Horrors Of The Irish Evictions

From scènes of flery excitement iuto others of deepest gloom and despair, was but a short step for poor beland. Three terrible years liad annihilatcd the resources of the rural population. The inability to pay the rent brought on the ruin of the landlords; whoïe districts were running to waste, and starvation onco more threatened with its awf til features. English journals, essayists, and oratorB united in urging the Irish landlord to colonize with thrifty farmers from beyoud the channel. "English and Scotch tenante," they said, "aromen with means, with modern ideas; they they will farm soicntiflcally, develop your resources, and make you rioli." Therc was a politica! interest in all this, too; for, if once the island were thus peopled, there would be an end of seditions and secret eonspiracies. None eared or thought what would become of tho poor people who now held the lauds; and, if the landlords were tempted to pity, it was a luxury they could not aflord. Tlms England sewed sowed the wind, and is now reaping the whirlwind; for the great ' ' f amine elearances" which iollowed drove 1,000,000 Irish to America, fllled with that deixdly hatred which wan the origin and spirit of Fcnianism. Few stories in history are more pain ful than the tale of these evictions. The Trish tenant's homo is passionately loved. Here his fathers lived before him; and every rock and bush bas its sweet asocintion. All his little store of worklly goods, moreoyer, is gathered witliin these humble walls; for he does not hire liis house all stocked, astheEnglish an-i Scotch farmers do. Under such cirenmstances, the evictions became acts of the utmost cruelty and brutality. The Sheriffs wlïo accompanied the landlords' agcuts protested that no exeeution was ever so trying to their feelings as the leveling oí these wretched houses. The fiercest wra.th of nature, even, could not stay the dreadful ruin. In hail and thunder, rain and snow, the gangs pushed on the wrtrik of destruction; the aged and bedridden, the nursiug babe, weredriven forth into the angry night to wander without shelter or food, until God, in I some unforeaeen way, perhaps by death, j should haye mercy on their misery. The story of these evictions makes the blood curdle and boil by turns, aud foroes one to look with horror upon the capabilities of human nature. For ten years the work went on; night and day, summer and winter, the "Crowbar Brigade " scoured the country. work was too siow, and a machine was invented which wcnild fasten upon the doomed house and bring it down in instantaneous ruin. The wretched victims lingered about the sacred places until driven away by sturvation or the more cruel blows of their masters. Such landed proprietors as did not embark in this horrid scheme yet forbado thcir tenants to receive iiuy of the fugitives, as none wished the burden of paupers. Such peasants as had the means e j grated to America, and some landlords, indeed, paid the passages of those whoni they turned adrift. BtiWast multitudes died in the swamps, the mountains, and by the roadside, or found a little longer way to the grave througti the workhouse.