that he could persuade them that there was not a hardship or a grievance of their lot that could not be laid at the door of the landlord. He was taught to regard the old relation of love and affection to the owner of the soil as the remnants of a barbarism that had had its day; and he was led to believe that whether the tyranny that crushed him was the Established Church or the landlord, there was a great Liberal party ready to aid him in resisting either or both when he could summon courage for the effort. By what prompting the poor man was brought to imagine that a reign of terror would suffice to establish him in an undisputed possession of the soil, and that the best lease was a loaded musket, it is neither my wish nor my duty to here narrate; I only desire to call my reader’s attention to the time itself as a transition period when the peasant had begun to unclasp some of the ties that had bound him to his landlord, and had not yet conceived the idea of that formidable conspiracy which issues its death-warrants, and never is at a loss for agents to enforce them. There were at the time some who, seeing the precarious condition of the period, had their grave forebodings of what was to come when further estrangement between the two classes was accomplished, and when the poor man should come to see in the rich only an oppressor and a tyrant. There was not at that time the armed resistance to rents, nor the threatening letter system to which we were afterwards to become accustomed, still less was there the thought that the Legislature would interfere to legalise the demands by which the tenant was able to coerce his landlord; and for a brief interval there did seem a possibility of reuniting once again, by the ties of benefit and gratitude, the two classes whose welfare depends on concord and harmony. I have not the shadow of a pretext to be thought didactic, but I did believe that if I recalled in fiction some of the traits which once had bound up the relations of rich and poor, and given to our social system many of the characteristics of a family, I should be reviving pleasant memories if not doing something more. To this end I sketched the character of Mary Martin. By making the opening of my story date from the time of the Relief Bill, I intended to picture the state of the country at one of the most memorable eras in its history, and when an act of the Legislature assumed to redress inequalities, compose differences, and allay jealousies of centuries’ growth, and make two widely different races one contented people. I had not, I own, any implicit faith in Acts of Parliament, and I had a fervent belief in what kindness--when combined with knowledge of Ireland--could do with Irishmen. I have never heard of a people with whom sympathy could do so much, nor the want of it be so fatal. I have never heard of any other people to whom the actual amount of benefit was of less moment than the mode in which it was bestowed.