"Having landed at the Pigeon-house, where there is a military depot, a dock for the reception of packets* and a revenue establishment, we had to submit our luggage to the examination of

THE OFFICERS OF CUSTOMS,

from whom we experienced much politeness, and no trouble beyond the proper and necessary discharge of their duty. I have pleasure in paying this tribute of justice to those gentleman, as, despite of the dictates of good sense, good feeling, and public policy, the insolence of office' is but too generally the companion of its power. Perhaps, nothing strikes an Englishman more forcibly than the difference, generally speaking, between that class of men in Ireland and in England; a difference, maintained nearly throughout the whole of the customs department, in both countries. You would be surprised, on landing in Dublin, to meet, in the Douanier, the intelligence of the scholar, graced with the polish of the drawing-room. Curiosity urged me to trace, to its source, the cause of this dissimilarity between the same class of officers in the two countries, and I think I have succeeded.

"Before the legislative union, the British power in this country could only be maintained by force or patronage; the latter was, properly, preferred, and as the genius of the people, particularly of the nobility and gentry of Ireland, had not directed itself so decidedly

* The packet establishment, at Howth, had not then existed.

into the channels of commerce as in England, the younger branches of the nobility, and the unprovided connexions of members of parliament, looked to the patronage of the crown for support, and engrossed it wholly indeed, it could hardly be called the patronage of the crown-it was that of borough-mongers; and although the people of Ireland, unwisely and ignorantly, boasted of national independence, the blessing was but ideal, and they were held in the hands of a proud, profligate, and greedy oligarchy, to be disposed of as suited the views of avarice and ambition. It is only since the union that Irishmen have really become free, and for British law and identity with her glorious destinies, they have exchanged that toparch influence, which carried the social views of the dark ages into the enlightened period of the eighteenth century, and retarded the moral and physical improvement of the country. While that vicious system of patronage existed, the crown had not the power of selecting its civil or fiscal servants, or to reward talent and merit, when found among the mass of the people. Family and borough influence filled every public department, and it was, then, no uncommon thing to see an honorable Mr. brother or cousin to my Lord ; a cidevant colonel of horse; an ex-member of parliament, &c. &c. examining your trunk of foul linen, and pocketing the fee with a true Vespasian sense of its value, and an indifference to the mode by which it was acquired. I doubt not, but that the class of men I write of, will, in time, become deteriorated, and the

collection of the customs revenue fall into meaner hands; then will come to be proved whether good education, gentlemanly habits of thinking and acting, and the auxiliary of a liberal income, are not better securities for a faithful and effective discharge of duty, in situations of trust and responsibility, than shall be found in persons of an opposite description, selected from mistaken views of public economy.

"At the Pigeon-house were collected a number of vehicles, of which you can form no idea; they are called gingles, from the gingling or rumbling noise produced by their motion, consequent of their crazy and wretched condition. The Irish seem particularly fond of the application of nick-names: the gingle has four wheels, the body like a sociable or berlin; it is drawn by one miserable, half-starved spectre of a horse, and the driver, or gingleman, seated in front, exhibits, in his person, a most disgusting combination of nudity, dirt, and rags. They are of all ages, and are considered the most profligate and vicious of the various classes forming the population of this great city. On landing, the passengers were beset by these fellows, pressing to convey them and their baggage to town. A gentleman and I engaged one of the gingles, and when it set us down at Falkner's hotel, Dawson-street, I was disposed, in a more than ordinary degree, to acknowledge the influence of a protecting providence: so shattered, disordered, patched, and crazy a vehicle could not be found in the whole world, out

C

of the range of its own class. The expedition with which they travel is really astonishing, when one looks at the worn-down and exhausted garran by which the machine is drawn, and which threatens every moment to close in death its labours and its journey. On the road between Dublin and the village of Black-rock, on a Sunday in summer, the gingles are absolutely clustered with occupants, like swarming bees, and often carry eight or nine persons, besides the driver, who, in his savage avidity of gain, works the wretched animal, who is the source of it, until he falls lifeless on the road; it is no uncommon thing for a gingleman coolly to calculate on killing a horse by a good day's work!

"The way from the Pigeon-house lies, for something more than half-a-mile, along a raised causeway, walled in, and having, when the tide is fully in, the sea on both sides; at the end of this causeway is the village of Ringsend, than which, nothing can form a more disagreeable and disgusting contrast to the noble and beautiful appearance on entering the Bay. All that you have ever read of Hottentot filthiness; all of sordid misery and dehumanising poverty, fall immeasurably short of the picture exhibited by the wretched village of Ringsend. The Scotch gaberlunzie, and the English gipsey, are clean, orderly, and decent personages, compared with the objects that meet your eyes, and offend every sense; the inhabitants of this suburb being composed of the daily hawkers of fish, and others, the most wretched descriptions of the community.

At the opposite side of the village, we had to pass between a double row of its fair inhabitants, each

Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,'

having crabs and cockles exposed for sale, and to purchase which, we were invited by a mingled peal of clamorous voices, not like that of the lady in Comus,

• Such as might create a soul under the ribs of death,' but, rather, such as might affright a soul from between the ribs of a living body. Crossing a bridge over the Dodder, a mountain stream, which here empties itself into the Liffey, we proceeded over a swampy flat, called the low grounds, such as might environ a Dutch town, until we entered the Irish capital, at Lower Mount-street and Merrion-square. Here indeed, the effect upon the stranger is truly imposing: Merrionsquare is a noble area.”

[The manuscript proceeds to describe the square, but we may well omit it here.]

"It was now nine o'clock, and the contrast, in point of population, between Dublin and London, struck me most forcibly. To me, the streets had the appearance of desertion; and the few persons, passing through them, looked, in general, mean and dirty. The hawkers of fish and vegetables were disagreeably noisy and discordant, filthy and squalid; their legs and feet bare, their matted locks scantily confined by a tattered dirty cap, or only covered by the vessel. which contained their wares."