Ireland, the scene presented by a rent day is one too impressive and melancholy ever to be forgotten by any heart touched with benevolence.  There is little, if any, of that erect freedom of demeanor and natural exhibition of good will, which characterize conscious independence and a sense of protection on the part of the tenant; whilst on that of the agent or landlord there is a contemptuous hardness of manner, a vile indifference, and utter disregard of the feelings of those by whom he is surrounded, that might enable the shallowest observer to say at a glance, there is no sympathy between that man and these people.

But that is not all.  Give yourself time to observe them more closely, listen to that agent pouring his insolent invective upon the head of this poor man, whose only crime is his poverty, and whose spirit appears to be broken down with the struggles and sufferings of life; yet, who hears his honesty impugned, his efforts ridiculed, and his character blackened, without manifesting any other than a calm spirit that looks inwards to his own heart for the consciousness of these falsehoods.  Look at this, we repeat, and you will surely feel yourself forced to say—­not that there is no sympathy between these men, but there sits the oppressor and there stands the oppressed.

But even this is not all.  Bestow a still more searching glance upon the scene.  Here is more than invective; more than the imputation of dishonesty and fraud; more than the cruel defamation of character in the presence of so many.  Mark the words of that agent or landlord again.  He is sealing the fate of this struggling man; he tells him he is to have no home—­no house to shelter himself, his wife, and their children; that he must be dispossessed, ejected, turned out upon the world, without friends to support or aid him, or the means to sustain their physical existence.  Hear all this, and mark the brow of that denounced man; observe how it knits and darkens; how firmly he compressess his lips, and with what a long, determined, gloomy gaze he surveys his denouncer—­observe all this, we repeat; and need you feel surprised, at finding yourself compelled to go still farther, and say there sits a doomed man and there most assuredly stands his murderer.

Let it not be supposed that we are capable of justifying murder, or the shedding of human blood; but we are palliating, and ever shall palliate that crime in the humble man, which originates in the oppression of the great man.  Is the act which banishes happiness and contentment—­introduces poverty, misery, destitution—­which scatters out of the heart all the little amenities and sweet endearments of life—­which wastes away the strength of the spirit, and paralyzes that of the hand—­which dims the eye and gives paleness to the cheek, and by combining all these together makes home—­yes, home, the trysting place of all the affections, a thing to be thought of only with dread—­an asylum for the miseries of life;—­is the