Rocks are no bigots in fighting matters; nor indeed at all particular as to whom they fight with, so it be but against the common enemy,—i. e. generally speaking, the Constituted Authorities for the time being. I can easily, therefore, believe that my venerable parent belonged not only to White-boys, Oak-boys, Heart-of-Steel boys, but to all other fraternities of Boys then existing, whose sports were at all likely to end in the attitude thus described by Virgil:-" Ludere pendentes pueros."

In the midst of all these transactions I came into the world,—on the very day (as my mother has often mentioned to me, making a sign of the cross on her breast at the same time,) when Father Sheehy, the good parish priest of Clogheen, was hanged at Clonmell on the testimony of a perjured witness, for a crime of which he was as innocent as the babe unborn. This execution of Father Sheehy was one of those coups d'état of the Irish authorities, which they used to perform at stated intervals, and which saved them the trouble of further atrocities for some time to come.

As Tithe matters seemed likely to occupy so much of the attention of our family, and I happened to be my father's tenth son, it struck him, that the ancient Irish custom of dedicating the tenth child to the service of the Church, might be revived in my person with considerable propriety. He accordingly had me christened Decimus (which he had learning enough to know was Latin for “Tenth”), and resolved, if my talent lay that way, to bring me up exclusively to the Tithe department. How far my career in this sacred line has justified his fond paternal hopes, it is not for me to determine. I can only say, that it has always been my pride and ambition to uphold the glory of the name of Rock, and trans

mit it with, if possible, increased lustre to my descendants.

I should mention also, among the motives that determined him to this step, a singular Prophecy, which had long existed in our family-and which, though little heeded by him in the time of his comfort and hope, he now clung to with that fondness of belief, of which a good Catholic, driven to despair, alone is capable. It ran thus:

As long as Ireland shall pretend,
Like sugar-loaf turn'd upside down,
To stand upon its smaller end,

So long shall live old Rock's renown.
As long as Popish spade and scythe
Shall dig and cut the Sassanagh's * tithe;
And Popish purses pay the tolls,
On heaven's road, for Sassanagh souls-
As long as Millions shall kneel down
To ask of Thousands for their own,
While Thousands proudly turn away,
And to the Millions answer "nay"—
So long the merry reign shall be
Of Captain Rock and his Family.

The Irish term for a Protestant, or Englishman.

CHAPTER II.

Attention of the Government to the education of the Rocks. -Institutions for that purpose.· - Charter Schools.— Royal Free Schools. Some account of them.-Activity of the Church in the same laudable cause.-Diocesan Schools.-Parochial Schools.-Present state of them. -Some account of the different educating Societies.Kildare Street, London Hibernian, etc.

We have seen with what care the Government, during the last century, provided against any degeneracy in our family, by never letting us rise, on the scale of property, higher than zero. Rockism, indeed, like the malaria, only acts to a certain distance from the ground,—those who stand erect, are in little danger from it, and the prostrate alone take the infection properly. Guided by this experience, our rulers, landlords, clergy, etc. have co-operated successfully even to the present day, in keeping down the great mass of the people to that exact pitch of depression, at which the contagion of Rockism is always found to be most malignant.

With such skilful provisions on the subject of

*

Property, as I have endeavoured to give an idea of in the preceding chapter, it would have been inconsistent not to connect some equally provident measures, with respect to Education. Our states

* In the Second Report of the Deputation sent by the Drapers' Company of London, to visit their estates in the County of Londonderry, in the years 1817 and 1818, there are the following sensible and liberal remarks on this subject: -Observing upon the great proportion of poor individuals belonging to the Roman Catholic church, the Reporters say -"This circumstance must arise from some cause which does not immediately appear; Roman Catholic faith does not induce poverty, neither does poverty lead to the creed of the church of Rome; the poverty of the Roman Catholics is too general to be accidental, and it should seem that it can only have arisen from the deprivations of property to which the Catholics in Ireland have, at different times, been subjected, and the discouragement which the laws till lately have offered to the accumulation of property by Catholics, and which discouragement is not yet wholly removed. If this be correct, it seems to result as a duty to those who have to form economical arrangements of a public nature, not to make any distinction between their dependents, who are equally loyal, though they may entertain different creeds, and that every encouragement which is held out to persons of one religious persuasion, should be equally held out to persons of every other religious persuasion; that every man should look to his neighbour's opinion with a consideration that, perchance, his neighbour may be right, and he himself in error."

These two Reports do the highest honour both to the persons who drew them up, and the Company by whom such enlightened persons were employed. Let Irish landlords and Irish secretaries read them, and blush!