The peasantry of Castletownroche oppose the Government in fair and
open field. This is magnanimous at least, if it be unwise. The peasantry of Kildare aim at waging a war of greater safety, but of an infinitely more reprehensible character. A letter from a commercial traveller in that county to his employer, quoted by the Dublin correspondent of the Times, says- . I would advise you to make a large speculation in arsenic, as I find a con-
siderable increase in the demand for it throughout these country parts. I was at first surprised at this, but chance soon let me into the secret. One shop- keeper in — told me that he had sold ten pounds of arsenic to a farmer who wanted to salt some tithe-hay under seizure, which was intended to be pur- chased by the Commissariat, and that it was generally understood through the country that all tithe-hay would be the better for being salted. I expect to get orders for four times the quantity of arsenic I ever sold in this district before."
This " salting" of tithe-hay, the Times correspondent observes, explains the stories lately in circulation of cattle having been smitten with cholera, and the bad jokes that were vented on the occasion. It will serve to explain also a letter from a certain " L. Walsh, R.C.C.," to the Cork Chronicle, in which he describes a tithe sale of some hay distrained at Ballyvourney, and the burn- ing of .a large part of it, by the persons who bought it at the sale. It was not very wonderful that they should prefer burning the hay to poisoning their cows with it. It is needless to dwell on the irievitable effects of the infamous and detestable practices,
which the cool and calculating shopkeeper of and the
Dublin commercial traveller are content to take ready advantage of, all in the way of business: where such a moral gangrene pre- vails, it would be vain by any argument to seek to awaken the better sensibilities of nature. The man. who mixes, and the man who sells for the purpose of mixing, a deadly poison with the bay for the purpose of killing horses, will not scruple, if an opportunity fall in his way, to mix poison with the wheat of his fields, for the purpose of murdering men. Such persons are far beyond the reach of reason and eloquence, however convincing and persuasive.
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