warrant he had acted. It was impossible to make him understand that his acquittal had been secured by the strong proofs of his innocence. "I was to have been hanged last Monday", he told us upon "but his Honour saved me.

Three

his return, times they brought me in guilty; but his Honour was upon the green table talking for me above an hour, and he was stronger than the jury altogether. Sure, it's his Honour entirely that saved my life."

Can you wonder then if I say that the sources of justice are poisoned on this side of the channel? Every subject of a free country should be able to feel a reliance on his own integrity, a full confidence that his innocence will prove an all-sufficient shield from the terrors of legal vengeance. If once he is driven to seek safety from a patron, of whatever rank or quality, his independence is gone; and the fearless character of the citizen is exchanged for the timidity of the slave. His code of right and wrong must be trimmed to suit another man's principles; and he must purchase safety by compliance with another man's caprice. Too much of this is to be found in the character and conduct of our people; but, tell me, is the fault to be ascribed to them or to their masters? and where must the reformation begin?

M.

LETTER XXVIII.

MAY.

WHEN on my tour last summer, in the Isle of Wight, I was several times in company with a lady whose immediate family was English, yet who, from the circumstance of having been educated in the South of Ireland, among a large circle of connexions and acquaintance, naturally felt and expressed a strong predilection for this country. The subject of Ireland was of course one in common between us; and with respect to the national character, we had many an amicable dispute; for while her censures were wholly bent against the peasantry, mine were much more directed towards the nobles and gentles of the land. Had it not indeed been as inconsistent with the laws of good breeding as of legal investigation, I might have brought the lady in evidence against herself. The unqualified vehemence with which she condemned the lower orders had doubtless been contracted during her residence in Ireland, and is the very circumstance which

shocks and offends the impartial observer in his intercourse with the higher classes. Whether in speaking of or to their inferiors, the stranger is struck with astonishment at treatment so widely different from any that he has been accustomed to witness in England. The haughty supercilious tone, the unceremonious address, the impatient gesture, the forced reluctant attention, and the ready unsparing abuse, as surely characterize a tyrannical aristocracy, as the fawning voice, the crouching posture, the reiterated terms of adulation, the sly evasion, and the prompt but equivocal assent, bespeak the vices of their slaves. This last disgraceful epithet still finds a place in the national vocabulary, and in part justifies the parallel which has been more than hinted at between the Irish landlord and the West Indian proprietor; the middleman and the slave driver. Alas! that facts should in so many other and more important points come in aid of this odious comparison. If, however, the faults of an individual are, and may so often be, traced as the effect, in a greater or less degree, of a disadvantageous education, who can refuse to acknowledge the influence of law and government on the habits and manners of a nation? More especially are we called upon to make allowance, when,

as in the present instance, such habits and manners are directly at variance with the warm-hearted kindness, and open-handed liberality, which, on other occasions, we cannot fail to recognize. We must even hope that the alteration which appears to be gradually taking place in the administrative, as well as legislative system, may, by a secret yet irresistible influence, produce the same salutary change in the morals of the landed interest, as it is expected to operate in that of their degraded tenantry. Meanwhile it is amusing enough to trace the lighter touches of the picture; to note the many peculiarities which constitute, as it were, the idiom of general society; or, in some remoter situation, to observe the follies and foibles, which such a state of things has naturally engendered, painted with an extravagance of colouring which we little expect to find, except in the novel or the drama.

How would your English notions of refinement be shocked, by an account of the semi-barbarous recreations of some of our feudal chieftains, who are naturally enough disposed to share their amusements, within doors, with the same ragged, but obsequious followers, who so readily swell their train when pursuing the sports of the field. "He seems to be very kind-hearted to the tenants," said my

sister, speaking to a poor woman of her landlord. “Och then, it's he that 's simple with them to be sure." "How do you mean simple ?" "Sure, of a wet day then, don't he call the people in, and just set them roystering (romping) and be setting them on, all the while, and sometimes himself giving them a puthook"-or some such sounding word, which is to be interpreted, a slap, pinch, or other friendly salute.

In the same spirit, the pleasures of the table are but too often shared by the gentlemen of the country with those who are very much their inferiors, both in birth and fortune. The lowest and most degrading debauchery must be the natural consequence; and here I must not forget an anecdote which will at once illustrate this, and also make you acquainted with a childish superstition, with which it is a frequent practice of all ranks to combat this pernicious vice; encouraged by their indolent manner of life, and by the former facility of procuring smuggled liquors. A gentleman, whose rental at one time amounted to £10,000 per annum, and who was in the constant habits of intoxication, took an oath to drink nothing after the cloth was removed; but, unable to comply with the spirit, he soon contented himself with adhering to the letter