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TWO:The evils of the social state of Ireland were bad enough without being aggravated by the virulence of faction. The result of numerous Parliamentary inquiries, and the observations of travellers from foreign countries, was to present a state of society the most deplorable that can well be imagined in any civilised country under a Christian Government. Many of the lower orders, especially in Munster and Connaught, as well as in mountainous districts of the other provinces, maintained a state of existence the most wretched that can be conceived. They lived in cabins built of mud, imperfectly covered with sods and straw, consisting generally of one room, without any window, with a chimney which admitted the rain, but did not carry off the smoke. They had little or nothing that deserved the name of furniture; their food consisted of potatoes and salt, with milk or a herring sometimes as a luxury; their wages, when they got work, were only sixpence or fourpence a day. They subsisted on small patches of land, which were continually subdivided as the children got married, the population at the same time multiplying with astonishing rapidity. When the potatoes and the turf failed, towards summer, the men went off to seek harvest work in the low lands and richer districts of the country, and in England and Scotland. The women, locking up the doors, set forth with the children to beg, the youngest of the lot being wrapped up in blankets, and carried on their backs. They passed on from parish to parish, getting a night's lodging, as they proceeded, in a chimney corner or in a barn, from the better part of the peasantry and farmers, who shared with them their potatoes, and gave them "a lock of straw" to sleep on. Thus they migrated from county to county, eastward and northward, towards the sea, lazily reposing in the sunshine by the wayside, their children enjoying a wild kind of gipsy freedom, but growing up in utter ignorance, uncared for by anybody, unrecognised by the clergy of any church. The great proprietors were for the most part absentees, who had let their lands, generally in large tracts, to "middlemen," a sort of small gentry, or "squireens," as they were called, who sublet at a rack-rent to the peasantry. Upon these rack-rented, ignorant cultivators of the soil fell a great portion of the burden of supporting the Established clergy, as well as their own priesthood. The tithes were levied exclusively off tillage, the[247] rector or vicar claiming by law a tenth of the crop, which was valued by his "tithe proctors," and unless compounded for in money, which was generally done by the "strong farmers," before the crop left the field, the tenth sheaf must have been set aside to be borne away on the carts of the Protestant clergyman, who was regarded by the people that thus supported him as the teacher of heresy.We offer the best Services in our Restarant.
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TWO:The American disasters had now to be criticised in Parliament. On the 20th of November the two Houses met, and Lord Chatham rose instantly to reply, and to move an amendment on the Address. He attacked the Ministry with a still more personal and sweeping censure than he had done once before. "Can Ministers," he asked, "presume to expect a continuance of support in their career of ruinous infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and its duty as to be deluded into the loss of the one and the violation of the other? Will they continue to give an unlimited credit and support to Government in measures which are reducing this flourishing empire to ruin and contempt? But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now, none so poor to do her reverence! I use the words of a poet; but, though it be poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth, that not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and expiring, but her well-earned glories, her true honour and substantial dignity, are sacrificed. France, my lords, has insulted you; she has encouraged and sustained America; and, whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference!" It is certain that Chatham would not have tolerated the presence of Franklin and Deane in Paris for a single day; they must have quitted France, or France would have been instantly compelled to throw off the mask. At this time, when the news neither of Howe's success in the south nor of Burgoyne's fall in the north had arrived, Chatham seemed to see in prophetic vision the disasters of the latter general. "The desperate state of our army," he said, "is, in part, known. No man thinks more highly of our troops than I do. I love and honour the English troops. I know that they can achieve anything but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannotI venture to say ityou cannot conquer America! You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance that you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little, pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are for ever vain and impotentdoubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my armsnevernevernever!" On the subject of employing Indians in the war against the Americans, willing to forget that he had done the same thing in Canada, he burst forth most indignantly: "But, my lords, who is the man that, in addition to these disgraces[247] and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorise and associate to our arms the scalping-knife and tomahawk of the savage? to call into civilised alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods? to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of this barbarous war against our brethren? My lord, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. Unless done away, it will be a stain on the national characterit is a violation of the Constitution; I believe it is against the law. It is not the least of our national misfortunes, that the strength and character of our army are thus impaired; infected with the mercenary spirit of robbery and rapinefamiliarised to the horrid scenes of savage cruelty, it can no longer boast of the noble and generous principles which dignify a soldier!" He then proceeded to give the Americans credit still for a natural leaning towards England; believed that they might be drawn from their alliance with France; and recommended, by his amendment, an immediate cessation of arms, and a treaty between the countries, by which he hoped that America would yet be retained in affectionate dependence.THE QUEEN'S FIRST COUNCIL.We offer the best Services in our Restarant.
