The difficulty of 'eying rates towards the expenses of sup-
porting the destitute in Ireland places the Executive in a "fix." The law is, that certain payments shall be charged upon the land for the maintenance of the destitute, and be levied forthwith ; and as England has made a free gift to Ireland of more than a corre- sponding amount, the law is equitable as well as regular in form : but the landlords of Ireland are panic.stricken at the way in which their rental is engulfed in demands for poor-rate; Boards of Guardians, in daily augmenting numbers, decline even to assess the requisite rates, on the plea that those already assessed cannot be collected; and there seems really to be a very perplexing diffi- culty in pronouncing whence the money for satisfying the col- lectors is to come. The law is imperative, but there is no cash. It is a pity that the Irish generally are contumacious, rebellious, idle, and shuffling ; because, if their story of hard necessity is to be believed, all that active and insolent obstruction is surplusage. They avow pauperism in the language of robbers, and provoke coercion by their manner of offering excuses.
This demeanour imposes a very needless increase of difficulty on the Executive. It is bad enough to be charged with the exe- cution of a law which is impossible of fulfilment; but when those , who are to come under the operation of that law resort to lan- guage of defiance, authority is piqued to vindicate its rights and its power, and mercy is made by the mode of claiming it to wear the aspect of coward weakness.
Nor is this all. The position is so false that it lends a false colouring to all the circumstances. The champion of dishonesty
and voluntary bankruptcy assumes the attitude of patriotism ; the asserter of equitable claims is viewed as a spoiler ; law and lawlessness change places in the popular regard. It isalkad sign When we see influential journals of the upper classes assuming a revolutionary tone,, like that of a respectable Conservative paper Dublin, and of what may be called the' Irish paper in. London, ivhich has become a Repeal organ of the Orange stamp.
