This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE FAMINE IN IRELAND
67

politics; but looked at things as they were, and faithfully recorded what they saw. Not only did they record, but they relieved. They talked and wrote, but acted more; and such a lasting impression have their labors left, that the next summer, as I followed in their wake through the country, the name of the "blessed William Forster" was on the lips of the poor cabiners, and it was from their testimony that his name and good deeds first reached me. William Bennett, too, passed six weeks in Ireland, and a clear and concise account was recorded by himself, of the state of the famine; though his own beneficence, which was not scanty, has not been definitely known, because he acted as an individual; therefore he was not responsible to any society. As the pestilence followed the famine, the entire country seemed to be sinking into the vortex, and a knowledge of Ireland was gaining by all classes of people, both in and out of the country. An innovation was made, promising good results, into the long-established habits and condition of that people, which nothing before had done. Poverty was divested of every mask; and from the mud cabin to the estated gentleman's abode, all strangers who wished, without the usual circuitous ceremony, could gain access. The landlord, who had long sported at his ease, was beginning to pay a penalty of which he had never dreamed; the tree, which was planted centuries ago, was now beginning to yield an exuberant crop; the starved tenants are driven into the "Union," or turned defenseless into the storm, and, in either case, the rents were left