tricts; by the sea they are better off and more comfortable, they fish occasionally.

Are they without bedsteads ?-In general without bedsteads; the entire family sleep in the same compartment; they call it a room; there is some division between it and the part where the fire is; they separate the sexes by very slight partitions, and yet I do not believe, and indeed I am convinced, that that species of promiscuous lying amongst each other, does not induce the immorality which one would expect from it; certainly no immorality between persons closely related, such a thing is not heard of.

Have you known any instances in which immorality has been imputed?-None at all even imputed; I do believe the Irish peasant would destroy himself if he thought it was seriously imputed to him.

Have they blankets to put over the straw sufficient to cover it ?-In general not.

Do they sleep in their clothes?-In the county of Kerry they seldom sleep in their clothes, they are better off in the remoter parts of it with respect to blankets; so in the remoter districts of the county of Cork; but I have reason to believe, that in Limerick, and in a portion of Clare, and in parts of the county of Cork, they sleep in their clothes; I know that near Dublin they sleep in their clothes, and that upon recent investigation, within eight or ten miles of Dublin, out of fourteen or fifteen families, there were only two found in which there was a blanket.

Of what description is their ordinary clothing?-In the southern provinces they wear a frieze jacket, and the breeches of frieze, the waistcoat generally of flannel; they are very ambitious of wearing something of a cloak made of frieze, a large coat; any of them that get at all above the world now, are desirous of having a kind of cotton work called corduroy trowsers.

Have they stockings generally-In general they have not, at least in ordinary use, in those counties I have spoken of ; neither men nor women do in general wear shoes and stockings, it is dress and luxury.

Have they sufficient clothes, in case of being wet, to change?-Speaking of it as a general rule, they have no clothes to change; they have none but what they wear at the moment; of course, in the various grades of poverty and its shades, there are differences, but I speak of the general state of the Irish labouring peasantry.

With respect to their food, of what does it consist ?-Except on the coast, of potatoes and water during the greater part of

the year; potatoes and sour milk during another portion; they use some salt with their potatoes when they have nothing but water; on the sea coast they get fish, the children repair to the shore, and the women and they get shell fish of various kinds, and indeed various kinds of fish.

Do they suffer any inconvenience in that season of the year which takes place between the going out of the old potatoes and the coming in of the new ?-Almost always great distress, aggravated by the difficulties with respect to tithes. The Irish Acts enable the peasant to hold a kind of battle with the tithe owner upon every thing but potatoes; with other things he can serve a notice to draw, but with potatoes it is not so; there is no statute provision respecting the potato, and then if the peasant begins to dig his potatoes he is completely at the mercy of the tithe owner; and it is right to say, that he is in general not very harshly dealt with where the clergyman has the tithe himself; but when they are in the hands of laymen, and frequently persons of the same persuasion with himself, is very badly dealt with; if he begins to dig he has no mode afterwards of defending himself against the demand.

That is, if he begins to dig previous to making an arrangement or bargain for his tithes ?-Yes; and that is the interval that takes place between the going out of the old potatoes and coming in of the new harvest, because the bargain for the tithe is not made or tendered to him at that early period; he has great distress in general at that time.

Have they the means of purchasing potatoes during that season, if their own stock is exhausted ?-Money is an article that the Irish peasant knows excessively little of; he has not the means.

Is there no employment sufficient to afford the means of acquiring money in cases of difficulty?-Certainly not; I do not believe there is in the world a peasantry more ready to accept small wages for employment than the Irish peasant.

Is there any thing like a demand for constant employment for the labouring class?-There is not, according to my knowledge and experience, even any thing that could be called an occasional demand; that is, the demand is so small that it scarcely deserves the name, it is rather an accidental demand than even occasional.

Could you give the Committee any idea of the proportion of the people that are without employment?-To attempt it numerically is matter of conjecture, but there certainly is not one out of twenty employed; that is, there is nothing like. constant work for that number.

What is the customary wages for a man's labour, when

employed, independently of considerations of rent?—I cannot say that, except in the remote district of the county of Kerry, where I take it to be when there is employment, sixpence a day without any meal, and four-pence a day with; and yet say that, from perhaps not a very distinct recollection, it is not more than that. I believe, during 1822, they cheerfully worked at two-pence a day without victuals, being paid in money.

Under these circumstances of a want of employment, how do the people contrive to provide themselves with food?Every man cultivates the food of his own family; potatoes and land becomes absolutely necessary therefore for every Irish peasant, and he cultivates that food, and he makes the rent in general (I am and have been speaking of the poorer class of peasantry) by feeding the pig as well as his own family upon the same food; and if it be not wrong to call it so, at the same table, upon the same spot with that pig, he makes the rent, besides any chance he gets of daily labour.

Is there generally a facility of acquiring land?-Great difficulty: "the lower class of tenantry, the mere peasant, it is painful to look for rent from, and he is supposed to injure the farm, and he does to a certain extent, and he has no capital to reinstate it, and they find therefore great difficulty in getting land, a difficulty increasing with the number of the population.

What rate of rent is charged on this class of occupiers ?-I cannot state that; the county of Clare subsists a good deal upon what are called conacres, that has been introduced but lately at all into Kerry, and not at all into my part; and in my part of it, the land is reckoned by the quantity of cows grazing; it is divided into plough lands and gneeves.

What is the conacre system?-I am not very familiar with it; as far as my knowledge of it reaches, it is this; I speak, however, with diffidence of it; it is a right to plant a crop, paying sometimes six, eight, or ten pounds an acre for that right by the single year, and the crop is detained till that rent is made up, in whatever way it can be made up; but then I should take a peasant to be wealthy that took an acre.

How does the peasant pay his rent who takes land by the year?-The lowest class of peasant pays it by the price of his pig and his labour, whatever chance of labour he has; the better class than that pay the rent by the produce of butter; in the mountain districts of oats, in the district something better than that; in the remote parts of the county of Cork they pay their rent by the produce of barley, and in the richer

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parts, the better farmers by the produce of wheat; by the produce, I mean the money produced.

How does a man pay the rent for a conacre?—I am not prepared to answer that; I am not sufficiently acquainted; but I should take it in general by labour, and by the sale of the pig.

From a former part of your evidence, it would appear there is difficulty in finding labour?-The only places which I am at all acquainted with conacres are in the vicinity of towns; my own residence is necessarily, the far greater part of the year, in Dublin, and my professional avocations are sufficient to prevent me from being acquainted with the minuter details of farming.

Are there not a great number of the lower orders that cannot even obtain conacres for the potatoes?-Yes, that is the impression upon my mind.

In what manner do they contrive to live?—I cannot tell that; I speak of there being such, not of my own knowledge, but as a general impression.

Have circumstances occurred, within your knowledge, of hardship, in respect of distraining for rent ?-Very many.

Is it a general hardship in the country ?-It is a general grievance, very much aggravated by the necessity of sublettings; there are frequently six and seven between the proprietor of the fee and the actual occupier; and whenever any two of those happen to differ in the state of their accounts, the man who claims more than the other has paid, or is willing to pay, settles the dispute, by distraining the actual occupier; and that occurs, in many instances, where the occupier has paid his own rent to his own landlord.

Then every superior tenant of the sub-tenant's has a right of distress over the actual occupier ?-Unquestionably.

Have cases come to your knowledge, of hardship arising from that? The greatest cruelty and oppression, and it is attended with this additional oppression: a recent statute, which was passed about the year 1817, for the first time, enabled the landlords to distrain growing crops in Ireland. My own opinion is, that that statute has contributed extremely to the disturbances in the South, because in all those cases of sub-letting, it gave to every one of those individuals the power of distraining the growing crop, that growing crop being the subsistence of the family of the peasant; and if he can forbear from digging the potato himself, he cannot restrain his wife and children. I have known numerous instances, where informations as for a felony were sworn before

a magistrate'; the wretch was committed to a jail for two or three or four months, till the ensuing assizes, when it was discovered it could not be a felony; but then the wretch had lain in jail during that time, and his family of course excessively ill off. The worst of the crimes of the South I attribute a great deal to the effect of that Act of Parliament.

Are the lower orders severe in their dealings towards one another, in regard to enforcing distress? They are harsh and unfeeling towards each other in pecuniary matters.

Do they exercise the right to the fullest extent of enforcing what is due to them, under all circumstances?-They do ; I have known persons who would be perfectly ready to die for each other in personal quarrels, as harsh about a shilling or a sixpence as if they had no previous acquaintance with each other whatever.

Have instances of grievance occurred to you, and hardship, arising out of the practice of bringing ejectments for rent ?Yes; the stamp duties, with respect to the tenure of land, of course are paid by the tenant; and with respect to a peasant, the amount of stamp duty would be more money than he could possibly command; the consequence of which is, that he deals in general upon parole, or upon a contract, written upon unstamped paper. The effect of that is, that it gives the landlord a constant power of breaking through the contract, without any remedy. Not even a civil bill action will lie for a breach of the contract, because it requires that it should be stamped before it can be produced; the consequence of which is, that every species of landlords have the means of bringing ejectments, and turning the tenants out. Before the civil bill ejectment was allowed by Act of Parliament, a landlord was cautious of bringing an ejectment, for even if defence was not made, it would cost him fourteen or fifteen pounds, at the cheapest, to turn out a tenant; but the civil bill ejectment has very much increased the power of lower landlords, for by means of that he can turn out his tenant for a few shillings; and that horrible murder of the Shees was occasioned by a civil bill ejectment, brought in that way. I wish to express this opinion strongly to the Committee, that the Acts of Parliament, passed- since the peace, giving to Irish landlords increased facilities of ejectment and distress, have necessarily very much increased the tendency to disturbance in Ireland; there have been several of them within the last ten years.

Have those laws produced this effect, by being made use of by the upper class of landlords ?-Yes; they have been used by the upper classes of Irish gentry in the South. The resi