to be the judge of his own conduct.  The agent easily excuses himself to the landlord; but the unfortunate man who had presumed to lift up his voice, is henceforth a marked object of vengeance; and he is made an example to his fellows, that they may not dare to imitate him.  The truth is, that the real state of Ireland, and the real feelings of the Irish people, can only be known by personal intercourse with the lower orders.  Gentlemen making a hurried tour through the country, may see a good deal of misery, if they have not come for the purpose of not seeing it; but they can never know the real wretchedness of the Irish poor unless they remain stationary in some district long enough to win the confidence of the people, and to let them feel that they can tell their sorrows and their wrongs without fear that they shall be increased by the disclosure.

Third, one brief word of how this injustice recoils upon the heads of the perpetrators, and I shall have ended.  It recoils upon them indirectly, by causing a feeling of hostility between the governors and the governed.  A man cannot be expected to revere and love his landlord, when he finds that his only object is to get all he can from him—­when he finds him utterly reckless of his misery, and still more indifferent to his feelings.  A gentleman considers himself a model of humanity if he pays the emigration expenses of the family whom he wishes to eject from the holding which their ancestors have possessed for centuries.  He is amazed at the fearful ingratitude of the poor man, who cannot feel overwhelmed with joy at his benevolent offer.  But the gentleman considers he has done his duty, and consoles himself with the reflection that the Irish are an ungrateful race.  Of all the peoples on the face of the globe, the Irish Celts are the most attached to their families and to their lands.  God only knows the broken hearts that go over the ocean strangers to a strange land.  The young girls who leave their aged mothers, the noble, brave young fellows who leave their old fathers, act not from a selfish wish to better themselves, but from the hope, soon to be realized, that they may be able to earn in another land what they cannot earn in their own.  I saw a lad once parting from his aged father.  I wish I had not seen it.  I heard the agonized cries of the old man:  “My God! he’s gone! he’s gone!” I wish I had not heard it.  I heard the wild wailing cry with which the Celt mourns for his dead, and glanced impulsively to the window.  It was not death, but departure that prompts that agony of grief.  A car was driving off rapidly on the mountain road which led to the nearest port.  The car was soon out of sight.  The father and the son had looked their last look into each other’s eyes—­had clasped the last clasp of each other’s hands.  An hour had passed, and still the old man lay upon the ground, where he had flung himself in his heart’s bitter anguish; and still the wail rung out from time to time:  “My God! he’s gone! he’s gone!”