We have already stated that Fardorougha was not only an extortioner, but a usurer.  Now, as some of our readers may be surprised that a man in his station of life could practise usury or even extortion to any considerable extent, we feel it necessary to inform them that there exists among Irish farmers a class of men who stand, with respect to the surrounding poor and improvident, in a position precisely analogous to that which is occupied by a Jew or moneylender among those in the higher classes who borrow, and are extravagant upon a larger scale.  If, for instance, a struggling small farmer have to do with a needy landlord or an unfeeling agent, who threatens to seize or eject, if the rent be not paid to the day, perhaps this small farmer is forced to borrow from one of those rustic Jews the full amount of the gale; for this he gives him, at a valuation dictated by the lender’s avarice and his own distress, the oats, or potatoes, or hay, which he is not able to dispose of in sufficient time to meet the demand that is upon him.  This property, the miser draws home, and stacks or houses it until the markets are high, when he disposes of it at a price which often secures for him a profit amounting to one-third, and occasionally one-half, above the sum lent, upon which, in the meantime, interest is accumulating.  For instance, if the accommodation be twenty pounds, property to that amount at a ruinous valuation is brought home by the accommodator.  This perhaps sells for thirty, thirty-five, or forty pounds, so that, deducting the labor of preparing it for market, there is a gain of fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred per cent. besides, probably, ten per cent, interest, which is altogether distinct from the former.  This class of persons will also take a joint bond, or joint promissory note, or, in fact, any collateral security they know to be valid, and if the contract be not fulfilled, they immediately pounce upon the guarantee.  They will, in fact, as a mark of their anxiety to assist a neighbor in distress, receive a pig from a widow, or a cow from a struggling small farmer, at thirty or forty per cent, beneath its value, and claim the merit of being a friend into the bargain.  Such men are bitter enemies to paper money, especially to notes issued by private bankers, which they never take in payment.  It is amusing, if a person could forget the distress which occasions the scene, to observe one of these men producing an old stocking, or a long black leathern purse—­or a calf-skin pocket-book with the hair on, and counting down, as if he gave out his heart’s blood drop by drop, the specific sum, uttering, at the same time, a most lugubrious history of his own poverty, and assuring the poor wretch he is fleecing, that if he (the miser) gives way to his good nature, he must ultimately become the victim of his own benevolence.  In no case, however, do they ever put more in the purse or stocking than is just then wanted, and sometimes they will be short