'The slave who shot the Prince Gargarin some years ago suffered this terrible death. He was made a soldier for the purpose, as this is in a degree a military punishment. He was forced to walk up and down between the ranks of men, while the heavy whip of leather tore away the flesh at every stroke. At the hundred and twentieth lash he fell: his sentence was a thousand lashes. He was asked whether he would have the rest of it then, or wait for another day. He said he would have it then, knowing that to defer it would only prolong his agony. He was then set up, and received a few more blows till he fell again; they put him up a third time, when he fainted, and was {35} carried away insensible. He died the next day from the mortification of his wounds. This man was a criminal guilty of a heinous crime.' 'But it is on all sides agreed that the punishment of death is and ought to be considered as an example to the survivors, and not as a means of vengeance on the criminal. Such a scene as I have related is a disgrace to a country calling itself Christian, and contrary to all right principles of government.'[8] [Footnote 8: Vol. ii, pp. 163-4.] The writing of this book did much to mature Mr. Bourke's mind, and to bring it into contact with the serious aspects of life. And the aspects of life which awaited him on his return to Ireland were sufficiently serious. The potato disease and the famine years were upon the country. During those years Mr. Richard Bourke won for himself an honoured place among the hundreds of high-minded Irish gentlemen who tried to do their duty. For months he almost lived in the saddle--attending a public meeting in Kildare County one day, and another thirty miles off in Meath the next; looking after the charitable distributions; hunting out cases of starvation; buying knitting materials, and setting the women to work in their villages; arranging for the food-supply of outlying groups of huts; managing the relief lists, and doing what in him lay to calm panic, prevent waste, and battle with famine. Every now and then he would rush over to England with the sewed work, knitted shawls, and the little home-manufactures of the {36} cottagers, and get them sold at good prices through his fashionable London friends. He had a considerable gift for acting, and had been a welcome guest on that account, among others, at many a neighbour's in more prosperous times. He now turned this talent and his musical gifts to account, getting up charitable performances, or private theatricals at country houses, and a famous concert at Naas, to which half the county went or subscribed.