wretched family, I went into an adjoining habitation, where I found
a poor old woman of eighty, whose miserable existence was painfully
continued by the maintenance of her granddaughter. Their condition,
if possible, was more deplorable."--Curwen, i., pp. 181-183.


This wretchedness, of which all strangers who visit Ireland are so
sensible, proceeds certainly in great measure from their accidental
use of a food so cheap, that it encourages population to an
extraordinary degree, lowers the price of labour, and leaves the
multitudes which it calls into existence almost destitute of
everything but food. Many more live in consequence of the
introduction of potatoes; but all live in greater wretchedness. In
the progress of population, the potato must of course become at last
as difficult to be procured as any other food; and then let the
political economist calculate what the immensity and wretchedness of
a people must be, where the further progress of population is
checked by the difficulty of procuring potatoes.

The consequence of the long mismanagement and oppression of Ireland,
and of the singular circumstances in which it is placed, is, that it
is a semi-barbarous country--more shame to those who have thus ill-
treated a fine country and a fine people; but it is part of the
present case of Ireland. The barbarism of Ireland is evinced by the
frequency and ferocity of duels--the hereditary clannish feuds of
the common people and the fights to which they give birth--the
atrocious cruelties practised in the insurrections of the common
people--and their proneness to insurrection. The lower Irish live
in a state of greater wretchedness than any other people in Europe
inhabiting so fine a soil and climate. It is difficult, often