The offences which spring from suffering and fear were heard of in many
districts, but they were encountered with instant resistance. There were
thirty thousand men in red jackets, carefully fed, clothed, and lodged,
ready to maintain the law. Four prisoners were convicted at the Galway
assizes of stealing a filly, which they killed and ate to preserve their
own lives. In Enniskillen two boys under twelve years of age were
convicted of stealing one pint of Indian-meal cooked into "stirabout,"
and Chief Justice Blackburn vindicated the outraged law by transporting
them for seven years. Other children committed larcenies that they might
be sent to jail where there was still daily bread to be had. In Mayo the
people were eating carrion wherever it could be procured, and the
coroner could not keep pace with the inquests; for the law sometimes
spent more to ascertain the cause of a pauper's death than would suffice
to preserve his life.
The social disorganization was a spectacle as afflicting as the waste of
life; it was the waste of whatever makes life worth possessing.
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