94 ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. [BOOK I. 



for eight months in the year. It is therefore not 

 ambition, nor the desire of enjoyments, which 

 urges these unhappy people it is despair; and in- 

 deed it must be such a motive to actuate men, simple 

 in their habits, who, as the recompense for the 

 hardest work, do not even require bread, of which 

 they know not the taste. They ask only for pota- 

 toes, and these they do not find ; and to undergo 

 every hazard, without leaders, protection, or sup- 

 port, and without any knowledge of the places 

 whither they go, they are obliged to tear them- 

 selves from their families, friends, country, and 

 their habits of life. There is nothing more pain- 

 ful, nothing which appears a severer comment 

 upon the governments of their respective coun- 

 tries, than to meet, descending the banks of the 

 Shannon or the Rhine, those long trains of carts, 

 filled with old men, women and children, in ragged 

 attire, quitting Europe, hitherto so dear to them, in 

 order to embark for the rude wilds of America. 



There is in all this but one consolation this new 

 scourge is so terrible that it cannot endure. The 

 Americans, who witnessed with such scorn the 

 arrival of these white negroes, as they call them, 

 find no longer any cause for laughter ; and in order 

 to put a stop at once to these importations, they 

 have recently raised to ten dollars (forty-four shil- 

 lings) the duty of two dollars, which was for- 



