IRELAND— ITS SOCIAL STATE. 161 



Ireland, I have of course seen a great variety, and 

 many whom I knew are dead or have left. Whilst 

 some were men to be respected, I have seen things 

 permitted by others, and done by them, and a want 

 of nprightness, that, as a lawyer, made one's blood 

 boil. Going to Ireland fresh from years of Circuit 

 and Sessions, and having also acted for years as a 

 magistrate for Suftblk, with a colleague on the Bench 

 who had been himself a lawyer, and was quite the 

 best magistrate I ever knew, I grieved from the first 

 over these great defects in the administration of 

 justice in Ireland, and have never ceased to lament 

 them. 



Appointing the best man to be found, and mak- 

 ing the administration of justice the first object, is 

 not cared for as it ought to be ; and though the out- 

 ward forms may be carefully kept up, yet on many 

 questions there is an evident bias, which is very 

 hurtful. Let what I have said of the absence of a 

 healthy public opinion be always remembered, as 

 well as the backward state of tilings fifty or a 

 hundred years ago. The improvement since that 

 time will then be seen to be great, and in spite of all 

 drawbacks, it is still going on. 



The object to aim at is to raise into a higher 

 state poor and backward people, who by help of potato 

 cultivation had grown up in numbers that potatoes 

 alone could barely support, and who have neither 

 industry, self-reliance, nor knowledge of anything fit- 

 M 



