Holcroft now rewarded his spouting friend with a guinea, redeemed his clothes, which he had been forced to pawn, and left London, elated with the most flattering hopes.—He arrived in Dublin about the latter end of September, 1770. The novelty of the scene, and the vast difference in the economy and manners of the people, made a strong impression on his imagination. The bar at the mouth of the Liffy renders the entrance up that river passable only to ships of small burthen, and to them only when the tide serves. It was low water when the packet arrived at the mouth of the river, and a boat came alongside of the vessel, into which most of the passengers went, rather than wait another tide, and our adventurer among the rest. The river divides the city, and the other passengers were set on shore on the quay; but Holcroft, as directed by his letter, inquired for Capel-Street, which was on the opposite side. Thither, accordingly, he was carried; and his trunk and himself landed in a beer-house. He was rather astonished, when the waterman demanded five and five-pence, together with a quart of three-penny, for his conveyance from the packet: and the more so, as he had seen the other passengers give but a shilling each, and one or two of the meaner among them only sixpence. He remonstrated against the imposition, and quoted the precedent of the shilling; but in vain. The disorder of their looks, the smoothness of their tongues, and the possession they had taken of his trunk, on which one of them seated himself, while the other argued the case, induced our novice to comply with their demands: but what gave him the greatest astonishment was, that the landlord of the beer-house, who had sworn stoutly to their honesty, while he was paying them, no sooner saw their backs turned, than, according to his own phraseology, ‘he pitched them to the _divel_, for a couple of cut-throat, _chating_ rascals, that _desarved_ hanging worse than a murderer.’ The reflections to which this and similar scenes gave rise in Mr Holcroft’s mind, though trite, are not the less worthy of attention. He says, ‘During my short stay in Ireland, I had but too many occasions to observe a shocking depravity of manners, which I attribute either to the laws, or the want of a due enforcement of them. The Irish are habitually, not naturally, licentious. They have all that warmth and generosity which are the characteristics of the best dispositions; and when properly educated, are an honour to mankind. Ireland has produced many first-rate geniuses; and in my opinion, nothing but the foregoing circumstance has prevented her from producing many more. It is the legislature which forms the manners of a nation.’