An Evicted Irish Tenant’s Speech.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 725, 26 March 1853, Page 4

An Evicted Irish Tenant’s Speech.

“ A grave old man, who leant upon a pair of crutches, and had just come in, now got up, and, after looking about him with a wild but haggard glance, spoke as follows. * Yez had betther he cautious as to passin’ this same resolution ; bekaise if it happens to go abroad that we passed it, the public will think that we’re in lague wid the landlords. I have an arnindment to propose, but, before Ido it, I want to spake to yoz a little. You say that no poor-house ought to be left in the counthry. I say so too; ami I wish to Heaven there wasn’t a poor-house in it. But, unfortunately, isn’t nineteen houses out of every twenty over the whole face of the counthry poor-houses P ( ‘ Hear, hear ! ') Now, if there was any way to prevent these houses from bein’ poor by in akin’ them that live in ’em aisy and comfortable, that way would be the best for getiin’ rid of poor-houses. But you all know well enough —too weft, indeed —that there’s another way of gettin’ rid of ’em, and that is the landlord way. Ah ! it is they that undherstand gettin’ rid of poor-houses, and of the poor that’s in them too. The crow-bar and the pickaxe are their instruments of charity. In wid the door and down wid the roof, and out wid the poor father, and may be the sick mother, and may he the sick childre, and may be the sick grandfatherfori have seen it all, and felt it too —it Is to it that I owe these crutches, and the helpless limbs they support. (Sensation.) The humble roof where in the middle of all our misery we wor often happy in the affection of our own hearts: that humble roof, Isay, was stripped from oyer us. I saw my only child and daughter lyin a corpse before my eyes in a fortnight atther—(Sensation) —and I lyin’ ill of could and fever beside her. She was buried somehow, but I couldn’t attend the dead body of the best child that ever brought happiness to a father’s heart; no, I couldn’t attend my darlin’s body to the grave. I got up a cripple, widout the use of my limbs, and now here 1 am.’

“ ‘ Give poor Paul a "laps o’ whisky,’ said Bill, drawing his hand across his eyes. “‘No,’ replied the old man, ‘I will have no whisky ; I am dhrunk as it is, but it is wid vengeance. It is not long since my heart was as soft and kind as the heart of a child, when I loved and prayed for all my fellow craytures. What is that heart now ? Hard and bloody. (Sensation.) I am an ould man, but I hope never to close my eyes in death till I know that the blood of the tyrant that murdhered my child, and left myself as you sec me, is shed, Here’s these Squandhers—fheir ould father had a great dale of good about him, and a great dale of evil—the last, how-an-ever, was betwixt himself and his God ; but he wouldn’t do sich an act as that. His eldest son resembles him both in his good and in his evil : but the second, called Harry, is goin’ to commence the work of pullin’ down the poor-houses I’m spakiu’ of. He manages the property, and has a heart as hard and hot wid wickedness as a pavin’stone from hell. An ould villain, called “ Graisy Pockets,” is their agent —a miserly oppressor that you’d smell the stink o’ the rotten Court o’ Chancery from over a whole barony; and a young scoundrel, the son of a bailiff to ould Squander, which bailiff was honestly shot for his doins —a young scoundrel, I say, that lives wid ’em and goes about dressed like a gintleman—that scoundrel is the under-agent. Now, what I want to tell yez is this. Mark the three; and if they begin their oppression, down with them ! There are hedges enough in the neighbourhood. (Cheers.) I never thought,’ he proceeded, 1 that it would come to this wid me. T never thought that the heart of a man and a Christian would be taken from me, and the heart of a wolf and a devil put in its place. If I had my will, there’s not an oppressin’ villain that puts his feet upon our necks and tramps the very lives out of our bodies—that strikes the defenceless sick mother, and the ould man that is defenceless both by age and sickness —ay, and the innocent child that looks to that poor mother for support, —I say, If I had my will, there’s not a proud and heartless oppressor among them that I wouldn’t shoot as soon as I would the maddest dog that ever ran frothin’ through the counthryl’

“ The old man’s features assumed such an expression as I never had witnessed, and as I hope I never may witness again. His cheeks, as he spoke, got deadly pale, his lips became contracted, and again they relaxed anti quivered with rage, and his eyes kindled with such a glare of vengeance as made me absolutely shrink with a feeling approaching to dismay. His last words were followed by a stern and solemn silence that was appalling. Altogether, the exhibition of this once kind, virtuous, and affectionate old man, fallen, as it Avere, from the Christian charily of our common humanity to the vengeance and perdition of a devil, was probably one of the most terrific changes from good to evil ever witnessed. “ At all events, it put an end to the mock debates, and suggested to both Dick and me the prudence of withdrawing as quietly as possible, before Ave might happen to be discovered.”— Carleton's New Tale “ The Squanders of Castle Squander^