374 WILD SPORTS OF THE WIST 



CHAPTER XL. 



HERE I am, safely over the Shannon : a laudable 

 improvement in the mode and rate of travelling of the 

 Westport mail facilitates one's intercourse with the 

 kingdom of Connaught ; and in course of time I have 

 little doubt but Erris will be as approachable as Upper 

 Canada, or any of the remoter provinces 



After my rambling observations upon men and 

 manners, you must permit me, like the last lawyer in 

 a cause, to condense the evidence, and make a general 

 wind-up. 



With regard to the moral condition of the West, I 

 cannot conscientiously assert that any great improve- 

 ment will be traced for the last half-century. The 

 two great classes, the gentry and peasantry, have 

 undergone a mighty revolution in conduct, manners, 

 and modes of thinking ; and yet one will look in vain 

 for commensurate advantages. It is admitted that the 

 former body have changed their generic character 

 altogether. We have the old school stigmatized now 

 for its aristocratic tyranny and petty assumption ; and 

 many a modern squire blesses God that he is not as 

 others were who preceded him. And yet our fathers 

 were, I verily believe, wiser in their generation, and 

 better fitted for their own times, than we. True, these 

 days were little better than barbarous. Denis Browne, 

 and Dick Martin, and Bowes Daly, and many a far- 

 famed name of minor note, were then in all their glory, 

 and they lived, it must be acknowledged, in very curious 

 times. In those days the qualifications of a repre- 

 sentative were determined by wager of battle, and a 



