impossible, to execute the processes of law. In cases where
gentlemen are concerned, it is often not even attempted. The
conduct of under-sheriffs is often very corrupt. We are afraid the
magistracy of Ireland is very inferior to that of this country; the
spirit of jobbing and bribery is very widely diffused, and upon
occasions when the utmost purity prevails in the sister kingdom.
Military force is necessary all over the country, and often for the
most common and just operations of Government. The behaviour of the
higher to the lower orders is much less gentle and decent than in
England. Blows from superiors to inferiors are more frequent, and
the punishment for such aggression more doubtful. The word
GENTLEMAN seems, in Ireland, to put an end to most processes at law.
Arrest a gentleman!!!--take out a warrant against a gentleman--are
modes of operation not very common in the administration of Irish
justice. If a man strike the meanest peasant in England, he is
either knocked down in his turn, or immediately taken before a
magistrate. It is impossible to live in Ireland without perceiving
the various points in which it is inferior in civilisation. Want of
unity in feeling and interest among the people--irritability,
violence, and revenge--want of comfort and cleanliness in the lower
orders--habitual disobedience to the law--want of confidence in
magistrates--corruption, venality, the perpetual necessity of
recurring to military force--all carry back the observer to that
remote and early condition of mankind, which an Englishman can learn
only in the pages of the antiquary or the historian. We do not draw
this picture for censure but for truth. We admire the Irish--feel
the most sincere pity for the state of Ireland--and think the
conduct of the English to that country to have been a system of
atrocious cruelty and contemptible meanness. With such a climate,
such a soil, and such a people, the inferiority of Ireland to the