Such was the picture everywhere presented to the eye of this intelligent traveller. Go where he might, he found hundreds anxious for employment, yet no employment could be had, unless they could travel to England, there to spend _weeks_ in travelling round the country in quest of _days_ of employment, the wages for which might enable them to pay their rent at home. "The Celt," says the _Times_, "is the hewer of wood and the drawer of water to the Saxon; The great works of this country," it continues "depend on _cheap labour_." The labour of the slave is always low in price. The people of Ireland were interdicted all employment but in the cultivation of the land, and men, women, and children were forced to waste more labour than would have paid twenty times over for all the British manufactures they could purchase. They were passing rapidly toward barbarism, and for the sole reason that they were denied all power of association for any useful purpose. What was the impression produced by their appearance on the mind of foreigners may be seen by the following extract from the work of a well-known and highly intelligent German traveller:-- "A Russian peasant, no doubt, is the slave of a harder master, but still he is fed and housed to his content, and no trace of mendicancy is to be seen in him. The Hungarians are certainly not among the best-used people in the world; still, what fine wheaten bread and what wine has even the humblest among them for his daily fare! The Hungarian would scarcely believe it, if he were to be told there was a country in which the inhabitants must content themselves with potatoes every alternate day in the year. "Servia and Bosnia are reckoned among the most wretched countries of Europe, and certainly the appearance of one of their villages has little that is attractive about it; but at least the people, if badly housed, are well clad. We look not for much luxury or comfort among the Tartars of the Crimea; we call them poor and barbarous, but, good heavens! they look at least like human creatures. They have a national costume, their houses are habitable, their orchards are carefully tended, and their gayly harnessed ponies are mostly in good condition. An Irishman has nothing national about him but his rags,--his habitation is without a plan, his domestic economy without rule or law. We have beggars and paupers among us, but they form at least an exception; whereas, in Ireland, beggary or abject poverty is the prevailing rule. The nation is one of beggars, and they who are above beggary seem to form the exception. "The African negroes go naked, but then they have a tropical sun to warm them. The Irish are little removed from a state of nakedness; and their climate, though not cold, is cool, and extremely humid. * * *