312 MORAL CONDITION OF THE WEST. 



with horror of acts of oppression and arbitrary power, 

 which then every country justice committed ; but after all, 

 the times have changed for the worse and the outcry 

 about invaded rights and an enslaved population, was, after 

 all, mere verbiage, "signifying nothing." 



The last fading gleam of western prosperity was during 

 the power of Napoleon, and with his dynasty it vanished. 

 The terrible change from war to peace ; the bursting of the 

 banking bubbles, which supplied for that time an imaginary 

 capital ; over-population and high rents, have ruined this 

 wild district, and reduced its peasantry, with few exceptions, 

 to abject wretchedness and want. 



Is there for this any remedy ? Cannot modern landlords, 

 acting on what they call enlightened principles, remove the 

 causes of distress, and restore the peasantry to that scale of 

 comfort they enjoyed under the rude and tyrannical regime 

 of their fathers ? They cannot. They will talk " scholarly" 

 of tithes and local taxation, and vainly attribute the insolvency 

 of their tenants to these and such like causes ; this is 

 vox et praterea nihil an unreal and fanciful conceit. The 

 true cause of the misery of the western population is 

 over-population and excessive rents ; and before the peasantry 

 could be tolerably comfortable, the lands must, on the 

 average, be lowered at least one third. Even then, at present 

 prices, the occupant will be hardly able to manage to pay the 

 rent and live. 



But can the landlords do this ? Can they afford to 

 equalize their rental to the times, and throw a third portion 

 from their nominal income overboard? They cannot. The 

 majority of the owners of western estates, from family burdens 

 and national unthriftiness, are heavily and hopelessly 

 encumbered ; and a reduction on such scale as would be 

 necessary to ensure their tenants' comforts, would completely 

 pauperize themselves. Hence, to keep off the evil day, every 

 pretext but the true one will be assigned for local wretchedness 

 and every reason but the right one offered to the starving 

 tenant, to persuade him that ruinous rents will never occasion 

 want and poverty. 



In personal appearance, the western peasantry are very 

 inferior to those of the other divisions of the kingdom. 



