5(30 Notes of the Month OH Affairs in General. [Nov. 



absentee, escape ; the race of beggars is kept up, and in the first faihire 

 of the potatoe crop, there is no alternative but famine and contagion, or 

 midnight robbery and rebellion. 



The operation on the future would be of high practical benefit. 

 The landlord has hitherto been willing to multiply tenantry, that he 

 might extract the more rent ; the result was, the gathering of population 

 where the land was insufficient for them, and the splitting of acres, wliich 

 was ruinous alike to farming and the farmer. But when the landlord 

 knows that in case of public pressure, he may have to assist in main- 

 taining his tenantry, he will be cautious of this unnatural accumulation : 

 he will be more, he will feel it his interest to prepare his tenantry 

 against sucli emergencies, by making them able to meet the change, by 

 assisting them- previously, adding to their comforts, and giving them 

 their farms at such a rent as will allow them to live, not like brute 

 beasts, but like men. Another advantage will be, that the absentees will 

 not be suffered to tlirow the burthen on those who do their duty, and 

 spend their rents at home. The twenty thousands and thirty thousands 

 a year that cross the channel to be spent in Berkeley-square and Picca- 

 dilly, or wander to Paris and Rome, will be forced to pay their contribu- 

 tions to the country from which they are wrung ; and the simplest and 

 most useful of all absentee taxes will thus be enacted without trouble. 



To the observations of the Warder, we reply, that in approving in the 

 highest degree of Protestant colonies, we took the word Orange as it 

 does — in the general sense of friends to Christianity and the Constitution. 



There is just now a good deal of scampering about both England and 

 Ireland, to jump into new seats in parliament. Little Otway Cave, 

 having received some hints which hurt his sensibilities in Leicester, has 

 been roving among the Whiteboys of Tipperary to collect their legisla- 

 tive good will. Spring Rice, in much the same condition at Limerick, 

 is endeavouring to fish the troubled waters among his native grocership ; 

 and our favourite, Sir T. Lethbridge, having been cruelly thrown out of 

 the Peerage plate, is spurring and whipping to get in somewhere or 

 other within sight of the post. But the mark of a turncoat is upon 

 him ; and to be Philpotted out of society is his natural fate. Even Dan, 

 Agitator ipsissimus, is in peril for Clare. His "bosom friends, his 

 gallant coadjutors, his heroic pair, who fought with him shoulder to 

 shoulder," are likely enough to try his popularity before long. The 

 true state of the case is, the priests, the actual masters of the representa- 

 tion of Ireland, have not deemed it the proper time to put forth their 

 mandate. They know the whole tribe of the brawlers too well not to 

 know them unsafe to be trusted with the higher and only objects that 

 the popish priesthood value. Hired lawyers, and clamorous clowns, did 

 very well for a while ; but the unalienable contempt of the popish priests 

 for every layman under heaven, came into play at the first possible 

 juncture ; and the whole clique of the association are now only dust on 

 the heels of the pontifical rulers of Ireland. 



The priests wait for a crisis ; they know that it will come ; they are 

 preparing for it in Maynooth, Clongowes, Stonyhurst, and every semi- 

 nary and cloister in the empire. They are preparing for it, too, in 

 Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, and Rome. They will not suffer the net to be 

 broken by the boisterous gambols and tumblings of the O'Connel set. 

 They may endure him for a while ; but they will not stoop to raise him 

 on their shoulders. 



