text:  When to this it is added that from the scanty number of gentry the Government of the day deemed it prudent to entrust with the commission of the peace in self-defence he was obliged to be a magistrate an office which not unfrequently compelled him to be complainant counsel and convicting justice in his own cause some idea may be formed of the difficulties and vexations the Vicar of Clogheen had to encounter in the collection of those tithes from which his income was principally derived