to get as rich as possible. He well knew
that Tim and Nelly must grow poorer.
Mike, to increase his store and dissipate his
grief, turned pig-jobber, and then became
one of the agents for the collection of those
domestic companions of the Irishmen, and
for their furtherance to the English market.
Mike converted dollars into pounds, and
was enabled to take Mr. Massey's largest
farm, and stock it in a manner far beyond
the ever known capabilities of Kiltubby.
Yet Kiltubby admired, and did not envy.
There is little of that black passion in the
Irish character. And when, on the occasion
of Mike one morning mounting his black
mare, and in an unaccountable tit of high
spirits spurring off among the followers of the
Galtees Hunt, people looked astonished, Tim
was generous enough to say, that "MikeDoolan
made jist as good a squireen as any of 'em."

Poor Tim had no such flattering unction to
lay to his own soul. Instead of rising in any
way, his struggles grew harder as a family
came around him. The school paid him
little, and made him lazy; although the
sedentary and unlaborious life gave him such
high spirits, such abundant verses, and so
allowed him to develope a tact for music,
that he was the life and prime Apollo of
every wedding, pattern, christening, funeral,
or other merry-making. There was no
fun in the Golden Vale, that Tim did not
help to make; and as he always had his
skinful on such occasions, and brought away
more tenpennies than he took with him, his
dissipation was not prodigality. Still so
much money went for the potatoes, of which
more and more were piled upon the skieve for
the meals of a growing family, that Tim's
affairs grew yearly more disordered and
dilapidated, and he was always in arrear of rent.

During the war there had been factions,
for how could Tipperary exist without them?
There had existed two parties among the
peasantry—the Shanavests and the Caravats
—which hated each other mortally, beat
each other à l'outrance, and battered in each
others skulls, at fairs and other parties of
pleasure, with true Irish relish, and with such
determination, as no police or magistrates
could interfere with. Police or magistrate,
in truth, saw no reason for such interference,
for there was nothing dangerous or seditious in
the contests. No person could explain the
difference in principle, in leaning, or in anything
else, between a Shanavest and a Caravat.

This ceased with the golden reign of high
prices and abundant employ. Feuds, fighting,
and vengeance, were then called forth by the
passions and distresses of private life. Instead
of unmeaning Shanavests and Caravats, people
in Tipperary began to range themselves into
the class that had land, and the class that either
had not land, or was in danger of losing it.
Landlords were so distressed to pay
mortgages and jointures, that they grasped with
despairing eagerness at any otfer that
approached the old rent. By doing so, they in
general got rid of an honest tenant, and
introduced in his place one who could not
keep his engagements. Yet he, when in turn
ousted, was twenty times more turbulent and
vindictive than the honest tenant, who on
being first displaced, very probably converted
his stock into cash, and crossed the Atlantic
to find a more secure investment in the back
woods.

If some good men were of the oppressed,
the ousted, and of course the disaffected
faction, there were other good men and
valuable, who often fell victims to unmerited
obloquy. If a farmer with agricultural
knowledge and some little capital, fancied
he could do more with a certain portion of
land than traditional culture had hitherto
done; and if, to try the experiment, he offered
a little more than other slovenly competitors;
he became a marked man, liable to be beaten
on all fitting occasions. As party grew
fiercer, and land more scarce, death became
the merciless and too certain award of what
was considered his crime.

Mike, as a prosperous man, content with
things as they were, became attached to one
of these factions; Tim, as one of the ousted and
declining, to the other. Mike made the door
and outworks of his dwelling stronger;
Tim let the door of his cabin fall off its
hinges, and contented himself with half a one,
just to keep the baby from drowning itself in
the black hole that adjoined the dung heap.

Mike was desirous of taking more land,
which he felt he had time, skill, and money
to manage; but he felt that he was risking
his life to fill his purse—a reflection that
made him pause, but not give over. He knew
that Tim was one of the party who
prohibited his extended industry, and he was
grateful in proportion. Mr. Massey's, like
all the property in the country, was undergoing
a change. It was not merely wine-
merchants' bills that distressed him, but
his smaller tenants grew every day more
unable and more unwilling to pay rent. It was,
perhaps, of the highest, that small holders,
trusting to the chapter of lucky accidents
rather than to stated calculations, covenanted
to pay. To eject was painful, yet inevitable,
and led to the horrors of agrarian disturbance
and crime. Besides the system of small holdings,
of which the inconveniences were not
perceived in a season of war, Mr. Massey
had done something equally inconvenient—
had kept a large quantity of ground on his
own hands. Neither from this, did he feel
any inconvenience during high prices.
However slovenly the work done, and however
plundered the master in labour and produce,
good prices, like charity, covered all defects,
and left the sum of profit great. Now, it was
different. Produce was cheap, labour
proportionately dear. Self-farming was found
unprofitable, and went by degrees out of
fashion in Tipperary. Instead of forty or fifty