IRELAND AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. 31 



pared and burnt for potatoes and corn again. All 

 this is now wholly changed. 



When I first knew the country, thirty or thirty- 

 five years ago, any idea of improving an estate or its 

 tenants was scouted by every one as an impossibility, 

 the dream of an enthusiast. It did seem a very hope- 

 less task, with the country overrun with population, in 

 this district not tenants but labourers. Very seldom 

 the old potatoes held out till the new crop was fit to 

 dig, and begging and starvation for a month or two, 

 and sometimes longer, were the consequence. Fever 

 was regular every summer more or less. The first 

 charity I took part in was getting a fever hospital 

 built, and direly was it wanted. Now it is never 

 used unless for cholera. 



If I said overnight I wanted 50 men for a job 

 of work, there would be 100 waiting next morning 

 begging for employment ; and the wages 6d, per day. 

 I paid 8d., and was thought a model of liberality. It 

 was a great mass of poverty that you seemed to 

 make no impression on, do what you would to relieve 

 it. It appeared just to close in upon you again on 

 all sides as if nothing had been done. 



It was the most hopeless, dispiriting work con- 

 ceivable, and, looking back on it, I do not know how 

 one faced it, and can wonder at no one who gave it 

 up in despair. And this went on until the famine 

 twenty years ago. 



I cannot stop without one more illustration. More 



