The Irish Peasant

THE IRISH PEASANT.
LOOK at him, courteous reader! that poor peasant, with all the feelings incident to human nature, with a heart as truly brave and noble as that which animated an Alexander, with a proportion of the milk of human kindness flowing thro’ all his veins, and perhaps too the decendent of Irish nobility, nay, of Irish Kings and chieftains, is now laboring hard to support a wife, an aged mother, and eleven children, upon 4d a day, out of which he pays 21. a year for his wretched hovel, inferior by far to a northern pig stye, a ridge of potatoe ground; so that for the mainteinance of a fourteen persons he has about 61. 1s. 8d. a year, from which, if we deduct the tithe of his little garden, his oppressive hearth money tax, his minister’s monies and his priests dues, our wretched peasant and all his family will have about 51. a year for clothes, tobacco and mainteinance, upon an average leis a great deal than 7s. annually a head. But that is not the worst of the matter, for in some parts of the kingdom this brave, this generous fellow, who would share his potatoe and water with all his heart a stranger, the mendicant and the friendless, is used more cruelly than a negro slave, not only by the tyrant his landlord and master, but by the gripping avaricious proctor, the merciless hearth money man, and every creature round him who can afford to wear, eat, and drink better than himself. His family, alas, are totally naked! That old flannel jacket and broken sheep skin breeches, all his cloathing throughout the different seasons of the year; a dirty wad of straw, more resembling litter from its age, the bed of ware for the whole family; with the addition of a pig, if he is lucky enough to have one; a ragged cadow, and a pot to boil their potatoes; all their worldly effects, if so lucky as to have been able to screen from the repacious claw of the smokeman and his constable. Potatoes, as I said before, their only viands, the limpid stream their beverage, and cow and horse dung their fuel! Heavenly powers! such wretchedness is hardly supportable! I can no more!

Prelates and kings may flourish and may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made,
But a bold peasantry– a nation’s pride,
If once destroyed can never be supply’d.
Goldsmith.