When we had parted with Glorvina, and caught a last view of her receding figure, we mounted our horses, and proceeded a considerable way in silence. The morning though fine was gloomy; and though the sun was scarcely an hour high, we were met by innumerable groups of peasantry of both sexes, laden with their implements of husbandry, and already beginning the labours of the day. I expressed my surprise at observing almost as many women as men working in the fields and bogs. “Yes,” said the priest, “toil is here shared in common between the sexes, the women as well as the men cut the turf, plant the potatoes, and even assist to cultivate the land; both rise with the sun to their daily labour; but his repose brings not theirs; for, after having worked all day for a very trivial remuneration, (as nothing here is rated lower than human labour,) they endeavour to snatch a beam from retreating twilight, by which they labour in that little spot of ground, which is probably the sole support of a numerous family.” “And yet,” said I, “idleness is the chief vice laid to the account of your peasantry.” “It is certain,” returned he, “that there is not, generally speaking, that active spirit of industry among the inferior orders here, which distinguishes the same rank in England. But neither have they the same encouragement to awaken their exertions. ‘The laziness of the Irish,’ says Sir William Petty, ‘seems rather to proceed from want of employment and encouragement to work, than the constitution of their bodies.’ An intelligent and liberal countryman of yours, Mr. Young, the celebrated traveller, is persuaded that, circumstances considered, the Irish do not in reality deserve the character of indolence; and relates a very extraordinary proof of their great industry and exertion in their method of procuring lime for manure, which the mountaineers bring on the backs of their little horses many miles distance, to the foot of the steepest acclivities, and from thence to the summit on their own shoulders while they pay a considerable rent for liberty to cultivate a barren, waste, and rigid soil. In short, there is not in creation a more laborious animal than an Irish peasant, with less stimulus to exertion, or less reward to crown his toil. He is indeed, in many instances, the mere creature of the soil, and works independent of that hope which is the best stimulus to every human effort, the hope of reward. And yet it is not rare to find among these oft misguided beings, some who really believe themselves the hereditary proprietors of the soil they cultivate.” “But surely,” said I, “the most ignorant among them must be well aware that all could not have been proprietors.”