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Part Four: Cork-Galway, 27 July-3 August, 1835
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Part Four Cork-Galway, 27 JulY-3 August, 1835 [44.201.64.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:53 GMT) 30 27 July 18 35 Journey from Kilkenny to Kork From Kilkenny to Mitchelstown the country has the same appearance as before. Hills despoiled of woods; cut up into a vast number of small fields. From time to time some great moors. Few villages, no belfries. One encounters churches without parishioners and one does not see those that have them. The habitations scattered along the road. The same kind of house, perhaps more wretched still than those in County Kilkenny . Houses of mud, roofs of thatch, often falling down. No chimney, or chimney so imperfect that nearly all the smoke comes out the door. No windows. A little dung hill near the door, a pig in the house. Some farmers in rags. Some children who relay on nearly the whole road and pursue the passers-by. I believe that these wretched dwellings contain beggars, but my traveling companions assure me that they are the dwellings of small farmers who have twenty or thirty acres to cultivate. At Mitchelstown there is a magnificent mansion belonging to Lord Kingston. He owns around the mansion 75,000 acres. He lives there. I was shown a vast clearing that he has made and that is covered with fine crops and a row of clean and comfortable small houses that he had built for the tenant farmers. It is said that he has profited by these operations. The town of Mitchelstown has not, as much as the rest of the country, so wretched an appearance. I ask where is the "Lord"? They tell me that two years ago he went mad. Why? I am told that it is because he saw himself charged with 400,000 pounds sterling of debts, without hope 88 Cork-Galway, 27 julY-3 August, 1835 of ever being able to pay them. The money had been lent him by the Catholic merchants of Cork who hold mortgages on the vast estate that I had seen and who receive nearly all the income. It is the same in nearly all Ireland. See the finger of God! The Irish aristocracy wished to remain separated from the people and to remain English. It has striven to imitate the English aristocracy without having its spirit and its resources, and it dies where it has sinned. The Irish have been dispossessed by force of arms. They return to the estates by industry. At a village I saw about thirty peasants seated in a circle at the door of a small house. They told me that this was the parish priest's house and that the men await their turn for confession. We arrived at Fermoy, a rather pretty town on the banks of the river Black Water. The town seems comparatively prosperous . The source of this prosperity is the presence of two regiments of infantry whose immense barracks cover the neighboring height. A distressing source for a country's prosperity. The entry into Cork is very fine. The merchants' quarter is handsome. In the suburbs are squalid dwellings and a population more horrible still, such as one can find only in Ireland. The Catholic bishop lives in a little house in the middle of this quarter. The shepherd in the midst of his flock. We had with us in ouropen coach two young men, each being very drunk. These young men aimed words at and made jokes to nearly all the passers-by. All, men and women, responded with laughter and other jokes. I thought I was in France. 31 Kork. 28 July 1835 Difficulties of nearly all the Irish landlords, which prevent July 30,1835 them from giving any help to the population, even when they would like to, [and] from improving anything for fear of risking capital, and squeezing the poor so as to increase their incomes, which makes the poor still more incapable of doing without them. A new complication, particular to this unhappy country, and which must not be lost sight of, when speaking about it. One of the principle causes of the present state [of things] is there. But this cause itself is only the effect of a more general cause, which has made the Irish aristocracy a stranger in the country, and has led it to ruin itself by wishing to imitate the English aristocracy without having its manly spirit, and without knowing how, like it, to draw...