assistance in guiding us to an opinion on questions involving such an enormous range of observation must obviously be infinitesimal. Two of the very instances adduced during a recent debate in Parliament, prove the truth of this observation. For the first is the case of a landlord who turns his tenants out at midnight in winter, without previous notice, and the other tells us of a would-be purchaser of an Irish estate who was only prevented from evicting a number of cottiers by being himself hanged for murder before he had concluded his bargain. Now, as by law every tenant must receive at the least eight or nine months' notice before he can be forced to surrender possession of his holding, the first case proves nothing against the laws regulating the relation of landlord and tenant, while in the second story the hero, not having been an Irish proprietor at all, can scarcely
possession of tenants on the Earl of Kemare's estates, in the village of Hospital, in the county of Limerick, is as follows:—In the year 1840 the lease of a small farm, comprising twenty-three acres, bordering on the village of Hospital, expired. A number of very poor people, inhabiting the most miserable description of hovels, resided on the skirts of the land; their hovels formed one side of the village of Hospital. I purchased, on the part of the Earl of Kenmare, these holdings from these poor people, at a valuation; and though I cannot now state the precise sum paid to each, the sum total distributed amongst them was £400. They were all perfectly satisfied, and quietly gave up possession. I moreover offered to each of them a free passage to America, with provisions during the voyage, an offer which they all refused to accept."
