CHAPTER VII.
When I awoke, I thought that I was on shipboard; for the first sound I heard was that of the sea booming against the castle walls. I arose, looked out of the window of my bedchamber, and saw that the whole prospect bore an air of savage wildness. As I contemplated the scene, my imagination was seized with the idea of remoteness from civilized society: the melancholy feeling of solitary grandeur took possession of my soul.
From this feeling I was relieved by the affectionate countenance of my old nurse, who at this instant put her head half in at the door.
“I only just made bold to look in at the fire, to see did it burn, because I lighted it myself, and would not be blowing of it for fear of wakening you.”
“Come in, Ellinor, come in,” said I. “Come quite in.”
“I will, since you’ve nobody with you that I need be afraid of,” said she, looking round satisfied, when she saw my own man was not in the room.
“You need never be afraid of any body, Ellinor, whilst I am alive,” said I; “for I will always protect you. I do not forget your conduct, when you thought I was dead in the banqueting-room.”
“Oh! don’t be talking of that; thanks be to God there was nothing in it! I see you well now. Long life to you! Sure you must have been tired to death last night, for this morning early you lay so quite, sleeping like an angel; and I could see a great likeness in yees to what you were when you were a child in my arms.”
“But sit down, sit down, my good Ellinor,” said I, “and let us talk a little of your own affairs.”
“And are not these my own affairs?” said she, rather angrily.
“Certainly; but I mean, that you must tell me how you are going on in the world, and what I can do to make you comfortable and happy.”
“There’s one thing would make me happy,” said she.
“Name it,” said I.
“To be let light your fire myself every morning, and open your shutters, dear.”
I could not help smiling at the simplicity of the request. I was going to press her to ask something of more consequence, but she heard a servant coming along the gallery, and, starting from her chair, she ran and threw herself upon her knees before the fire, blowing it with her mouth with great vehemence.
The servant came to let me know that Mr. M’Leod, my agent, was waiting for me in the breakfast-room.
“And will I be let light your fire then every morning?” said Ellinor eagerly, turning as she knelt.
“And welcome,” said I.
“Then you won’t forget to speak about it for me,” said she, “else may be I won’t be let up by them English. God bless you, and don’t forget to speak for me.”
“I will remember to speak about it,” said I; but I went down stairs and forgot it.
Mr. M’Leod, whom I found reading the newspaper in the breakfast-room, seemed less affected by my presence than any body I had seen since my arrival. He was a hard-featured, strong-built, perpendicular man, with a remarkable quietness of deportment: he spoke with deliberate distinctness, in an accent slightly Scotch; and, in speaking, he made use of no gesticulation, but held himself surprisingly still. No part of him but his eyes moved, and they had an expression of slow, but determined good sense. He was sparing of his words; but the few that he used said much, and went directly to the point. He pressed for the immediate examination and settlement of his accounts: he enumerated several things of importance, which he had done for my service: but he did this without pretending the slightest attachment to me; he mentioned them only as proofs of his having done his duty to his employer, for which he neither expected nor would accept of thanks. He seemed to be cold and upright in his mind as in his body. I was not influenced in his favour even by his striking appearance of plain-dealing, so strong was the general abhorrence of agents which Crawley’s treachery had left in my mind. The excess of credulity, when convinced of its error, becomes the extreme of suspicion. Persons not accustomed to reason often argue absurdly, because, from particular instances, they deduce general conclusions, and extend the result of their limited experience of individuals indiscriminately to whole classes. The labour of thinking was so great to me, that, having once come to a conclusion upon any subject, I would rather persist in it, right or wrong, than be at the trouble of going over the process again to revise and rectify my judgment.
Upon this occasion national prejudice heightened the prepossession which circumstances had raised. Mr. M’Leod was not only an agent, but a Scotchman; and I had a notion that all Scotchmen were crafty: therefore I concluded that his blunt manner was assumed, and his plain-dealing but a more refined species of policy.
After breakfast he laid before me a general statement of my affairs; obliged me to name a day for the examination of his accounts; and then, without expressing either mortification or displeasure at the coldness of my behaviour, or at my evident impatience of his presence, he, unmoved of spirit, rang for his horse, wished me a good morning, and departed.
By this time my castle-yard was filled with a crowd of “great-coated suitors,” who were all come to see—could they see my lordship? or waiting just to say two words to my honour. In various lounging attitudes, leaning against the walls, or pacing backwards and forwards before the window, to catch my eye, they, with a patience passing the patience of courtiers, waited, hour after hour, the live-long day, for their turn, or their chance, of an audience. I had promised myself the pleasure of viewing my castle this day, and of taking a ride through my grounds; but that was totally out of the question. I was no longer a man with a will of my own, or with time at my own disposal.
“Long may you live to reign over us!” was the signal that I was now to live, like a prince, only for the service of my subjects. How these subjects of mine had contrived to go on for so many years in my absence, I was at a loss to conceive; for, the moment I was present, it seemed evident that they could not exist without me.
One had a wife and six childer, and not a spot in the wide world to live in, if my honour did not let him live under me, in any bit of a skirt of the estate that would feed a cow.
Another had a brother in jail, who could not be got out without me.
Another had three lives dropped in a lase for ever; another wanted a renewal; another a farm; another a house; and one expected my lard would make his son an exciseman; and another that I would make him a policeman; and another was racked, if I did not settle the mearing between him and Corny Corkran; and half a hundred had given in proposials to the agent for lands that would be out next May; and half a hundred more came with legends of traditionary promises from the old lord, my lordship’s father that was: and for hours I was forced to listen to long stories out of the face, in which there was such a perplexing and provoking mixture of truth and fiction, involved in language so figurative, and tones so new to my English ears, that, with my utmost patience and strained attention, I could comprehend but a very small portion of what was said to me.
Never were my ears so weary any day of my life as they were this day. I could not have endured the fatigue, if I had not been supported by the agreeable idea of my own power and consequence; a power seemingly next to despotic. This new stimulus sustained me for three days that I was kept a state-prisoner in my own castle, by the crowds who came to do me homage, and to claim my favour and protection. In vain every morning was my horse led about saddled and bridled: I never was permitted to mount. On the fourth morning, when I felt sure of having despatched all my tormentors, I was in astonishment and despair on seeing my levee crowded with a fresh succession of petitioners. I gave orders to my people to say that I was going out, and absolutely could see nobody. I supposed that they did not understand what my English servants said, for they never stirred from their posts. On receiving a second message, they acknowledged that they understood the first; but replied, that they could wait there till my honour came back from my ride. With difficulty I mounted my horse, and escaped from the closing ranks of my persecutors. At night I gave directions to have the gates kept shut, and ordered the porter not to admit any body at his peril. When I got up, I was delighted to see the coast clear; but the moment I went out, lo! at the outside of the gate, the host of besiegers were posted, and in my lawn, and along the road, and through the fields: they pursued me; and when I forbade them to speak to me when I was on horseback, the next day I found parties in ambuscade, who laid wait for me in silence, with their hats off, bowing and bowing, till I could not refrain from saying, “Well, my good friend, what do you stand bowing there for?” Then I was fairly prisoner, and held by the bridle for an hour.
In short, I found that I was now placed in a situation where I could hope neither for privacy nor leisure; but I had the joys of power, my rising passion for which would certainly have been extinguished in a short time by my habitual indolence, if it had not been kept alive by jealousy of Mr. M’Leod.
One day, when I refused to hear an importunate tenant, and declared that I had been persecuted with petitioners ever since my arrival, and that I was absolutely tired to death, the man answered, “True for ye, my lard; and it’s a shame to be troubling you this way. Then, may be, it’s to Mr. M’Leod I’ll go? Sure the agent will do as well, and no more about it. Mr. M’Leod will do every thing the same way as usual.”
“Mr. M’Leod will do every thing!” said I, hastily: “no, by no means.”
“Who will we speak to, then?” said the man.
“To myself,” said I, with as haughty a tone as Louis XIV. could have assumed, when he announced to his court his resolution to be his own minister. After this intrepid declaration to act for myself, I could not yield to my habitual laziness. So much had my pride been hurt, as well as my other feelings, by Captain Crawley’s conduct, that I determined to show the world I was not to be duped a second time by an agent.
When, on the day appointed, Mr. M’Leod came to settle accounts with me, I, with an air of self-important capability, as if I had been all my life used to look into my own affairs, sat down to inspect the papers; and, incredible as it may appear, I went through the whole at a sitting, without a single yawn; and, for a man who never before had looked into an account, I understood the nature of debtor and creditor wonderfully well: but, with my utmost desire to evince my arithmetical sagacity, I could not detect the slightest error in the accounts; and it was evident that Mr. M’Leod was not Captain Crawley; yet, rather than believe that he could be both an agent and an honest man, I concluded, that if he did not cheat me out of my money, his aim was to cheat me out of power; and, fancying that he wished to be a man of influence and consequence in the county, I transferred to him instantly the feelings that were passing in my own mind, and took it for granted that he must be actuated by a love of power in every thing that he did apparently for my service.
About this time I remember being much disturbed in my mind, by a letter which Mr. M’Leod received in my presence, and of which he read to me only a part: I never rested till I saw the whole. The epistle proved well worth the trouble of deciphering: it related merely to the paving of my chicken-yard. Like the King of Prussia,79 who was said to be so jealous of power, that he wanted to regulate all the mousetraps in his dominions, I soon engrossed the management of a perplexing multiplicity of minute insignificant details. Alas! I discovered to my cost, that trouble is the inseparable attendant upon power: and many times, in the course of the first ten days of my reign, I was ready to give up my dignity from excessive fatigue.
CHAPTER VIII.
Early one morning, after having passed a feverish night, tortured in my dreams by the voices and faces of the people who had surrounded me the preceding day, I was awakened by the noise of somebody lighting my fire. I thought it was Ellinor; and the idea of the disinterested affection of this poor woman came full into my mind, contrasted in the strongest manner with the recollection of the selfish encroaching people by whom, of late, I had been worried.
“How do you do, my good Ellinor?” said I; “I have not seen any thing of you this week past.”
“It’s not Ellinor at all, my lard,” said a new voice.
“And why so? Why does not Ellinor light my fire?”
“Myself does not know, my lard.”
“Go for her directly.”
“She’s gone home these three days, my lard.”
“Gone! is she sick?”
“Not as I know on, my lard. Myself does not know what ailed her, except she would be jealous of my lighting the fire. But I can’t say what ailed her; for she went away without a word good or bad, when she seen me lighting this fire, which I did by the housekeeper’s orders.”
I now recollected poor Ellinor’s request, and reproached myself for having neglected to fulfil my promise, upon an affair which, however trifling in itself, appeared of consequence to her. In the course of my morning’s ride I determined to call upon her at her own house, and make my apologies: but first I satisfied my curiosity about a prodigious number of parks and towns which I had heard of upon my estate. Many a ragged man had come to me, with the modest request that I would let him one of the parks near the town. The horse-park, the deer-park, the cow-park, were not quite sufficient to answer the ideas I had attached to the word park: but I was quite astonished and mortified when I beheld the bits and corners of land near the town of Glenthorn, on which these high-sounding titles had been bestowed:—just what would feed a cow is sufficient in Ireland to constitute a park.
When I heard the names of above a hundred towns on the Glenthorn estate, I had an exalted idea of my own territories; and I was impatient to make a progress through my dominions: but, upon visiting a few of these places, my curiosity was satisfied. Two or three cabins gathered together were sufficient to constitute a town, and the land adjoining thereto is called a town-land. The denominations of these town-lands having continued from generation to generation, according to ancient surveys of Ireland, it is sufficient to show the boundaries of a town-land, to prove that there must be a town; and a tradition of a town continues to be satisfactory, even when only a single cabin remains. I turned my horse’s head away in disgust from one of these traditionary towns, and desired a boy to show me the way to Ellinor O’Donoghoe’s house.
“So I will, plase your honour, my lard; sure I’ve a right to know, for she’s my own granny.”
The boy, or, as he was called, the gossoon, ran across some fields where there was abundance of fern and of rabbits. The rabbits, sitting quietly at the entrance of their holes, seemed to consider themselves as proprietors of the soil, and me and my horse as intruders. The boy apologized for the number of rabbit-holes on this part of the estate: “It would not be so, my lard, if I had a gun allowed me by the gamekeeper, which he would give me if he knew it would be plasing to your honour.” The ingenuity with which even the young boys can introduce their requests in a favourable moment sometimes provoked me, and sometimes excited my admiration. This boy made his just at the time he was rolling out of my way a car that stopped a gap in the hedge; and he was so hot and out of breath with running in my service, that I could not refuse him a token to the gamekeeper that he might get a gun as soon as I understood what it meant.
We came to Ellinor’s house, a wretched-looking, low, and mud-walled cabin; at one end it was propped by a buttress of loose stones, upon which stood a goat reared on his hind legs, to browse on the grass that grew on the house-top. A dung-hill was before the only window, at the other end of the house, and close to the door was a puddle of the dirtiest of dirty water, in which ducks were dabbling. At my approach there came out of the cabin a pig, a calf, a lamb, a kid, and two geese, all with their legs tied; followed by turkeys, cocks, hens, chickens, a dog, a cat, a kitten, a beggar-man, a beggar-woman with a pipe in her mouth, children innumerable, and a stout girl with a pitchfork in her hand; all together more than I, looking down upon the roof as I sat on horseback, and measuring the superficies with my eye, could have possibly supposed the mansion capable of containing. I asked if Ellinor O’Donoghoe was at home; but the dog barked, the geese cackled, the turkeys gobbled, and the beggars begged, with one accord, so loudly, that there was no chance of my being heard. When the girl had at last succeeded in appeasing them all with her pitchfork, she answered, that Ellinor O’Donoghoe was at home, but that she was out with the potatoes; and she ran to fetch her, after calling to the lays, who was within in the room smoking, to come out to his honour. As soon as they had crouched under the door, and were able to stand upright, they welcomed me with a very good grace, and were proud to see me in the kingdom. I asked if they were all Ellinor’s sons?
“All entirely,” was the first answer.
“Not one but one,” was the second answer. The third made the other two intelligible.
“Plase your honour, we are all her sons-in-law, except myself, who am her lawful son.”
“Then you are my foster-brother?”
“No, plase your honour, it’s not me, but my brother, and he’s not in it.”
“Not in it?’’
“No, plase your honour; becaase he’s in the forge, up abow.”
“Abow!” said I; “what does he mean?”
“Sure he’s the blacksmith, my lard.”
“And what are you?”
“I’m Ody, plase your honour; the short for Owen.”
“And what is your trade?”
“Trade, plase your honour! I was bred to none, more than another; but expects, only that my mother’s not willing to part with me, to go into the militia next month; and I’m sure she’d let me, if your honour’s lordship would spake a word to the colonel, to see to get me made a serjeant immadiately.”
As Ody made his request, all his companions came forward in sign of sympathy, and closed round my horse’s head to make me sinsible of their expectations; but at this instant Ellinor came up, her old face colouring all over with joy when she saw me.
“So, Ellinor,” said I, “you were affronted, I hear, and left the castle in anger?”
“In anger! And if I did, more shame for me—but anger does not last long with me any way; and against you, my lord, dear, how could it? Oh, think how good he is, coming to see me in such a poor place!”
“I will make it a better place for you, Ellinor,” said I. Far from being eager to obtain promises, she still replied, that “all was good enough for her.” I desired that she would come and live with me at the castle, till a better house than her present habitation could be built for her; but she seemed to prefer this hovel. I assured her that she should be permitted to light my fire.
“Oh, it’s better for me not,” said she; “better keep out of the way. I could not be asy if I got any one ill-will.”
I assured her that she should be at liberty to do just as she liked: and whilst I rode home I was planning a pretty cottage for her near the porter’s lodge. I was pleased with myself for my gratitude to this poor woman. Before I slept, I actually wrote a letter, which obtained for Ody the honour of being made a serjeant in the —— militia; and Ellinor, dazzled by this military glory, was satisfied that he should leave home, though he was her favourite.
“Well, let him leave me then,” said she; “I won’t stand in his light. I never thought of my living to see Ody a serjeant. Now, Ody, have done being wild, honey-dear, and be a credit to your family, and to his honour’s commendation—God bless him for ever for it! From the very first I knew it was he that had the kind heart.”
I am not sure that it was a very good action to get a man made a serjeant, of whom I knew nothing but that he was son to my nurse. Self-complacency, however, cherished my first indistinct feelings of benevolence. Though not much accustomed to reflect upon my own sensations, I think I remember, at this period, suspecting that the feeling of benevolence is a greater pleasure than the possession of barouches, and horses, and castles, and parks—greater even than the possession of power. Of this last truth, however, I had not as yet a perfectly clear conception. Even in my benevolence I was as impatient and unreasonable as a child. Money, I thought, had the power of Aladdin’s lamp, to procure with magical celerity the gratification of my wishes. I expected that a cottage for Ellinor should rise out of the earth at my command. But the slaves of Aladdin’s lamp were not Irishmen. The delays, and difficulties, and blunders, in the execution of my orders, provoked me beyond measure; and it would have been difficult for a cool spectator to decide whether I or my workmen were most in fault; they for their dilatory habits, or I for my impatient temper.
“Well, plase your honour, when the pratees are set, and the turf cut, we’ll fall-to at Ellinor’s house.”
“Confound the potatoes and the turf! you must fall-to, as you call it, directly.”
“Is it without the lime, and plase your honour? Sure that same is not drawn yet, nor the stones quarried, since it is of stone it will be—nor the foundations itself dug, and the horses were all putting out dung.”
Then after the bog and the potatoes, came funerals and holidays innumerable. The masons were idle one week waiting for the mortar, and the mortar another week waiting for the stones, and then they were at a stand for the carpenter when they came to the door-case, and the carpenter was looking for the sawyer, and the sawyer was gone to have the saw mended. Then there was a stop again at the window-sills for the stone-cutter, and he was at the quarter-sessions, processing his brother for tin and tinpence, hay-money. And when, in spite of all delays and obstacles, the walls reached their destined height, the roof was a new plague; the carpenter, the slater, and the nailer, were all at variance, and I cannot tell which was the most provoking rogue of the three. At last, however, the house was roofed and slated: then I would not wait till the walls were dry before I plastered, and papered, and furnished it. I fitted it up in the most elegant style of English cottages; for I was determined that Ellinor’s habitation should be such as had never been seen in this part of the world. The day when it was finished, and when I gave possession of it to Ellinor, paid me for all my trouble; I tasted a species of pleasure that was new to me, and which was the sweeter from having been earned with some difficulty. And now, when I saw a vast number of my tenants assembled at a rural feast which I gave on Ellinor’s installation, my benevolence enlarged, even beyond the possibility of its gratification, and I wished to make all my dependants happy, provided I could accomplish it without much trouble. The method of doing good, which seemed to require the least exertion, and which I, therefore, most willingly practised, was giving away money. I did not wait to inquire, much less to examine into the merits of the claimants; but, without selecting proper objects, I relieved myself from the uneasy feeling of pity, by indiscriminate donations to objects apparently the most miserable.
I was quite angry with Mr. M’Leod, my agent, and considered him as a selfish, hard-hearted miser, because he did not seem to sympathize with me, or to applaud my generosity. I was so much irritated by his cold silence, that I could not forbear pressing him to say something.
“I doubt, then,” said he, “since you desire me to speak my mind, my lord, I doubt whether the best way of encouraging the industrious is to give premiums to the idle.”
“But, idle or not, these poor wretches are so miserable, that I cannot refuse to give them something; and, surely, when one can do it so easily, it is right to relieve misery. Is it not?”
“Undoubtedly, my lord; but the difficulty is, to relieve present misery, without creating more in future. Pity for one class of beings sometimes makes us cruel to others. I am told that there are some Indian Brahmins so very compassionate, that they hire beggars to let fleas feed upon them: I doubt whether it might not be better to let the fleas starve.”
I did not in the least understand what Mr. M’Leod meant: but I was soon made to comprehend it, by crowds of eloquent beggars, who soon surrounded me: many who had been resolutely struggling with their difficulties, slackened their exertions, and left their labour for the easier trade of imposing upon my credulity. The money I had bestowed was wasted at the dram-shop, or it became the subject of family-quarrels; and those whom I had relieved returned to my honour, with fresh and insatiable expectations. All this time my industrious tenants grumbled, because no encouragement was given to them; and, looking upon me as a weak good-natured fool, they combined in a resolution to ask me for long leases, or reduction of rent.
The rhetoric of my tenants succeeded in some instances; and again I was mortified by Mr. M’Leod’s silence. I was too proud to ask his opinion. I ordered, and was obeyed. A few leases for long terms were signed and sealed; and when I had thus my own way completely, I could not refrain from recurring to Mr. M’Leod’s opinion.
“I doubt, my lord,” said he, “whether this measure may be as advantageous as you hope. These fellows, these middle-men, will underset the land, and live in idleness, whilst they rack a parcel of wretched under-tenants.”
“But they said they would keep the land in their own hands, and improve it; and that the reason why they could not afford to improve before was, that they had not long leases.”
“It may be doubted whether long leases alone will make improving tenants; for in the next county to us, there are many farms of the dowager Lady Ormsby’s land let at ten shillings an acre, and her tenantry are beggars: and the land now, at the end of the leases, is worn out, and worse than at their commencement.”
I was weary listening to this cold reasoning, and resolved to apply no more for explanations to Mr. M’Leod; yet in my indolence I wanted the support of his approbation, at the very time I was jealous of his interference.
At one time I had a mind to raise the wages of labour; but Mr. M’Leod said, “It might be doubted whether the people would not work less, when they could with less work have money enough to support them.”
I was puzzled: and then I had a mind to lower the wages of labour, to force them to work or starve. Still provoking Mr. M’Leod said, “It might be doubted whether it would not be better to leave them alone.”
I gave marriage-portions to the daughters of my tenants, and rewards to those who had children; for I had always heard that legislators should encourage population. Still Mr. M’Leod hesitated to approve; he observed, “that my estate was so populous, that the complaint in each family was, that they had not land for the sons. It might be doubted whether, if a farm could support but ten people, it were wise to encourage the birth of twenty. It might be doubted whether it were not better for ten to live, and be well fed, than for twenty to be born, and to be half-starved.”
To encourage manufactures in my town of Glenthorn, I proposed putting a clause in my leases, compelling my tenants to buy stuffs and linens manufactured at Glenthorn, and no where else. Stubborn M’Leod, as usual, began with, “I doubt whether that will not encourage the manufacturers at Glenthorn to make bad stuffs and bad linen, since they are sure of a sale, and without danger of competition.”
At all events, I thought my tenants would grow rich and independent, if they made every thing at home that they wanted: yet Mr. M’Leod perplexed me by his “doubt whether it would not be better for a man to buy shoes, if he could buy them cheaper than he could make them.” He added something about the division of labour, and Smith’s Wealth of Nations; to which I could only answer—“Smith’s a Scotchman.”
I cannot express how much I dreaded Mr. M’Leod’s I doubt—and—It may be doubted.
From the pain of doubt, and the labour of thought, I was soon most agreeably reprieved by the company of a Mr. Hardcastle, whose visits I constantly encouraged by a most gracious reception. Mr. Hardcastle was the agent of the dowager Lady Ormsby, who had a large estate in my neighbourhood: he was the very reverse of my Mr. M’Leod in his deportment and conversation. Talkative, self-sufficient, peremptory, he seemed not to know what it was to doubt; he considered doubt as a proof of ignorance, imbecility, or cowardice. “Can any man doubt?” was his usual beginning. On every subject of human knowledge, taste, morals, politics, economy, legislation; on all affairs, civil, military, or ecclesiastical, he decided at once in the most confident tone. Yet he “never read, not he!” he had nothing to do with books; he consulted only his own eyes and ears, and appealed only to common sense. As to theory, he had no opinion of theory; for his part, he only pretended to understand practice and experience—and his practice was confined steadily to his own practice, and his experience uniformly to what he had tried at New-town-Hardcastle.
At first I thought him a mighty clever man, and I really rejoiced to see my doubter silenced. After dinner, when he had finished speaking in this decisive manner, I used frequently to back him with a—Very true—very fair—very clear—though I understood what he said as little as he did himself; but it was an ease to my mind to have a disputed point settled—and I filled my glass with an air of triumph, whilst M’Leod never contradicted my assertions, nor controverted Mr. Hardcastle’s arguments. There was still an air of content and quiet self-satisfaction in M’Leod’s very silence, which surprised and vexed me.
One day, when Hardcastle was laying down the law upon several subjects in his usual dictatorial manner, telling us how he managed his people, and what order he kept them in, I was determined that M’Leod should not enjoy the security of his silence, and I urged him to give us his general opinion, as to the means of improving the poor people in Ireland.
“I doubt,” said M’Leod, “whether any thing effectual can be done till they have a better education.”
“Education!—Pshaw!—There it is now—these book-men,” cried Hardcastle: “Why, my dear sir, can any man alive, who knows this country, doubt that the common people have already too much education, as it is called—a vast deal too much? Too many of them know how to read, and write, and cipher, which I presume is all you mean by education.”
“Not entirely,” said M’Leod; “a good education comprehends something more.”
“The more the worse,” interrupted Hardcastle. “The more they know, the worse they are, sir, depend on that; I know the people of this country, sir; I have a good right to know them, sir, being born amongst them, and bred amongst them; so I think I may speak with some confidence on these matters. And I give it as my decided humble opinion, founded on irrefragable experience, which is what I always build upon, that the way to ruin the poor of Ireland would be to educate them, sir. Look at the poor scholars, as they call themselves; and what are they? a parcel of young vagabonds in rags, with a book under their arm instead of a spade or a shovel, sir. And what comes of this? that they grow up the worst-disposed, and the most troublesome seditiousrascals in the community. I allow none of them about New-town-Hardcastle—none—banished them all. Useless vagrants—hornets, vipers, sir: and show me a quieter, better-managed set of people than I have made of mine. I go upon experience, sir; and that’s the only thing to go upon; and I’ll go no farther than New-town-Hardcastle: if that won’t bring conviction home to you, nothing will.”
“I never was at New-town-Hardcastle,” said M’Leod, drily.
“Well, sir, I hope it will not be the case long. But in the mean time, my good sir, do give me leave to put it to your own common sense, what can reading or writing do for a poor man, unless he is to be a bailiff or an exciseman? and you know all men can’t expect to be bailiffs or excisemen. Can all the book-learning in the world, sir, dig a poor man’s potatoes for him, or plough his land, or cut his turf? Then, sir, in this country, where’s the advantage of education, I humbly ask? No, sir, no, trust me—keep the Irish common people ignorant, and you keep ‘em quiet; and that’s the only way with them; for they are too quiet and smart, as it is, naturally. Teach them to read and write, and it’s just adding fuel to fire—fire to gunpowder, sir. Teach them any thing, and directly you set them up: now it’s our business to keep them down, unless, sir, you’d wish to have your throat cut. Education, sir! Lord bless your soul, sir! they have a great deal too much; they know too much already, which makes them so refractory to the laws, and so idle. I will go no farther than New-town-Hardcastle, to prove all this. So, my good sir,” concluded he, triumphantly, “education, I grant you, is necessary for the rich; but tell me, if you can, what’s the use of education to the poor?”
“Much the same, I apprehend, as to the rich,” answered M’Leod. “The use of education, as I understand it, is to teach men to see clearly, and to follow steadily, their real interests. All morality, you know, is comprised in this definition; and—”
“Very true, sir; but all this can never apply to the poor in Ireland.”
“Why, sir; are they not men?”
“Men, to be sure; but not like men in Scotland. The Irish know nothing of their interests; and as to morality, that’s out of the question: they know nothing about it, my dear sir.”
“That is the very thing of which I complain,” said M’Leod. “They know nothing, because they have been taught nothing.”
“They cannot be taught, sir.”
“Did you ever try?”
“I did, sir, no later than last week. A fellow that I caught stealing my turf, instead of sending him to jail, I said to him, with a great deal of lenity, My honest fellow, did you never hear of the eighth commandment, ‘Thou shalt not steal?’ He confessed he had; but did not know it was the eighth. I showed it to him, and counted it to him myself; and set him, for a punishment, to get his whole catechism. Well, sir, the next week I found him stealing my turf again! and when I caught him by the wrist in the fact, he said, it was because the priest would not let him learn the catechism I gave him, because it was a Protestant one. Now you see, sir, there’s a bar for ever to all education.”
Mr. M’Leod smiled, said something about time and patience, and observed, “that one experiment was not conclusive against a whole nation.” Any thing like a general argument Mr. Hardcastle could not comprehend. He knew every blade of grass within the reach of his tether, but could not reach an inch beyond. Any thing like an appeal to benevolent feelings was lost upon him; for he was so frank in his selfishness, that he did not even pretend to be generous. By sundry self-complacent motions he showed whilst his adversary spoke, that he disdained to listen almost as much as to read: but, as soon as M’Leod paused, he said, “What you observe, sir, may possibly be very true; but I have made up my mind.” Then he went over and over again his assertions, in a louder and a louder voice, ending with a tone of interrogation that seemed to set all answer at defiance, “What have you to answer to me now, sir?—Can any man alive doubt this, sir?”
M’Leod was perfectly silent. The company broke up; and, as we were going out of the room, I maliciously asked M’Leod, why he, who could say so much in his own defence, had suffered himself to be so completely silenced? He answered me, in his low, deliberate voice, in the words of Moiré—“‘Qu’est-ce que la raison avec un filet de voix contre une gueule comme celle-là?’ At some other time,” added Mr. M’Leod, “my sentiments shall be at your lordship’s disposal.”
Indolent persons love positive people, when they are of their own opinion; because they are saved the trouble of developing their thoughts, or supporting their assertions: but the moment the positive differs in sentiment from the indolent man, there is an end of the friendship. The indolent man then hates his pertinacious adversary as much as he loved his sturdy friend. So it happened between Mr. Hardcastle and me. This gentleman was a prodigious favourite with me, so long as his opinions were not in opposition to my own; but an accident happened, which brought his love of power and mine into direct competition, and then I found his peremptory mode of reasoning and his ignorance absurd and insufferable.
Before I can do justice to my part of this quarrel, I must explain the cause of the interest which I took in behalf of the persons aggrieved. During the time that my first hot fit of benevolence was on me, I was riding home one evening after dining with Mr. Hardcastle, and I was struck with the sight of a cabin, more wretched than any I had ever before beheld: the feeble light of a single rush-candle through the window revealed its internal misery.
“Does any body live in that hovel?” said I
“Ay, sure, does there: the Noonans, plase your honour,” replied a man on the road. Noonans! I recollected the name to be that of the pugilist, who had died in consequence of the combat at which I had been present in London; who had, with his dying breath, besought me to convey his only half-guinea and his silk handkerchief to his poor father and sister. I alighted from my horse, asking the man, at the same time, if the son of this Noonan had not died in England.
“He had, sir, a son in England, Mick Noonan, who used to send him odd guineas, I mind, and was a good lad to his father, though wild; and there’s been no account of him at-all-at-all this long while: but the old man has another boy, a sober lad, who’s abroad with the army in the East Indies; and it’s he that is the hope of the family. And there’s the father—and old as he is, and poor, and a cripple, I’d engage there is not a happier man in the three counties at this very time speaking: for it is just now I seen young Jemmy Riley, the daughter’s bachelor, go by with a letter. What news? says I. ‘Great news!’ says he: ‘a letter from Tom Noonan to his father; and I’m going in to read it for him.’”
By the time my voluble informant had come to this period, I had reached the cabin door. Who could have expected to see smiles and hear exclamations of joy under such a roof?
I saw the father, with his hands clasped in ecstasy, and looking up to heaven, with the strong expression of delight in his aged countenance. I saw every line of his face; for the light of the candle was full upon it. The daughter, a beautiful girl, kneeling beside him, held the light for the young man, who was reading her brother’s letter. I was sorry to interrupt them.
“Your honour’s kindly welcome,” said the old man, making an attempt to rise.
“Pray, don’t let me disturb you.”
“It was only a letter from a boy of mine that’s over the seas, we was reading,” said the old man. “A better boy to an ould father, that’s good for nothing now in this world, never was, plase your honour. See what he has sent me: a draft here for ten guineas out of the little pay he has. God for ever bless him!—as he surely will.”
After a few minutes’ conversation, the old man’s heart was so much opened towards me, that he talked as freely as if he had known me for years. I led to the subject of his other son Michael, who was mentioned in the letter as a wild chap. “Ah! your honour, that’s what lies heaviest on my heart, and will, to my dying day, that Mick, before he died, which they say he did surely a twelvemonth ago, over there in England, never so much as sent me one line, good or bad, or his sister a token to remember him by even!”
“Had he but sent us the least bit of a word, or the least token in life, I had been content,” said the sister, wiping her eyes: “we don’t so much as know how he died.”
I took this moment to relate the circumstances of Michael Noonan’s death; and when I told them of his dying request about the half-guinea and the silk handkerchief, they were all so much touched, that they utterly forgot the ten-guinea draft, which I saw on the ground, in the dirt, under the old man’s feet, whilst he contemplated the half-guinea which his poor Michael had sent him: repeating, “Poor fellow! poor fellow! ‘twas all he had in the world. God bless him!—Poor Michael! he was a wild chap! but none better to his parents than he while the life was in him. Poor Michael!”
In no country have I found such strong instances of filial affection as in Ireland. Let the sons go where they may, let what will befall them, they never forget their parents at home: they write to them constantly the most affectionate letters, and send them a share of whatever they earn.
When I asked the daughter of this Noonan, why she had not married? the old man answered, “That’s her own fault—if it be a fault to abide by an old father. She wastes her youth here, in the way your honour sees, tending him who has none other to mind him.”
“Oh! let alone that,” said the girl, with a cheerful smile; “we be too poor to think of marrying yet, by a great deal! so, father dear, you’re no hinderance any way. For don’t I know, and doesn’t Jemmy there know, that it’s a sin and a shame, as my mother used to say, for them that have nothing, to marry and set up house-keeping, like the rogue that ruined my father?”
“That’s true,” said the young man, with a heavy sigh; “but times will mend, or we’ll strive and mend them, with the blessing of God.”
I left this miserable but in admiration of the generosity of its inhabitants. I desired the girl to come to Glenthorn Castle the next day, that I might give her the silk handkerchief which her poor brother had sent her. The more I inquired into the circumstances of this family, the more cause I found for pity and approbation. The old man had been a good farmer in his day, as the traditions of the aged, and the memories of the young, were ready to witness; but he was unfortunately joined in co-partnership with a drunken rogue, who ran away, and left an arrear of rent, which ruined Noonan. Mr. Hardcastle, the agent, called upon him to pay it, and sold all that the old man possessed; and this being insufficient to discharge the debt, he was forced to give up his farm, and retire, with his daughter, to this hovel; and soon afterwards he lost the use of his side by a paralytic stroke.
I was so much pleased with the goodness of these poor people, that, in despite of my indolent disposition, I bestirred myself the very next day to find a better habitation for them on my own estate. I settled them, infinitely to their satisfaction, in a small farm; and the girl married her lover, who undertook to manage the farm for the old man. To my utter surprise, I found that Mr. Hardcastle was affronted by the part I took in this affair. He complained that I had behaved in a very ungentlemanlike manner, and had spirited the tenants away from Lady Ormsby’s estate, against the regulation which he had laid down for all the tenants not to emigrate from the estate. Jemmy Riley, it seems, was one of the cotters on the Ormsby estate, a circumstance with which I was unacquainted; indeed I scarcely at that time understood what was meant by a cotter. Mr. Hardcastle’s complaint, in matter and manner, was unintelligible to me; but I was quite content to leave off visiting him, as he left off visiting me—but here the matter did not stop. This over-wise and over-busy gentleman took upon him, amongst other offices, the regulation of the markets in the town of Ormsby; and as he apprehended, for reasons best and only known to himself, a year of scarcity, he thought fit to keep down the price of oats and potatoes. He would allow none to be sold in the market of Ormsby but at the price which he stipulated. The poor people grumbled, and, to remedy the injustice, made private bargains with each other. He had information of this, and seized the corn that was selling above the price he had fixed. Young Riley, Noonan’s son-in-law, came to me to complain, that his little oats were seized and detained. I remonstrated. Hardcastle resented the appeal to me, and bid him wait and be damned. The young man, who was rather of a hasty temper, and who did not much like either to wait or be damned, seized his own oats, and was marching off, when they were recaptured by Hardcastle’s bailiff, whom young Riley knocked down; and who, as soon as he got up again, went straight and swore examinations against Riley. Then I was offended, as I had a right to be, by the custom of the country, with the magistrate who took an examination against my tenant, without writing first to me. Then there was a race between the examinations of my justice of peace and his justice of peace. My indolence was conquered by my love of power: I supported the contest; the affair came before our grand jury: I conquered, and Mr. Hardcastle was ever after, of course, my enemy. To English ears the possessive pronouns my and his may sound extraordinary, prefixed to a justice of peace; but, in many parts of Ireland, this language is perfectly correct. A great man talks of making a justice of the peace with perfect confidence; a very great man talks with as much certainty of making a sheriff; and a sheriff makes the jury; and the jury makes the law. We must not forget, however, that in England, during the reign of Elizabeth, a member of parliament defined a justice of peace to be “an animal, who for half a dozen chickens will dispense with half a dozen penal statutes.” Time is necessary to enforce the sanctions of legislation and civilization—But I am anticipating reflections which I made at a much later period of my life. To return to my history.
My benevolence was soon checked by slight disappointments. Ellinor’s cottage, which I had taken so much pains to build, became a source of mortification to me. One day I found my old nurse sitting at her wheel, in the midst of the wreck and litter of all sorts of household furniture, singing her favourite song of