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180
ANNALS OF THE

things to the tenants, quite unknown to the landlord, who has been called humane.

But this fearless "driver" throws, or causes to be thrown down, cabin after cabin, and sometimes whole villages, of which it is said the landlord was entirely ignorant, but the pitiless storm heeded not that, and the poor starved exiles pleading that the cabin might be left a little longer, have no pity, their pot and even the cloak, which is the peasant woman's all by night and by day, has often been torn from her emaciated limbs, and sold at auction. Perhaps in no instance does the oppression of the poor, and the sighing of the needy come before the mind so vividly, as when going over the places made desolate by the famine, to see the tumbled cabins, with the poor hapless inmates, who had for years sat around their turf fire, and ate their potato together, now lingering and ofttimes wailing in despair, their ragged barefooted little ones clinging about them, one on the back of the weeping mother, and the father looking in silent despair, while a part of them are scraping among the rubbish to gather some little relic of mutual attachment—(for the poor, reader, have their tender remembrances)—then, in a flock, take their solitary, their pathless way to seek some rock or ditch, to encamp supperless for the night, without either covering for the head or the feet, with not the remnant of a blanket to spread over them in the ditch, where they must crawl. Are these solitary cases? Happy would it be were it so; but village upon village, and company after company have I seen; and one magistrate who