Unfortunately, the spirit of "absenteeism" extended itself to the holders of offices in Ireland, and even the lord-lieutenant rarely took up his residence in Dublin for any time longer than necessitated by the immediate demands of his installation and speech-making, although he drew his emoluments from the Irish revenues. In the "List of Absentees" instances are given where men appointed to Irish offices would land on Saturday night, receive the sacrament on Sunday, take the oath in court on Monday morning, and be on their way back to England by Monday afternoon. It has been calculated that out of a total rental of L1,800,000, as much as 33-1/3 per cent. was sent out of the country. [T. S.] [20] Sheridan, in the sixth number of "The Intelligencer," contributes an account of the state of Ireland, written to the text, "O patria! O divum domus!" "When I travel through any part of this unhappy kingdom, and I have now by several excursions made from Dublin, gone through most counties of it, it raises two passions in my breast of a different kind; an indignation against those vile betrayers and insulters of it, who insinuate themselves into favour, by saying, it is a rich nation; and a sincere passion for the natives, who are sunk to the lowest degree of misery and poverty, whose houses are dunghills, whose victuals are the blood of their cattle, or the herbs in the field; and whose clothing, to the dishonour of God and man, is nakedness. Yet notwithstanding all the dismal appearances, it is the common phrase of our upstart race of people, who have suddenly sprang up like the dragon's teeth among us, _That Ireland was never known to be so rich as it is now_; by which, as I apprehend, they can only mean themselves, for they have skipped over the channel from the vantage ground of a dunghill upon no other merit, either visible or divineable, than that of not having been born among us.