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If a tenant clandestinely remove his goods, to prevent the landlord from distraining them for rent, he may seize the goods within thirty days, wherever they shall be found; and if not actually sold previous to the seizure, he may dispose of them in order to recover his rent.

He has damned himself to eternal infamy by the bitter zeal he showed in hunting down Dissenters, inflicting exorbitant fines, and breaking into their houses and distraining their goods for a full discharge, maltreating their wives and daughters, and haling the offenders to prison.

On pretence of distraining for the rent of a cottage, he has robbed the mother of these and other poor infant-orphans of two cows, which afforded them their whole sustenance. Shall you be concerned in tearing the hard-earned morsel from the mouth of indigence? Shall your name, which has been so long mentioned as a blessing, be now detested as a curse by the poor, the helpless, and forlorn?

If distress be made for rent, and the goods are not replevied within five days after the distress is made, and notice left on the premises stating the cause of such distress, the person distraining may have the goods appraised by two persons, sworn by the constable of the place for that purpose, and may after such appraisement sell them to the best advantage.

The Desmond of the day had still his own judges or Brehons, by whose judgment he professed to rule. He had still his own palatinate courts; he still collected his dues by force, driving away his clansmen's cattle, and distraining those who resisted him.

The deputy has been cruelly distraining on his Irish tenants for a 'supposed debt of his to the Queen of 400 pounds for rent, which was indeed but fifty marks, and which was paid, and has carried off 500 milch kine from the poor settlers whom he has planted there, and forcibly thrust him out of possession of a castle.

The authorities could not see, as did the champion of religious liberty, the opportunities of oppression that such a system afforded; nor could they feel with him the harshness of its taxation, nor the injustice of distraining dissenters' goods, or, as he phrased it, "their lack of faith in God and in God's people to uphold religion."

But if goods are distrained, and no cause given for so doing, the owner may rescue them, if not impounded. Distraining part of the goods for rent in arrear, in the name of the whole goods, will be deemed a lawful seizure.

But as for keeping up the same mind, as for being able to say to myself my heart is as hard as ever, I'm just as much bent on cruelty as I was yesterday that's clean beyond me; and the reason, God help me, is no great comfort to me after all for it's just this: that when I do a hard thing, whether distraining a creature out of his bit of ground, selling a widow's pig, or fining a fellow for shooting a hare, I lose my appetite and have no heart for my meals; and as sure as I go asleep, I dream of all the misfortunes in life happening to me, and my guardian angel sitting laughing all the while and saying to me, "Didn't you bring it on yourself, Mathew Kearney? couldn't you bear a little rub without trying to make a calamity of it?

I'll go on distraining, and I'll advertise, and I'll cant, and I'll sell the distress at the end of the eight days.