Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
In the observations which we shall make on the pamphlet entitled "A Cry
from Ireland," we wish to be distinctly understood--we do not undertake
the task of showing up its glaring and wilful falsehoods for the purpose
of exculpating Mr Shee, the principal person whose conduct is arraigned
in it. He is openly, and boldly assailed; and if he be either unable or
unwilling to defend his character, he is unworthy of sympathy or
support. We undertake this duty, from higher and more important motives
than the exculpation of any individual. The conduct of the Irish gentry
is assailed through Mr Shee; and we wish to show that no landlord,
however ill inclined he may be, _could_ practise such legal tyranny as
is imputed to this man. The administration of justice has been
impugned--we wish to show how unjustly; and this we shall be able to do,
even from the statements made by this wholesale libeller himself. The
conduct of the government has been vilified, because they are accused of
supplying Mr Shee with a police force, under whose protection, and _by
whose assistance_, he is said to perpetrate the most glaring felonies in
the open day--we leave the defence of their participation in Mr Shee's
enormities to her Majesty's ministers, when they are called to account,
as no doubt they will be, for allowing a force, paid for the protection
of her Majesty's subjects, to be employed as the author of this pamphlet
states them to be, in the following instance:--
"In one case, that of a tenant named Bushe, of whom with many other
sufferers I have not yet spoken, the landlord resolved on an
ejectment; but Bushe owing no rent, he could only proceed as he had
done against Pat Ring, or by some other process of a like kind. He
took a shorter one. It so happened that, though Bushe had paid his
rent in order to keep the house above his head--a very good house
it was, to judge from the size and worth of the substantial walls
which, in most parts, were still standing when I was there--he had
not paid every man in the county to whom he was indebted. He owed
one person, residing at a distance, a sum of money more, as it soon
appeared, than he could pay at once. This man the landlord found
out, through some of his agents appointed for such purposes, and
purchased from him the debt which Bushe owed him. This account
being legally conveyed to the landlord, he at once proceeded
against his tenant the debtor, threw him into prison, and as soon
as he got him there, went and took the roof off his house, turning
out his wife and six young children upon the open highway. There
they remained without shelter and without food, until some of the
people of the adjoining village assisted them. The father was in
prison, and could neither resist the spoliation of the house which
he himself had built nor could he do any thing, by work or
otherwise, for his family's subsistence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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