'Huzza! huzza! Sir Condy Rackrent for ever!' was the first thing I hears in the morning, and the same and nothing else all day, and not a soul sober only just when polling, enough to give their votes as became 'em, and to stand the browbeating of the lawyers, who came tight enough upon us; and many of our freeholders were knocked off; having never a freehold that they could safely swear to, and Sir Condy was not willing to have any man perjure himself for his sake, as was done on the other side, God knows; but no matter for that. Some of our friends were dumbfounded by the lawyers asking them: Had they ever been upon the ground where their freeholds lay? Now, Sir Condy being tender of the consciences of them that had not been on the ground, and so could not swear to a freehold when cross-examined by them lawyers, sent out for a couple of cleavesful of the sods of his farm of Gulteeshinnagh; [At St. Patrick's meeting, London, March 1806, the Duke of Sussex said he had the honour of bearing an Irish title, and, with the permission of the company, he should tell them an anecdote of what he had experienced on his travels. When he was at Rome he went to visit an Irish seminary, and when they heard who it was, and that he had an Irish title, some of them asked him, 'Please your Royal Highness, since you are an Irish peer, will you tell us if you ever trod upon Irish ground?' When he told them he had not, 'Oh, then,' said one of the Order, 'you shall soon do so.' They then spread some earth, which had been brought from Ireland, on a marble slab, and made him stand upon it.] and as soon as the sods came into town, he set each man upon his sod, and so then, ever after, you know, they could fairly swear they had been upon the ground. [This was actually done at an election in Ireland.] We gained the day by this piece of honesty [See GLOSSARY 26]. I thought I should have died in the streets for joy when I seed my poor master chaired, and he bareheaded, and it raining as hard as it could pour; but all the crowds following him up and down, and he bowing and shaking hands with the whole town.
'Is that Sir Condy Rackrent in the chair?' says a stranger man in the crowd.
'The same,' says I. 'Who else should it be? God bless him!'
'And I take it, then, you belong to him?' says he.
'Not at all,' says I; 'but I live under him, and have done so these two hundred years and upwards, me and mine.'
'It's lucky for you, then,' rejoins he, 'that he is where he is;for was he anywhere else but in the chair, this minute he'd be in a worse place; for I was sent down on purpose to put him up, [TOPUT HIM UP: to put him in gaol] and here's my order for so doing in my pocket.'
It was a writ that villain the wine merchant had marked against my poor master for some hundreds of an old debt, which it was a shame to be talking of at such a time as this.
'Put it in your pocket again, and think no more of it anyways for seven years to come, my honest friend,' says I; 'he's a member of Parliament now, praised be God, and such as you can't touch him:
and if you'll take a fool's advice, I'd have you keep out of the way this day, or you'll run a good chance of getting your deserts amongst my master's friends, unless you choose to drink his health like everybody else.'
'I've no objection to that in life,' said he. So we went into one of the public-houses kept open for my master; and we had a great deal of talk about this thing and that. 'And how is it,'
says he, 'your master keeps on so well upon his legs? I heard say he was off Holantide twelvemonth past.'
'Never was better or heartier in his life,' said I.
'It's not that I'm after speaking of' said he; 'but there was a great report of his being ruined."'No matter,' says I, 'the sheriffs two years running were his particular friends, and the sub-sheriffs were both of them gentlemen, and were properly spoken to; and so the writs lay snug with them, and they, as I understand by my son Jason the custom in them cases is, returned the writs as they came to them to those that sent 'em much good may it do them!--with a word in Latin, that no such person as Sir Condy Rackrent, Bart., was to be found in those parts.'
'Oh, I understand all those ways better--no offence--than you,'
says he, laughing, and at the same time filling his glass to my master's good health, which convinced me he was a warm friend in his heart after all, though appearances were a little suspicious or so at first. 'To be sure,' says he, still cutting his joke, 'when a man's over head and shoulders in debt, he may live the faster for it, and the better if he goes the right way about it;or else how is it so many live on so well, as we see every day, after they are ruined?'
'How is it,' says I, being a little merry at the time--'how is it but just as you see the ducks in the chicken-yard, just after their heads are cut off by the cook, running round and round faster than when alive?'
At which conceit he fell a-laughing, and remarked he had never had the happiness yet to see the chicken-yard at Castle Rackrent.
'It won't be long so, I hope,' says I; 'you'll be kindly welcome there, as everybody is made by my master: there is not a freer-spoken gentleman, or a better beloved, high or low, in all Ireland.'
