This is certainly an awful picture of the slavery resulting from compelling a whole nation to devote itself to agriculture, and thus annihilating the power of association--from compelling a whole people to forego all the advantages resulting from proximity to market for the sale of their products or the purchase of manure--and from compelling men, women, and children to be idle, when they would desire to be employed. In reading it, we are forcibly reminded of the _razzias_ of the little African kings, who, anxious for a fresh supply of slaves, collect their troops together and invade the neighbouring territories, where they enact scenes corresponding exactly with the one here described. In Africa, however, the slave is fed by those who have burned and destroyed his house and his farm; but in Ireland, as labour is valueless, he is turned into the roads or the grave-yards to die of famine, or of pestilence. And yet, even now, the _Times_ asks the question--
"How are the people to be fed and employed? That is the question which still baffles an age that can transmit a message round the world in a moment of time, and point out the locality of a planet never yet seen. There is the question which founders both the bold and the wise."