IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. 211 



wrings his profits from their blood ; and all this for a pittance 

 that merely enables them to exist, with little power to save, or a 

 hope beyond the continuance of the like exertion. 



"Such are the labourers I have seen here, and have still found 

 them civil and courteous, with a ready greeting for the stranger 

 inquiring into their condition, and a quick jest on their own 

 equipment, which is frequently, it must be admitted, of a whim- 

 sical kind. 



"Here, too, were many poor women with their husbands; 

 and when I contemplated their wasted forms and haggard sickly 

 looks, together with the close swamp, whose stagnant air they 

 were doomed to breathe, whose aspect, changeless and death- 

 like, alone met their eyes, and fancied them, in some hour of 

 leisure, calling to memory the green valley and the pure river, or 

 the rocky glen and sparkling brook of their distant home, with 

 all the warmth of colouring the imaginative spirit of the Irish 

 peasant can so well supply, my heart has swelled and my eyes 

 have filled with tears. 



" I cannot hope to inspire the reader with my feelings upon a 

 mere sketch like this; but if I could set the scene of those poor 

 labourers' exile fairly forth, with all the sad accompaniments 

 detailed ; could I show the course of the hardy, healthy pair just 

 landtjd, to seek fortune on those long sighed-for shores, with 

 spirits newly lifted by hope and brighter prospects, from the 

 apathy into which compulsory idleness and consequent reckless- 

 ness had reduced them at home; and then paint the spirit-sinking 

 felt on a first view of the scene of their future labour; paint the 

 wild revel designed to drown remembrance, and give heart to the 

 newcomers; describe the nature of the toil, where exertion is 

 taxed to the uttermost, and the weary frame stimulated by the 

 worst alcohol, supplied by the contractor at a cheap rate, for the 

 purpose of exciting a rivalry of exertion amongst these simple 

 men. 



" Next comes disease, either a sweeping pestilence that deals 

 wholesale in its victims, or else a gradual sinking of mind and 

 body; finally, the abode in the hospital, if any comrade is in- 

 terested enough for the sufferer to bear him to it; else the soli- 

 tary log-hut and quicker death. Could these things, with their 

 true colours, be set forth in detail before the veriest grinder of 

 the poor that ever drove the peasant to curse and quit the soil of 

 his birth, he would cover his eyes from the light of Heaven, and 

 feel that he yet possessed a heart and human sympathies. 



