the year 1787, drove the wretched peasantry of Munster to my banners.

Lord Clare, who was then Attorney-general, and, of course, defended the Church, said, " he knew the unhappy tenantry were ground to powder by relentless landlords."-Mr. Grattan, on the other hand, proved that "the landlord's over-reaching, compared to that of the tithe-farmer, was mercy." No wonder, therefore, that, between both, the wretched people were maddened, to the full pitch that Captain RIGHT (as I was then nick-named by my followers) required-not that even those double scourges, middlemen and tithe-takers, efficient as they were, could have accomplished the object for me so completely, had not the Government, as usual, come in to their assistance, and, by its premature and unqualified severity, exasperated discontent into frenzy.

The constancy of our State Doctors to their old remedy, the bayonet, is miraculous. Having ex

The Captain has here, in the original manuscript, entered into a long detail of his achievements at this period, under the assumed name of Captain RIGHT: but, as there is but little variety in his manner of relating these feats, and the public has long been acquainted with the nature of them, I have thought it best to omit the narration altogether.-EDITOR.

hibited it in 1787 with their accustomed vigour and success, they continued so to administer it, at convenient intervals and with increasing exacerbation, till 1798—when it brought on that violent, but imperfect, crisis, the Rebellion. They then resumed the same course of physic immediately after the Union, and have persevered in it, only with a greater frequency of doses, down to the present day-Martial Law and the Insurrection Act having been in force fourteen years out of the four and twenty that have elapsed since that measure. It would take a whole page to enumerate the various forms and names, under which this one, sole specific for all the evils of Ireland has been administered, viz. Peace Preservation Acts, Seizure of Arms Act, Secret Society Acts, Constabulary Acts, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. But, as Doctor Ollapod says, " Rhubarb is Rhubarb, call it what you will;" and there is no disguising by any change of name or phrase, that the bayonet is the sole, active ingredient in all these various formulas.

When Moliere was asked by Louis XIV. what use he made of his physician, he answered-"Nous causons ensemble; il m'ordonne des remèdes-je ne les prends pas, et je guéris;"-but, when a

mischievous physician, who orders steel in all cases, has the power also of compelling his dose to be swallowed, what is the unfortunate patient to do?

CHAPTER X.

Conversation between the Captain and a Spirit.-Tithe systems in England and Ireland.-Differences between them.-Potatoes.-Tithe -farmers.-Proctors.—Ariosto. -Drivers.-Scale of the Irish Hierarchy.-Paying Tithe in kind.—Sinbad in the Valley of Diamonds. - New Tithe Bill.-Remarks on it.

If a Spirit on his travels, like Micromegas, were to apply to me for information concerning this part of our planet, and I should tell him-"There is a class of men among us, set apart to instruct the people in religion, and to place before their eyes examples of piety and peacefulness. In order to qualify them for this mission, and give them, in their respective neighbourhoods, that popularity which is necessary to ensure its success, the Law empowers them to seize annually a tenth part of the produce of all the cultivators, however indigent, entrusted to their care.

"As this annual depredation is seldom taken in good part, and sometimes even leads to bloodshed and rebellion, the time of the said teachers is almost exclusively occupied, in wrangling with their

pupils, and, occasionally, having them shot and hanged-in consequence of which, they have but

* From a note on a speech of Sir Henry Parnell, in Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, it appears that, in the year 1807, there were in five counties in Ireland no less than 1286 actions on cases connected with tithes; and in the Galway Advertiser of the 18th of October, 1822, we find the following article:-"At the quarter-sessions at Gort, one tithe-proctor processed eleven hundred persons for tithes. They were all, or most, of the lower order of farmers or peasants-the expense of each process about eight shillings."

Anthony Pearson, in speaking of the law proceedings with respect to tithes, under the Protectorate, says, "Divers on this account have long lain in the Fleet, and yet are there. And I believe above an hundred suits are in the Exchequer depending, and proccedings stopt at this point, the very officers of the court relenting with pity towards such numbers of poor men, brought thither every term from the most remote parts of the nation, and some of them not for above twelve-pence; such merciless cruelty lodges in the hearts of many, if not of most, of our pretended Gospel-ministers."

Milton, too, in speaking of the same reverend tithe-takers, says, "I omit their violent and irreligious exactions, their seizing of pots and pans from the poor, who have as good a right to tithes as they, from some the very beds; their seizing and imprisoning, worse than when the Canon Law was in force; worse than when the wicked sons of Eli were priests. For those sons of Belial, within some limits, made seizure of what they knew was their own by an undoubted law; but these, from whom there is no sanctuary, seize out of men's ground, out of men's houses, their other goods, of double, sometimes of treble value, for that which, did not covetousness and rapine blind them, they know to be not their own by the Gospel which they preach."-Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church.