carried away insensible. He died the next day from the mortification of his wounds. This man was a criminal guilty of a heinous crime.' 'But it is on all sides agreed that the punishment of death is and ought to be considered as an example to the survivors, and not as a means of vengeance on the criminal. Such a scene as I have related is a disgrace to a country calling itself Christian, and contrary to all right principles of government[1].'
The writing of this book did much to mature Mr. Bourke's mind, and to bring it into contact with the serious aspects of life. And the aspects of life which awaited him on his return to Ireland were sufficiently serious. The potato disease and the famine years were upon the country. During those years Mr. Richard Bourke won for himself an honoured place among the hundreds of high-minded Irish gentlemen who tried to do their duty. For months he almost lived in the saddle — attending a public meeting in Kildare County one day, and another thirty miles off in Meath the next; looking after the charitable distributions; hunting out cases of starvation; buying knitting materials, and setting the women to work in their villages; arranging for the food-supply of outlying groups of huts; managing the relief lists, and doing what in him lay to calm panic, prevent waste, and battle with famine. Every now and then he would rush over to England with the sewed work, knitted shawls, and the little home-manufactures of the
- ↑ Vol. ii, pp. 163-4.
