The Tithe-Proctor. William Carleton
it, Tom—why, if you get me a book I'll swear it, and that's better than thinking any dee. Didn't Emencipation pess? answer me that.”
“Begad it did so, sir,”—from the crowd. “Well,” proceeded the Buck, “what doubt or hesiteetion can there be that the seem power and authority that riz our own church won't be keepable of puttin' down the great protesting heresy?”
“See that now,” from the crowd; “begad it stands to raison sure enough.”
“Certainly,” he proceeded, “none what-somever; but then the question is, how can it be effectualized?”
The crowd—“Begad, and so it is.”
“Well, my friends, it isn't at oll difficult to determine that particularity: you oll know that a men lives by food—very well; pleece that men in a persition where he can't procur food and the nethrel kensiquence is that he must die. Eh—ha! ha! ha!—do you kimprehind?”
“Not a doubt of it,” replied Mr. Crowd, “but sure, at any rate, we will kimprehend it by-an'-by.”
“Very well; take the protesting? church or the parsons, for it is oll the seem—deprive them of the mains of support, that is to see, deny them their tithes—don't pay a shilling—hold out to the death, as my friend the Counsellor—great O'Connell says—and as we oil say, practice passive resistance,then you know the establishment must stirve and die of femine and distitootion, as a contributive jidgment for its sins.”
Crowd—“Blood alive, isn't that great!”
“What is it?” from the other circle.
“Why, that the parsons, an' all belonging to them, is to die of family prostitution for their sins!”
“Devil's cure to them, then, for they desarve it—at least many of them does, anyhow,” says one segment.
“Faith, an' I don't know that either,” says another segment. “The parsons, bad as they're spoken of, was, for the most part, willin' to live among us; and, begad, you all know that they're kind friends and good neighbors, an' that the money they get out of the parish comes back into the parish agin—not all as one as absentee landlords. They give employment as far as they're able, an' thar's no doubt but their wives and daughters does a great dale of good among the poor, and so, begad, does the parsons themselves often.”
“Who is that wiseecre that spoke last?” asked the Buck; “if I don't misteek he leebors with Dennis Purcel, the procter.”
“Ay, an' a very good masther he is,” replied the spokesman of the segment; “gives plenty of employment anyhow—although the pay's no great shakes—an' that's more than some that abuses him does.”
“There's no one aboosin' him here, my good friend, so don't imegine it—at leest I should be extremely sorry to do so. I respect himself and his family in a very elevated manner, I assoore you. An' what's more, my friend, I'll thank you to report to him that I said so.”
Here he looked significantly among the mob, especially as he perceived that the man's eyes were not fixed upon him whilst he spoke, and having thrust his tongue into his cheek, half in derision, and half as it were by a natural action, he succeeded at all events in creating a general laugh; but so easily is a laugh, among such an audience, created, that it is not altogether within our power or penetration to determine the point which occasioned their mirth, unless it were the grimace with which his words were accompanied—or stay—perhaps it was the strong evil odor in which Purcel, the subject of their conversation, must have been held.
“Talk of the devil, Mr. English,” replied a stern voice from the listeners, “and he will appear; look down the road there and you'll see Purcel himself an' his family drivin' to mass on the sweat and groans of the people!”
“Not all of them,” replied another voice, in a different tone; “there's only himself, his wife, and their two spankin' daughters, upon the jauntin' car; but, blood alive, look at the sons! Devil so purty a lot of sweat and groans I seen this twelvemonth as the two is riding on, in the shape of a pair of blood-horses, so that you may put the blood, Barney, along wid the sweat and the groans, agra. Well done, tithes!—ha! ha! ha!”
The individual laugh that accompanied these last observation was cruel, revolting, and hideous. The Buck sought out the speaker among the crowd, and gave him first a nod of approval—and almost instantly afterward added, with a quick change of countenance, but not until he perceived that this double expression was pretty generally understood—
“Don't, my friend—if they get wealthy and proud upon our groans and tears an' blood, as you say, it is not their invalidity that makes them do so, but ours. Instead, of being cruel to them it is to ourselves we are cruel; for by peeing the aforeseed tithes we are peeing away our heart's blood, an' you know that if we are the fools to pee that way, small bleeme to them if they take it in the shape of good passable cash. They—meening sich men as Purcel—are only the instruments with which the parsons work.”
“Ay,” replied the stern voice, “but, in case we had the country to ourselves, do you think now, Buck darlin', that when we'd settle off the jidges, an' lawyers, an' sheriffs, an' bailiffs, that we'd allow the jails or the gibbets to stan', or the hangmen to live. No, by japers, we'd make a clane sweep of it; and when sich a man as Purcel becomes a tool in the parsons' hands to grind the people, I don't see that we ought to make fish of one an' flesh of the other.”
“Ah, Darby Hourigan, is that you?” exclaimed the Buck; “well, although I don't exaggerate with your severity, yet I will shake hands with you. How do you do Darby? Darby, I think you're a true petriot—but, so far as Mr. Purcel is concirned, I wish you to understand that he is a particular friend of mine, and so is every mimber of his family.”
“Faith, an' Mr. Buck, it's more than you are with them, I can tell you.”
“But perhaps you are a little misteeken there, Mr. Hourigan,” replied the Buck, with a swagger, whilst he raised his head and pulled up the collar of his shirt at both sides, with a great deal of significant self-consequence;—“perhaps you are—I see so, that's oll. Perhaps, I repeat, there is some mimber of that family not presupposed against me, Mr. Hourigan?”
“Well, may be so,” replied the other; “but if it be so, it's of late it must have happened, that's what I say.”
Hourigan, who was by trade a shoemaker, was also a small farmer; but, sooth to say, a more treacherous or ferocious-looking ruffian you could not possibly meet with in a province. He was spare and big-boned slouchy and stealthy in his gait, pale in face with dark, heavy brows that seemed to have been kept from falling into his deep and down-looking eyes only by an effort. His cheekbones stood out very prominently, whilst his thin, pallid cheeks fell away so rapidly as to give him something the appearance of the resuscitated skeleton of a murderer, for never in the same face were the kindred spirits of murder and cowardice so hideously blended.
Much more dialogue of the description just detailed took place, in which the proctor was not without defenders; but at the same time, as we are bound to record nothing but truth, we are compelled to say, that the majority of the voices were fearfully against him. If, however, he, the proctor and the instrument, had but few to support him, what must we not suppose the defence of the system in all its bearings to have been?
At length, as Purcel and his family approached, the conversation was transferred from the political to the personal, and he, his wife, and his children, received at the hands of the people that satirical abuse, equally unjust and ungenerous, which an industrious family, who have raised themselves from poverty to independence, are in general certain to receive from all those who are deficient in the virtues by which the others rose.
“Ay, there he comes now, ridin' on his jauntin' car, an' does he think that we all forget the time when he went wid his basket undher his arm, wid his half-a-crown's worth of beggarly hardware in it. He begun it as a brat of a boy, an' was called nothin' then but Mahon na gair (that is 'Mat of the-grin'); but, by-and-by, when