“Now there is not in all Europe a more cunning or a deeper fellow than Paddy. He has an Italian's subtlety and a Celt's suspicion; but enlist his self-love, his vanity, and his acquisitiveness in any scheme, and all his shrewdness deserts him. The old hackney coach-horses never followed the hay on the end of the pole more hopefully than will he travel after some promised future of 'fine times,' with plenty to eat and drink, and nothing to do for it! They have booked themselves now for this journey, and the delusion must run its course. Meanwhile rents will not be paid, farms not improved, bad prices and poverty will abound, and the usual crop of discontent and its consequent crime. I 'm not going to inflict you with my own opinions on this theme. You know well enough already that I never regarded these 'Agrarian disturbances,' as they are called, in the light of passing infractions of the peace, but traced in them the continuous working of a long preconcerted plan,--the scheme of very different heads from those who worked it,--by which the law should ever be assailed and the right of property everlastingly put in dispute. In plain words, the system was a standing protest against the sway of the Saxons in Ireland! 'The agitators' understood thoroughly how to profit by this, and they worked these alternate moods of outrage and peace pretty much as the priests of old guided their auguries. They brought the game to that perfection that a murder could shake a ministry, or a blank calendar become the triumph of an Administration!
“Such is, at the moment I am writing, the actual condition of Ireland! Come home, then, at once,--but come alone. Come back resolved to see and act for yourself. There is a lingering spark of the old feudalism yet left in the people. Try and kindle it up once more into the old healthful glow of love to the landlord. Some would say it is too late for all this; but I will not think so. Magennis has given us an open defiance; we are to be put on our title. Now, you are well aware there is a complication here, and I shall want to consult you personally; besides, we must have a search through those registries that are locked up in the strong-room. Mary tells me you carried away the key of it. I tell you frankly, I wish we could hit upon some means of stopping Magennis. The suit is a small war, that demands grand preparation,--always a considerable evil! The fellow, I am told, is also concocting another attack,--an action against your niece and others for the forcible abduction of his wife. It would read fabulously enough, such a charge, but as old Casey said, 'There never yet was anything you could n't impute at law, if you only employed the word “conspiracy;”' and I believe it! The woman certainly has deserted him, and her whereabouts cannot be ascertained. The scandal of such a cause would of course be very great; but if you were here we might chance upon some mode of averting it,--at all events, your niece shouldn't be deserted at such a moment. What a noble girl it is, Martin, and how gloriously she comprehends her station! Give me a dozen like her, and I 'll bid defiance to all the machinations of all the agitators; and they know it!