202 ON THE STATE OF IRELAND. [BOOK II. 



by a clergyman in the neighbourhood. One witness states 

 that he knew several men who never tasted food for forty- 

 eight hours, and the whole population was reduced to one 

 meal a-day. 



When labourers are out of employment, their wives and 

 families are driven to begging, or go collecting weeds or 

 anything to keep life together. 



Parish of Rathangan, barony of Ophaly west. Twenty -eight witnesses. 



Formerly a labouring man would as soon have been 

 accused of a capital crime as of begging, but now, from 

 want of employment, they think nothing of it. 



A witness said, that a person, when he hires a day- 

 labourer, is obliged to give him a breakfast before he sets 

 to work, the value of which is deducted from his pay. A 

 Catholic priest said to the Commissioners, " It would make 

 your blood run cold to hear the tales of misery that are 

 told me at the confessional ; the hardships the poor bear 

 are beyond endurance ;" and he instanced an example. A 

 farmer's wife, respectably brought up, with four children, 

 was on the death of her husband driven out from their 

 holding, without a roof to cover them ; they remained in a 

 wretched hut by the road-side for forty-five nights. " Her 

 son," adds the Catholic priest, "came to me when he 

 heard it, and, in a state bordering on distraction, said, 

 e What am I told, sir? am I to live and see those things ?"' 



This priest stated also that all the midnight murders 

 and assassinations in this country had been attributed to 

 political causes ; whereas he could affirm positively that 

 poverty and destitution were at the root. 



One witness stated that he was the master of a school 

 of forty pupils, whose parents paid him one penny each 



