88 LIFE IN IRELAND 



Middlemen are a sort of rapscallion placed betwixt 

 landlord and tenant, on purpose to oppress the latter. 

 Where the landlord is an absentee, they are intolerable 

 extortioners and tyrants, who stick at nothing to gain 

 money; they keep hounds, and assume an authority 

 far superior to the law, and the real landed proprietor 

 is very seldom near to be appealed to ; like the late 

 Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Londonderry, who held that 

 situation during a long life, and spent the revenues 

 of his Bishoprick and estates in Italy. The harvest his 

 middlemen reaped will never be forgotten in that part 

 of the country where they had power to oppress. One 

 of the nobles now in Ireland to welcome the King, 

 desired his middleman to put his castle in order for 

 his reception. 'By Jasus ! my Lord,' was the reply, 

 ' I burned it down twenty years ago as the readiest 

 way to come at the lead which cover'd it, thinking 

 your Lordship, after a thirty years' abstence, would never 

 come here alive to look for a resting-place.' 



His Majesty landed in Ireland on his birthday, the 

 i2th of August 1821; he is only the second of his 

 family that ever trod the Land of Potatoes ; his brother, 

 the sailor (if real seamen will pardon the expression), 

 when a midshipman, lodged at Cork, in the house of 

 one Wright, a Quaker, in Hammond's Marsh. With 

 his usual effrontery, he took some liberties with a part 

 of the family by no means kept for royal purposes ; 

 the Quaker mildly checked his presumption by remark- 

 ing, ' Sir, your father is an honest man, he would not 

 have done so.' 



His Majesty's gout is like a Saint Helena cancer — 

 hereditary; so we presume it accompanied him to his 



