Towards the evening of the second day’s journey, the driver of Lord Colambre’s hackney chaise stopped, and jumping off the wooden bar, on which he had been seated, exclaimed, “We’re come to the bad step, now. The bad road’s beginning upon us, please your honour.”
“Bad road! that is very uncommon in this country. I never saw such fine roads as you have in Ireland.”
“That’s true; and God bless your honour, that’s sensible of that same, for it’s not what all the foreign quality I drive have the manners to notice. God bless your honour! I heard you’re a Welshman, but whether or no, I am sure you are a jantleman, any way, Welsh or other.”
Notwithstanding the shabby great coat, the shrewd postilion perceived, by our hero’s language, that he was a gentleman. After much dragging at the horses’ heads, and pushing and lifting, the carriage was got over what the postilion said was the worst part of the bad step; but as the road “was not yet to say good,” he continued walking beside the carriage.
“It’s only bad just hereabouts, and that by accident,” said he, “on account of there being no jantleman resident in it, nor near; but only a bit of an under-agent, a great little rogue, who gets his own turn out of the roads, and every thing else in life. I, Larry Brady, that am telling your honour, have a good right to know; for myself, and my father, and my brother, Pat Brady, the wheelwright, had once a farm under him; but was ruined, horse and foot, all along with him, and cast out, and my brother forced to fly the country, and is now working in some coachmaker’s yard, in London; banished he is!— and here am I, forced to be what I am — and now that I’m reduced to drive a hack, the agent’s a curse to me still, with these bad roads, killing my horses and wheels — and a shame to the country, which I think more of — Bad luck to him!”
“I know your brother; he lives with Mr. Mordicai, in Long–Acre, in London.”
“Oh, God bless you for that!”
They came at this time within view of a range of about four-and-twenty men and boys, sitting astride on four-and-twenty heaps of broken stones, on each side of the road; they were all armed with hammers, with which they began to pound with great diligence and noise as soon as they saw the carriage. The chaise passed between these batteries, the stones flying on all sides.
“How are you, Jem?— How are you Phil?” said Larry. “But hold your hand, can’t ye, while I stop and get the stones out of the horses’ feet. So you’re making up the rent, are you, for St. Dennis?”
“Whoosh!” said one of the pounders, coming close to the postilion, and pointing his thumb back towards the chaise. “Who have you in it?”
“Oh, you need not scruple, he’s a very honest man;— he’s only a man from North Wales, one Mr. Evans, an innocent jantleman, that’s sent over to travel up and down the country, to find is there any copper mines in it.”
“How do you know, Larry?”
“Because I know very well, from one that was tould, and I seen him tax the man of the King’s Head with a copper half-crown at first sight, which was only lead to look at, you’d think, to them that was not skilful in copper. So lend me a knife, till I cut a linchpin out of the hedge, for this one won’t go far.”
Whilst Larry was making the linchpin, all scruple being removed, his question about St. Dennis and the rent was answered.
“Ay, it’s the rint, sure enough, we’re pounding out for him; for he sent the driver round last night-was-eight days, to warn us Old Nick would be down a’-Monday, to take a sweep among us; and there’s only six clear days, Saturday night, before the assizes, sure: so we must see and get it finished any way, to clear the presentment again’ the swearing day, for he and Paddy Hart is the overseers themselves, and Paddy is to swear to it.”
“St. Dennis, is it? Then you’ve one great comfort and security — that he won’t be particular about the swearing; for since ever he had his head on his shoulders, an oath never stuck in St. Dennis’s throat, more than in his own brother, Old Nick’s.”
“His head upon his shoulders!” repeated Lord Colambre. “Pray, did you ever hear that St. Dennis’s head was off his shoulders?”
“It never was, plase your honour, to my knowledge.”
“Did you never, among your saints, hear of St. Dennis carrying his head in his hand?” said Lord Colambre.
“The rael saint!” said the postilion, suddenly changing his tone, and looking shocked. “Oh, don’t be talking that way of the saints, plase your honour.”
“Then of what St. Dennis were you talking just now?— Whom do you mean by St. Dennis, and whom do you call Old Nick?”
“Old Nick,” answered the postilion, coming close to the side of the carriage, and whispering,—“Old Nick, plase your honour, is our nickname for one Nicholas Garraghty, Esq., of College-green, Dublin, and St. Dennis is his brother Dennis, who is Old Nick’s brother in all things, and would fain be a saint, only he’s a sinner. He lives just by here, in the country, under-agent to Lord Clonbrony, as Old Nick is upper-agent — it’s only a joke among the people, that are not fond of them at all. Lord Clonbrony himself is a very good jantleman, if he was not an absentee, resident in London, leaving us and every thing to the likes of them.”
Lord Colambre listened with all possible composure and attention; but the postilion, having now made his linchpin of wood, and fixed himself, he mounted his bar, and drove on, saying to Lord Colambre, as he looked at the road-makers, “Poor cratures! They couldn’t keep their cattle out of pound, or themselves out of jail, but by making this road.”
“Is road-making, then, a very profitable business!— Have road-makers higher wages than other men in this part of the country?”
“It is, and it is not — they have, and they have not — plase your honour.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“No, beca-ase you’re an Englishman — that is, a Welshman — beg your honour’s pardon. But I’ll tell you how that is, and I’ll go slow over these broken stones — for I can’t go fast: it is where there’s no jantleman over these under-agents, as here, they do as they plase; and when they have set the land they get rasonable from the head landlords, to poor cratures at a rackrent, that they can’t live and pay the rent, they say —”
“Who says?”
“Them under-agents, that have no conscience at all. Not all — but some, like Dennis, says, says he, ‘I’ll get you a road to make up the rent:’ that is, plase your honour, the agent gets them a presentment for so many perches of road from the grand jury, at twice the price that would make the road. And tenants are, by this means, as they take the road by contract, at the price given by the county, able to pay all they get by the job, over and above potatoes and salt, back again to the agent, for the arrear on the land. Do I make your honour sensible6?”
6 Do I make you understand?]
“You make me much more sensible than I ever was before,” said Lord Colambre: “but is not this cheating the county?”
“Well, and suppose,” replied Larry, “is not it all for my good, and yours too, plase your honour?” said Larry, looking very shrewdly.
“My good!” said Lord Colambre, startled. “What have I to do with it?”
“Haven’t you to do with the roads as well as me, when you’re travelling upon them, plase your honour? And sure, they’d never be got made at all, if they wern’t made this ways; and it’s the best way in the wide world, and the finest roads we have. And when the rael jantleman’s resident in the country, there’s no jobbing can be, because they’re then the leading men on the grand jury; and these journeymen jantlemen are then kept in order, and all’s right.”
Lord Colambre was much surprised at Larry’s knowledge of the manner in which county business is managed, as well as by his shrewd good sense: he did not know that this is not uncommon in his rank of life in Ireland.
Whilst Larry was speaking, Lord Colambre was looking from side to side at the desolation of the prospect.
“So this is Lord Clonbrony’s estate, is it?”
“Ay, all you see, and as far and farther than you can see. My Lord Clonbrony wrote, and ordered plantations here, time back; and enough was paid to labourers for ditching and planting. And, what next?— Why, what did the under-agent do, but let the goats in through gaps, left o’ purpose, to bark the trees, and then the trees was all banished. And next, the cattle was let in trespassing, and winked at, till the land was all poached: and then the land was waste, and cried down: and Saint Dennis wrote up to Dublin to Old Nick, and he over to the landlord, how none would take it, or bid any thing at all for it: so then it fell to him a cheap bargain. Oh, the tricks of them! who knows ’em, if I don’t?” Presently, Lord Colambre’s attention was roused again, by seeing a man running, as if for his life, across a bog, near the roadside: he leaped over the ditch, and was upon the road in an instant. He seemed startled at first, at the sight of the carriage; but, looking at the postilion, Larry nodded, and he smiled and said, “All’s safe!” “Pray, my good friend, may I ask what that is you have on your shoulder?” said Lord Colambre. “Plase your honour, it is only a private still, which I’ve just caught out yonder in the bog; and I’m carrying it in with all speed to the gauger, to make a discovery, that the jantleman may benefit by the reward: I expect he’ll make me a compliment.”
“Get up behind, and I’ll give you a lift,” said the postilion.
“Thank you kindly — but better my legs!” said the man; and, turning down a lane, off he ran again, as fast as possible.
“Expect he’ll make me a compliment,” repeated Lord Colambre, “to make a discovery!”
“Ay, plase your honour; for the law is,” said Larry, “that, if an unlawful still, that is, a still without licence for whiskey, is found, half the benefit of the fine that’s put upon the parish goes to him that made the discovery: that’s what that man is after; for he’s an informer.”
“I should not have thought, from what I see of you,” said Lord Colambre, smiling, “that you, Larry, would have offered an informer a lift.”
“Oh, plase your honour!” said Larry, smiling archly, “would not I give the laws a lift, when in my power?”
Scarcely had he uttered these words, and scarcely was the informer out of sight, when, across the same bog, and over the ditch, came another man, a half kind of gentleman, with a red silk handkerchief about his neck, and a silver-handled whip in his hand.
“Did you see any man pass the road, friend?” said he to the postilion.
“Oh! who would I see? or why would I tell?” replied Larry in a sulky tone.
“Come, come, be smart!” said the man with the silver whip, offering to put half-a-crown into the postilion’s hand; “point me which way he took.”
“I’ll have none o’ your silver! don’t touch me with it!” said Larry. “But, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll strike across back, and follow the fields, out to Killogenesawce.”
The exciseman set out again immediately, in an opposite direction to that which the man who carried the still had taken. Lord Colambre now perceived that the pretended informer had been running off to conceal a still of his own.
“The gauger, plase your honour,” said Larry, looking back at Lord Colambre; “the gauger is a still-hunting!”
“And you put him on a wrong scent!” said Lord Colambre.
“Sure, I told him no lie: I only said, ‘If you’ll take my advice.’ And why was he such a fool as to take my advice, when I wouldn’t take his fee?”
“So this is the way, Larry, you give a lift to the laws!”
“If the laws would give a lift to me, plase your honour, may be I’d do as much by them. But it’s only these revenue laws I mean; for I never, to my knowledge, broke another commandment: but it’s what no honest poor man among his neighbours would scruple to take — a glass of potsheen.”
“A glass of what, in the name of Heaven?” said Lord Colambre.
“Potsheen, plase your honour;— beca-ase it’s the little whiskey that’s made in the private still or pot; and sheen, because it’s a fond word for whatsoever we’d like, and for what we have little of, and would make much of: after taking the glass of it, no man could go and inform to ruin the cratures; for they all shelter on that estate under favour of them that go shares, and make rent of ’em — but I’d never inform again’ ’em. And, after all, if the truth was known, and my Lord Clonbrony should be informed against, and presented, for it’s his neglect is the bottom of the nuisance —”
“I find all the blame is thrown upon this poor Lord Clonbrony,” said Lord Colambre.
“Because he is absent,” said Larry: “it would not be so was he prisint. But your honour was talking to me about the laws. Your honour’s a stranger in this country, and astray about them things. Sure, why would I mind the laws about whiskey, more than the quality, or the jidge on the bench?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why! was not I prisint in the court-house myself, when the jidge was on the bench judging a still, and across the court came in one with a sly jug of potsheen for the jidge himself, who prefarred it, when the right thing, to claret; and when I seen that, by the laws! a man might talk himself dumb to me after again’ potsheen, or in favour of the revenue, or revenue officers. And there they may go on, with their gaugers, and their surveyors, and their supervisors, and their watching officers, and their coursing officers, setting ’em one after another, or one over the head of another, or what way they will — we can baffle and laugh at ’em. Didn’t I know, next door to our inn, last year, ten watching officers set upon one distiller, and he was too cunning for them; and it will always be so, while ever the people think............