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+Project Gutenberg's Ireland as It Is, by Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ireland as It Is
+       And as It Would be Under Home Rule
+
+Author: Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
+
+Release Date: August 17, 2009 [EBook #29710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND AS IT IS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeannie Howse, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | The original book for this e-text is full of inconsistent |
+    | hyphenation, punctuation and capitalization, which has    |
+    | been preserved. This e-text contains Irish dialect, with  |
+    | unusual spelling.                                         |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND AS IT IS
+AND AS IT WOULD BE
+UNDER HOME RULE.
+
+
+SIXTY-TWO LETTERS
+WRITTEN BY THE
+SPECIAL COMMISSIONER
+OF THE
+BIRMINGHAM DAILY GAZETTE,
+BETWEEN MARCH AND AUGUST, 1893.
+
+
+_With Map of Ireland showing the places visited._
+
+
+BIRMINGHAM:
+BIRMINGHAM DAILY GAZETTE COMPANY, LIMITED, HIGH STREET.
+
+LONDON:
+47, FLEET STREET, E.C.
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+THE BIRMINGHAM GAZETTE CO., LTD.,
+52 AND 53, HIGH STREET,
+BIRMINGHAM.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+SPECIAL COMMISSIONER'S PREFACE.
+
+
+Irish Loyalists will not soon forget the early part of 1893. Arriving
+in Dublin in March, it at once became evident that the industrial
+community regarded Home Rule, not with the academical indifference
+attributed to the bulk of the English electorate, but with absolute
+dismay; not as a possibility which might be pleasantly discussed
+between friends, but as a wholly unnecessary measure, darkly
+iniquitous, threatening the total destruction of all they held dear.
+English lukewarmness was hotly resented, but the certainty that
+England must herself receive a dangerous if not a mortal wound, was
+scant comfort to men who felt themselves on the eve of a hopeless
+struggle for political, nay, even for material existence. This was
+before the vast demonstrations of Belfast and Dublin, before the
+memorable function in the Albert Hall, London, before the hundreds of
+speakers sent forth by the Irish Unionist Alliance had visited
+England, spreading the light of accurate knowledge, returning to
+Ireland with tidings of comfort and joy. The change in public feeling
+was instant and remarkable. Although from day to day the passage of
+the Bill through the Commons became more and more a certainty, the
+Irish Unionists completely discarded their fears, resuming their
+normal condition of trust and confidence. Mr. H.L. Barnardo, J.P., of
+Dublin, aptly expressed the universal feeling when he said:--
+
+"We have been to England, and we know three things,--that the Bill
+will pass the Commons, that the Lords will throw it out, and that the
+English people don't care if they do."
+
+This accounted for the renewed serenity of the well-doing classes,
+whose air and attitude were those of men thankful for having narrowly
+escaped a great danger. The rebound was easily observable in cities
+like Dublin and Belfast, where also was abundantly evident the placid
+resignation of the Separatist forces, whose discontent with the actual
+Bill and profound distrust of its framer, superadded to an
+ever-increasing qualmishness inevitably arising from acquaintance with
+the prospective statesmen of an Irish Legislature, caused them to look
+forward to the action of the Lords with ill-disguised complacency. In
+regions more remote the scattered Loyalists lacked the consolation
+arising from numbers and propinquity to England, and accordingly their
+tremors continued, and, in a smaller degree, continue still. To them
+the Bill is a matter of life and death; and while their industry is
+crippled, their mental peace is destroyed by the ever-present torture
+of suspense.
+
+As to the merits of the case for Home Rule, I would earnestly ask
+fair-minded opponents to remember that during my wanderings I met with
+numbers of intelligent and honourable men, both Scots and English, who
+having come to Ireland as earnest, nay, even by their own confession,
+as bigoted Gladstonians, had changed their opinions on personal
+acquaintance with the facts, and strove with all the energy of
+conscientious men who had unwittingly led others astray, to repair, so
+far as in them lay, the results of their former political action. And
+it should be especially noted that of all those I so met who had
+arrived in Ireland as Home Rulers, not one retained his original
+faith. A very slight process of inductive reasoning will develop the
+suggestiveness of this incontestible fact.
+
+Readers will hardly require to be reminded that the letters were
+written, not in studious retirement with ample time at command, but
+for a Daily Paper, at the rate of nearly eight newspaper columns a
+week, in the intervals of travel and inquiry, often under grave
+difficulties and with one eye on the inexorable clock. The precepts of
+the Master were of necessity ignored:--
+
+    _Sćpe stylum vertas, iterum quć digna legi sint Scripturus;
+    neque, te ut miretur turba labores Contentus paucis lectoribus._
+
+But before committing them to paper, the facts were sifted with
+scrupulous care, and where personal investigation was impracticable,
+nothing was adduced except upon evidence of weight and authority
+sufficient to prove anything. And as during a six months' hue and cry
+of the Nationalist press of Ireland, aided and abetted by some English
+prints, no single statement was in any degree shaken, the letters have
+re-appeared precisely as at first.
+
+                                         R.J.B.,
+     Special Commissioner of the _Birmingham Daily Gazette_.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+EDITOR'S REVIEW.
+
+
+The _Birmingham Daily Gazette_ of August 18, 1893, thus summed up the
+labours of its Special Commissioner:--We publish to-day the last of
+our Special Commissioner's letters on "Ireland As It Is." His task has
+been an arduous one, and not without a strong element of personal
+danger. That he has been kept under the close observation of the Irish
+police; that they have frequently given him timely warning of personal
+danger; that he has dared to go to places in County Clare when the
+police warned him to refrain, and his native car-driver refused to
+venture, are facts which he has modestly abstained from bringing into
+the prominence they deserved. We must necessarily speak of the merits
+of his labour with a certain measure of reserve, but the many letters
+which lie before us are at least a gratifying proof that his work has
+been appreciated, and that it has cast new lights upon the Irish
+problem. To the simple direction, "State nothing that you cannot stand
+by," he has been faithful even beyond our most sanguine hopes. A
+stranger in a strange land seeking information wherever it can be
+found, and compelled on many occasions to accept the statements made
+to him, may easily be led into error. It is to the credit of our
+Commissioner that he has withheld some of the most sensational stories
+retailed to him, because he had not an opportunity of verifying them
+in detail. The notorious Father Humphreys, of Tipperary, will not
+soon forget his experience of giving the lie to the _Gazette_; neither
+will those who organised an "indignation" meeting at Tuam be likely to
+congratulate themselves upon having stung our Commissioner into
+retaliation. It may be recalled as an illustration of the desperate
+efforts made to discredit him that after he had attended a Nationalist
+meeting at Dundalk he was denounced as a "liar" and a "pimp" because
+he had stated that he was invited to address the score of persons who
+had "met in their thousands" to shake the foundations of the British
+Empire. His assailants fiercely declared that he was not invited to
+speak; he was only informed that he might address the meeting if he
+desired to do so!
+
+Our Commissioner has travelled about four thousand miles since he
+started last March. He has taken no lop-sided view of Ireland. The
+prosperous North has been contrasted with the stagnant South, and the
+causes of their difference have been explained. The splendid work of
+industrial development inaugurated in the poverty-stricken West by
+that greatest of all Irish Secretaries, Mr. Balfour, has been compared
+with the mischievous encouragements of idleness, the lavish
+professions of sentimental sympathy, and the dogged refusals of
+substantial help since the present Government took office. Above all,
+our Commissioner has provided conclusive evidence that Irish
+Nationalism is a mere delusive sham--a paltry euphemism for the
+predatory passion which a succession of professional agitators have
+aroused in the hearts of the people. If the Land Question could be
+settled, there would be an end of the clamour for independence and of
+the insensate shrieking against British rule. With a definite stake in
+the country the peasantry upon whom the Nationalist agitation mainly
+relies would cease to place their faith in the impecunious and
+blatant scoundrelism which fattens upon the discord and misery which
+it provokes in the name of Patriotism. Our Commissioner believes that
+the priests, who have an even stronger hold upon the people than the
+politicians, would find their power weakened if it were possible to
+greatly extend the system of peasant proprietary which it was the
+purpose of the Land Purchase of 1891 to foster. Land hunger lies at
+the root of Irish disaffection, and the Romish hierarchy have found in
+the deep-rooted prejudices and the ignorant superstitions of the
+people a foundation upon which they have reared an appalling
+superstructure of social and spiritual tyranny. Politicians have
+taught the peasantry to believe that they have been robbed of the land
+which is their only means of subsistence in a country that is
+destitute of mineral wealth, that lacks capital, and is overshadowed
+by the enormous commercial energy of Great Britain. The priests have
+adopted the theses of politicians, and have brought the terrors of
+their sacred calling into play in order to make themselves the masters
+of the people.
+
+Home Rule would be the signal for a ghastly civil war, ruinous to
+Ireland, and fatal to that spirit of religious toleration by which the
+Roman Catholics and the Protestants have obtained equal rights of
+citizenship under the rule of the Queen and the Imperial Parliament.
+The cultured Roman Catholics of England and Ireland look with pain and
+regret at the insensate bigotry and domineering intolerance which made
+the exposures in County Meath possible. They see in these wild claims
+of absolutism in the domain of temporal as well as spiritual affairs,
+a grave danger to all pure religion. They perceive that the revival of
+the old sectarian passions in Ireland cannot fail to react on Great
+Britain, and even if the Keltic priesthood triumphed over the Ulster
+Protestants their victory would be a fatal one to all who hold by the
+Roman Catholic faith in England. Home Rule would bring misery and
+disaster in its train, and even the Parnellite section of the Irish
+people, who have shaken off clerical domination, tremble at the
+prospect of it while nine-tenths of their co-religionists are
+destitute of personal freedom. We must find the solution of Ireland's
+disaffection in another way, and mainly by a bold handling of the
+agrarian question, which lies at the root of all. The task before the
+Unionist party is not a light one. They must crush the Nationalist
+conspiracy, and uproot the fantastic hopes which unscrupulous men have
+implanted in the minds of an ignorant and credulous people. They must
+extend the noble system of practical aid to Ireland so successfully
+inaugurated by Mr. Balfour in his light railway, fishery, and
+agricultural development schemes. And they must mitigate the friction
+between owners and occupiers of the soil by making it easy and
+profitable for tenants and landlords alike to avail themselves of
+British credit in terminating a relationship which has been fraught
+with occasions of bitter hostility and mistrust. Under such a policy
+we can see bright prospects of a happy future for the sister island,
+but under the policy of Home Rule we see only the lowering clouds of
+civil war and the dark shadows of reawakened religious animosity.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+
+No. 1.--The Spirit of the Capital             Dublin, March 28th     1
+
+No. 2.--Panic and Disaster                    Dublin, March 30th     7
+
+No. 3.--Ulster's Preparations for War         Belfast, April 1st    13
+
+No. 4.--Mr. Balfour's Welcome                 Belfast, April 4th    20
+
+No. 5.--Has Mr. Morley Lied?                Ballymena, April 6th    27
+
+No. 6.--The Exodus of Industry                 Dublin, April 8th    34
+        Mr. Balfour in Dublin                  Dublin, April 8th    40
+
+No. 7.--Bad for England, Ruinous to
+        Ireland                             Limerick, April 11th    43
+
+No. 8.--Terrorism at Tipperary             Tipperary, April 12th    48
+
+No. 9.--Tyranny and Terrorism  Oolagh, Co. Tipperary, April 15th    54
+
+No. 10.--Defying the Land League                Cork, April 20th    61
+
+No. 11.--The Cry for Peace and
+         Quietness                 Tralee, Co. Kerry, April 20th    67
+
+No. 12.--English Ignorance and Irish
+         Perversity                         Limerick, April 22nd    75
+
+No. 13.--The Curse Of County
+         Clare               Rathkeale, Co. Limerick, April 24th    81
+
+No. 14.--Lawlessness and
+         Laziness                Killaloe, Co. Clare, April 27th    89
+
+No. 15.--The Peril to English
+         Trade                      Ennis, Co. Clare, April 29th    96
+
+No. 16.--Civil War in County
+         Clare                        Bodyke, Co. Clare, May 2nd   102
+
+No. 17.--Rent at the Root of
+         Nationalism                  Bodyke, Co. Clare, May 2nd   109
+
+No. 18.--Hard Facts for English
+         Readers                       Gort, Co. Galway, May 6th   116
+
+No. 19.--Indolence and
+         Improvidence               Athenry, Co. Galway, May 6th   123
+
+No. 20.--Religion at the Bottom of
+         the Irish Question            Tuam, Co. Galway, May 9th   128
+
+No. 21.--Mr. Balfour's Fisheries           Galway Town, May 13th   135
+
+No. 22.--The Land League's Reign at
+         Loughrea                             Loughrea, May 16th   142
+
+No. 23.--The Reign of Indolence               Salthill, May 18th   149
+
+No. 24.--The Aran Islands                       Galway, May 20th   156
+
+No. 25.--The Priests and
+         Outrage                  Moycullen, Connemara, May 23rd   163
+
+No. 26.--The Connemara Railway   Oughterard, Connemara, May 23rd   169
+
+No. 27.--Cultivating Irish Industry            Athenry, May 27th   177
+
+No. 28.--Could we Reconquer
+         Ireland?                    Barna, Co. Galway, May 30th   184
+
+No. 29.--What Rack-Rent
+         Means                Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, June 1st   190
+
+No. 30.--The "Union of Hearts"                 Athlone, June 3rd   197
+
+No. 31.--The "Union of Hearts"                Westport, June 6th   203
+
+No. 32.--Home Rule and Irish Immigration     Castlebar, June 8th   209
+
+No. 33.--Tuam's Indignation Meeting           Ballina, June 10th   217
+
+No. 34.--Why Ireland does not Prosper       Oughewall, June 10th   223
+
+No. 35.--In a Congested District    Newport, Co. Mayo, June 15th   230
+
+No. 36.--Irish Improvidence the
+         Stumbling Block          Mulranney, Co. Mayo, June 17th   237
+
+No. 37.--On Achil Island                  Achil Sound, June 20th   244
+
+No. 38.--The Achil Islanders     Dugort, Achil Island, June 22nd   251
+
+No. 39.--Irish Unfitness for
+         Self-Government                  Castlereagh, June 24th   259
+
+No. 40.--Object Lessons in Irish
+         Self-Government                    Roscommon, June 27th   265
+
+No. 41.--The Changed Spirit of the Capital     Dublin, June 29th   271
+
+No. 42.--At a Nationalist Meeting              Dundalk, July 1st   279
+
+No. 43.--In the Prosperous North                 Newry, July 4th   285
+
+No. 44.--The Prosperous North                   Armagh, July 6th   291
+
+No. 45.--A Picture of Romish "Toleration"     Monaghan, July 8th   298
+
+No. 46.--A Bit of Foreign Opinion         Enniskillen, July 11th   304
+
+No. 47.--The Loyalists and the Lawless         Clones, July 13th   310
+
+No. 48.--A Search for "Orange Rowdyism"       Belfast, July 15th   317
+
+No. 49.--The Constitution of the
+         Orange Lodges                      Portadown, July 18th   324
+
+No. 50.--The Hollowness of Home Rule      Warrenpoint, July 20th   331
+
+No. 51.--The Irish Press on "Finality"       Strabane, July 22nd   337
+
+No. 52.--How the Priests Control
+         the People               Raphoe, Co. Donegal, July 25th   345
+
+No. 53.--What they think in County
+         Donegal              Stranorlar, Co. Donegal, July 27th   351
+
+No. 54.--A Sample of Irish "Loyalty"      Killygordon, July 29th   358
+
+No. 55.--A Truly Patriotic Priest            Donegal, August 1st   365
+
+No. 56.--Do-Nothing Donegal                  Donegal, August 3rd   371
+
+No. 57.--Barefooted and Dilatory        Ballyshannon, August 5th   378
+
+No. 58.--The Truth about Bundoran              Sligo, August 8th   383
+
+No. 59.--Irish Nationalism is not
+         Patriotism                      Birmingham, August 11th   390
+
+No. 60.--Land Hunger: its Cause,
+         Effect, and Remedy              Birmingham, August 14th   396
+
+No. 61.--Clerical Domination and its
+         Consequences                    Birmingham, August 16th   403
+
+No. 62.--Civil War a certainty of
+         Home Rule                       Birmingham, August 18th   409
+
+[For a General Index the reader is referred to the end of the
+volume.]
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND AS IT IS
+
+AND AS IT WOULD BE
+
+UNDER HOME RULE.
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND AS IT IS
+
+AND AS IT WOULD BE
+
+UNDER HOME RULE
+
+
+
+
+No. 1.--THE SPIRIT OF THE CAPITAL.
+
+
+By the Spirit of the Capital I do not mean, as an Irishman would tell
+you, Jameson's whiskey, nor yet the vivifying soul of Guinness's
+double stout, but the mental posture of the dwellers in Dublin with
+reference to Home Rule. There can be no doubt of the interest
+prevailing in the Irish metropolis. The people are wrought into a
+fever-heat of expectancy and intense nervous excitement. Home Rule is
+the only topic of conversation. In hotels, on the steamers, in railway
+carriages, on tramcars, in the market-place, on the steps of the
+temples, at the corners of the streets, in the music halls, the
+wondering stranger hears of Home Rule, Home Rule, Home Rule, first,
+last, midst, and without end.
+
+Obviously so much discussion shows difference of opinion, divergency
+of conception, conflicting interests. It is borne in upon you that the
+Irish people are far from agreed as to what Home Rule means, and that
+every individual has his own pet notion, the various theories
+differing as widely as the education and social position of their
+proposers. But the most striking feature in the attitude of Dublin is
+undoubtedly the intense, the deep-rooted, the perfervid hatred of the
+bill shown by the better sort of people, the nervous anxiety of the
+law-abiding classes, the undisguised alarm of everybody who has
+anything to lose, whether commercial men, private traders,
+manufacturers, or the representatives of learning and culture. The
+mere shadow of Home Rule has already seriously affected stocks and
+securities, has brought about withdrawal of capital, and is sending
+both English and Irish commercial travellers home empty-handed. Sir
+Howard Grubb, maker of the great telescope of the Lick Observatory,
+America, an Irishman whose scientific and commercial successes are a
+glory to his country, and whose titular honours have been won by sheer
+force of merit, declares that the passing of the Home Rule Bill will
+be the signal heralding his departure to England, with plant and
+working staff, and that he has been preparing for this since 1886. One
+of the largest booksellers in the city tells me that, acting in
+conjunction with others of the trade, during the last six weeks no
+orders have been given to English travellers, adding--and thoughtful
+people should find this highly suggestive--"The Dublin Unionists are
+the people who have the money and the education. The people who have
+money to spend are becoming excessively careful. They know not what
+may be in store, but they fear that if Home Rule becomes law they will
+be ruined, and more than ninety-five per cent. of my customers are
+Unionists."
+
+Further inquiry confirmed the statement that the book-buying community
+are practically Unionists to a man. The same figures hold good among
+the Irish Quakers. Ninety-five per cent. is the proportion given to me
+by an eminent Friend, no stranger to Birmingham, intimately known to
+Alderman White and three generations of the Cadbury family. He said,
+"Irish Quakers are Unionists, because they are on the spot, because
+they understand the subject, because they know what will follow,
+because they share the dangers of the threatened revolution. What may
+be the proportion of Home Rulers among the English Friends I do not
+know, but probably the Gladstonians have a majority, for precisely
+opposite reasons to those I have stated, that is,--they are not on the
+spot, do not understand the matter, are unable to see what will take
+place, and regard themselves as safe, whatever happens." The Irish
+Quakers have issued a manifesto which should weigh with their English
+brethren and with the country at large. The Quakers know their way
+about. Their piety has not blunted their perceptive faculties, has not
+taken the edge off their keenness. Their reputation for shrewdness is
+equal to their reputation for integrity, which is saying a good deal.
+With them the innocence of the dove is happily combined with
+considerable wisdom of the serpent. And at least ninety-five per cent.
+of the Irish Quakers are earnest Unionists.
+
+But although the deep concern of the respectable classes of the Irish
+capital is calculated to fill the wandering Englishman with grave
+uneasiness, it is not all tragedy. The Dubliners must have their fun,
+and, like the Parisians, will sport with matters of heaviest import.
+The poorer classes treat the universal subject lightly, as beseems men
+who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The prevailing trait
+in their mental attitude is incredulousness. You cannot make them
+believe that the bill will pass. "We'll get Home Rule when a pair o'
+white wings sprouts out o' me shoulders an' I fly away like a
+blackbird," said an old market woman with great emphasis; and a Dublin
+jackeen, piloting an American over the city, said: "This, Sorr, is
+College Green, an' that, Sorr, is Thrinity College, an' that
+Sorr,"--here he pointed to the grand pile opposite the College--"that
+Sorr, is the grate buildin' in which the Irish Parliament is _not_
+going to meet!" At one of the music halls an old woman (Ireland) is
+represented as buying a coffin for a deceased son named "Home Rule"
+Bill, when the following conversation occurs:--
+
+"Is it an oak or an elm coffin ye want?"
+
+"Ah, thin, just a chape deal coffin, shure--wid a few archangels on
+the lid."
+
+"Will ye want any trimmings?"
+
+"Arrah, what d'ye mane by trimmin's?"
+
+"Trimmings for the coffin."
+
+"Bad luck to yer trimmin's. What would I want wid them? Sure 'twas
+'trimmin's' that kilt him!"
+
+It is hoped that Saxon readers will see this subtle joke when I
+explain that "delirium" should come before "trimmin's."
+
+Underneath the incredulity of the lower classes--and be it observed
+that their incredulity is obviously based on an instinctive feeling
+that the claims and arguments of their own party are alike
+preposterous--underneath this vein of unbelief is a vein of
+extraordinary credulity. Poverty is to be at once and for ever
+abolished. "The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv us,
+to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay soldiers to grind us down, we'll
+put into our own pockets, av you plaze," was the answer vouchsafed to
+an inquiry as to what advantages were expected from the passing of the
+Home Rule Bill. The speaker was a political barber. Another of the
+craft said, in answer to the same query, "Well, Sorr, I think we have
+a right to our indipindence. Sure, we'd be as sthrong as Switzerland
+or Belgium." A small farmer from the outlying district thought that
+rents would be lowered, that money would be advanced to struggling
+tenants, that great public works would be instituted, and plainly
+intimated that all these good things and many more had been roundly
+promised by the Home Rule leaders, and that he, for one, fully
+believed that all would duly come to pass, once the Bill were carried,
+which happy event he never expected to see. Every man was to be a kind
+of king in his own country, evictions were to be utterly unknown; the
+peasantry were to live rent free, under a visionary scheme of which he
+had all the absurd particulars; the old sporting maxim reminding
+farmers that landlord shooting begins on January 1st and ends on
+December 31st was to become obsolete by reason of a complete
+extinction of the species--only an odd one being occasionally dug out
+of the bogs along with trunks of bog-oak and skeletons of the great
+Irish elk; while the family pig, which, having for ages occupied a
+responsible position in the matter of "Rint," is understood to be an
+inveterate landlord-hater, will be released from his delicate
+situation, will be relieved from his harassing anxieties, will no
+longer be sacrificed to the exigencies of the occasion; but, on the
+contrary, will peacefully expire of old age, surrounded by every
+tribute of respect. The dirtiest of the Dubliners hold opinions as to
+the marvellous results of Home Rule more adapted to their own
+positions and pursuits, but apparently on the same plane, no whit
+higher in the scale of intelligence. They regard the English as their
+natural enemies, and the lower you go the more truculent they become.
+One and all they hold the belief, industriously instilled by
+agitators, that the poverty of Ireland is due to the aggrandisement
+of England, that the bulk of Irish taxation flows into English
+coffers, and is used for English purposes to the exclusion of Ireland,
+and this they have swallowed and insist upon, in defiance of common
+reason and the evidence of their senses. The instinct of patriotism is
+not _en évidence_. The dominant passion is cupidity, and nothing
+higher; sheer greed of gain, lust of possession, and nothing nobler.
+Selfishness and the hope of plunder are the actuating impulses at the
+poll; crass ignorance and bitter prejudice the mental disposition of
+the lower class of voters. Four hours' slumming convinced me of this,
+and must convince anyone. "We'll bate the English into the say," said
+a resident in the sweet region yclept Summer Hill. "Whin we get the
+police in our hands an' an army of our own, we'd sweep them out o' the
+counthry av we only held cabbage-shtalks. Ireland for the Irish, an'
+to hell wid John Bull! Thim's my sintiments." And those are the
+"sintiments" of his class. I have spent days among the Irish Home
+Rulers without having once heard of the Union of Hearts. The phrase
+serves well enough to tickle the simple souls of the long-eared but
+short-headed fraternity of pseudo-philosophical-philanthropists across
+the water, but it has no currency in Ireland.
+
+Like the country folks the city slummers believe that unheard-of
+advantages would follow the great Bill, and, unconsciously parodying
+Sancho Panza, say in effect, "Now blessings light on him who first
+invented Home Rule! it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a
+cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the
+cold, and cold for the hot." The bare thought of the coming Paradise
+illuminates their dirty visages. Like the lunatic, the lover, and the
+poet, they are of imagination all compact, and, unlike the character
+mentioned by the Bard, they "can hold a fire in their hands, By
+thinking on the frosty Caucasus, And cloy the hungry edge of appetite
+By bare imagination of a feast; And wallow naked in December snow By
+thinking on fantastic summer's heat."
+
+Meanwhile, they lounge about in idleness, hugging their misery,
+discussing the "bating" of the Unionist party, or, as I saw them
+yesterday evening, listening to the crooning of an ancient female
+gutter-snipe, a dun-coloured heap of decrepit wretchedness, chanting
+the great future of the Irish Parliament in a picturesque and
+extraordinary doggerel anent the "larned reprisintatives of the Oirish
+na-a-tion. Promiscu-o-ous they shtand in em-u-la-a-tion." The small
+shopkeepers, once ardent Nationalists, seem to be changing their
+minds. One of them confided to me the fact that he and his fellows,
+brought actually face to face with the possibility that the end of
+their aspirations and agitations would be attained, were beginning to
+ask whether, after all, taxation would be remitted, whether indeed the
+rates would not be heavier, and whether the moneyed people would
+remain in the country at all. Hearing on all sides these and similar
+confessions, accompanied by urgent admonitions of secrecy, you begin
+to ask whether the past conduct of these enlightened voters had any
+more substantial basis than a cantankerous and unreasonable
+discontent, superadded to an Irishman's natural love of fighting. The
+leaders of the Separatist party have made the most frantic efforts to
+win over the police, but apparently without much success. The Dublin
+constabulary, a body of 1,300 men, is totally separate and distinct
+from the Royal Irish Constabulary, but I have reason to believe that
+the feeling of both forces is averse to Home Rule. Said a sergeant
+yesterday, "John Bull may have faults, but," and here he winked
+expressively, "but--he pays!" Then he went on--"I am a Westmeath man,
+a Roman Catholic, an' as good an Irishman as any of thim; an' I'd like
+Home Rule if it was local self-government, what they call the gas an'
+wather management, or the like of that. But although I've the highest
+respect for my counthry, an' for my counthrymen, I'd like to feel that
+my pay was in better hands, and--what is of more importance--my
+pension, afther 30 years' service."
+
+Here was a complete lack of confidence, but my friend had more to say.
+He referred to the provisions of the bill, spoke of the six years'
+arrangement, and on this point exhibited great native shrewdness. "How
+do we know we'll be employed for six years, once the Irish leaders get
+matters in their own hands? They may promise fairly enough, but they
+would be subject to several influences which might prevint thim kaping
+their promise. First of all, when they had the power, they would
+naturally like to manage things their own way--an' not to be
+altogether bound down so hard an' fast by their engagement with the
+English Parliament. Then, although they profess such friendship, they
+don't altogether like us. We may tell them we are Nationalists, an'
+that we're runnin' over with patriotism; but they'll tell us that we
+stood by at evictions, an' that we fired on the people at
+Mitchelstown. But the greatest thing of all is this--all their
+counthry friends, all the terrorisers, the men that mutilated the
+cattle, the village ruffians that for years have been doin' their
+work, an' actin' as their spies--all these will have to be provided
+for. The same with our officers, but their case is still worse. They
+have had to pass a regular military examination, which means an
+expensive education. They will get the go-by an' the dirty kick-out,
+in order that the friends of the ruling party, who have been so long
+in the desert, may be furnished with posts. 'Tis human nature, Sorr."
+Wherefore, the constabulary, it would seem, may be trusted to take
+care of themselves, but the situation is suggestive of serious
+complications, once the bill were passed. A full private this morning
+told me that without the security of the British Exchequer the force
+would not hold together for four-and-twenty hours, a statement which,
+whatever be its value, is at least an indication of the amount of
+trust which some of the Irish people, and those not the worst
+informed, are disposed to place in the distinguished assembly which,
+according to the authority hereinbefore-mentioned is _not_ to meet on
+College Green.
+
+A never-ending complaint which follows you everywhere is the
+supineness of the English electorate. Men whose interests are
+seriously threatened, such as the better class of shopkeepers, are
+unable to understand the comparative calmness of the British public at
+large. Passionately they ask why England leaves them to their fate,
+and strongly they urge that prompt and decided action should be taken,
+if not for the sake of Ireland, then in the interests of England
+herself. Disruption, pure and simple, the breaking up of the Empire,
+with panic and general ruin, are in their opinion the sure and certain
+concomitants of the bill now before the House. They declare that
+Englishmen as a whole, whether Gladstonians or Unionists, fail to
+realise the gravity of the situation, and they lose no opportunity of
+saying whenever they hear an English accent, "WE DON'T WANT IT, WE
+DON'T WANT IT!" Not always do they trouble to say what is the thing
+they so emphatically reject. "Pardon me, Sir, but are you English?"
+Receiving an affirmative the rejoinder comes at once, and forcefully,
+"We don't want it, we don't want it! Tell the English people that if
+they knew all they would not entertain the idea for a moment." The
+phrase meets you everywhere, is roared at you in chorus in commercial
+rooms, haunts you in your sleep, and, if they would own it, must be
+painfully suggestive to Gladstonian visitors. But there are none so
+blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not
+hear. It is impossible to withhold sympathy with the indignation and
+mental anxiety of these industrious men, who have made Dublin what she
+is, and whose only notion of happiness is the fulfilment of duty,
+their sole means of acquiring wealth or middleclass comfort, hard and
+honest work. That the backbone of the city should stand with their
+fortunes subject to the will of a few unscrupulous agitators is
+indeed, as they say, an inscrutable dispensation of Providence.
+
+Help, however, is at hand. As Hercules hangs backward in their need
+they have determined to help themselves. During the Easter recess both
+Ireland and England will be made to ring with denunciations of Home
+Rule, denunciations uttered for the most part by Irishmen. Orators
+will go forth throughout the length and breadth of both islands, with
+the object of laying the truth of the matter before the
+people--demonstrating the dire results which the most intelligent
+almost unanimously predict. There will be no lack of funds--Catholics
+and Protestants are subscribing, among the former the grandson of
+Daniel O'Connell, the great Liberator of Ireland. Money is literally
+pouring into the offices of the Irish Unionist Alliance. Little Roman
+Catholic Tralee, in the heart of Kerry, one of the most disturbed
+districts, has sent several hundreds. In three weeks the subscriptions
+have reached Ł20,000. That ought to be enough to enable Irish
+Unionists not, as one said to me, "to enlighten the English people. We
+do not presume to so much. But we will try to let some of the Darkness
+out."
+
+Dublin, March 28th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 2.--PANIC AND DISASTER.
+
+
+The situation is becoming hourly more serious. The over-excited
+condition of men's minds is rapidly ripening into a panic. The
+impending Second Reading is driving the respectable population of
+Ireland into absolute despair. The capital is inundated by men from
+all parts of the kingdom anxious to know the worst, running hither and
+thither, asking whether, even at the eleventh hour, anything may be
+done to avert the dreaded calamity. An eminent solicitor assures me
+that during the last four-and-twenty hours a striking change of
+opinion has taken place. Red-hot Home Rulers when confronted with the
+looming actuality are on all sides abandoning their loudly proclaimed
+political opinions. My friend's business--he is, or has been, an
+ardent Home Ruler--is chiefly connected with land conveyancing, and he
+declares that his office is besieged by people anxious to "withdraw
+their charges" on land and house property, that is, to recall their
+money advanced on mortgage, however profitable the investment, however
+apparently solid the security. He instanced the case of an estate in
+Cavan, bearing three mortgages of respectively Ł1,000, Ł3,000, and
+Ł4,000, and leaving to the borrower a clear income of Ł1,700 a year
+after all claims were paid. The three lenders are strenuously
+endeavouring to realise, the thousand-pounder being prostrate with
+affright, but although the investments under normal conditions would
+fetch a good premium, not a penny can be raised in any direction. The
+lenders are Home Rulers, and eighty per cent. of the population of
+Cavan are Roman Catholic.
+
+The same story is heard everywhere, with "damnable iteration." The
+cause of charity is suffering severely. The building of additions to
+the Rotunda Hospital and the Hospital for Consumptives, at a cost of
+twenty thousand pounds, has been definitely abandoned, although
+three-quarters of the money has been raised. The building trade is at
+a complete standstill. On every hand contracts are thrown up, great
+works are put aside. Mr. Kane, High Sheriff of Kildare, declines to
+proceed with the building of his new mansion, which was to cost many
+thousand pounds. Mr. John Jameson, the eminent distiller, who also
+contemplated the construction of a palatial residence, which would
+take years to build, has dropped the idea. The project for the
+formation of a great Donegal Oyster-bed Company, which long bade fair
+to prosper, and to confer a boon on the starving peasantry of the
+coast, has been cast to the winds. Among the shoals of similar
+occurrences which confront you at every turn, some contain an element
+almost of humour. A Dublin architect tells a quaint story of this
+kind. It may not be generally known in England that the Roman
+Catholics of Ireland can borrow money from John Bull for the erection
+of "glebe-houses," at 4 per cent., repayable in 49 years. In a certain
+recent case the priest thought the builder's estimate too high, and,
+without absolutely declining the contract, intimated that he would
+"wait a while." Said the architect, "Better make up your mind before
+June, or you may have the Irish Legislature to deal with." This
+argument acted like magic. The good Father instantly saw its cogency,
+and, like every other patriotic Nationalist whose personal interest is
+involved, preferred to place himself in English hands rather than in
+those of his own countrymen, and incontinently accepted the contract,
+begging the architect to proceed with all haste.
+
+A run on the Post Office Savings Bank threatens to clear out every
+penny of Irish money, and why? Because it has dawned on the small
+hoarders, the thrifty and industrious members of the lower classes,
+that the Post Office is to be transferred to the Irish Legislature. A
+friend tells me that yesterday his Catholic cook begged for an
+interview. She had money in the Post Office Savings Bank, and
+thereanent required advice, asking if it would be safe till to-morrow!
+Following up this hint, pregnant with meaning, though delivered in
+jest, I found that the feeling of insecurity is spreading like wild
+fire, to the intense indignation of those patriots who have no
+savings, and who are alive to the fact that under the provisions of
+the proposed Act the four millions supposed to be lying in the Post
+Office Savings Bank would constitute the entire working capital, as
+distinguished from current income, of the College Green Legislature.
+The master of a small sub-office told me that the withdrawals at his
+little place amounted to Ł200 per week, rising latterly to Ł70 per
+day, and that it was necessary to get money from London to meet the
+demands. Concurrently with this I learn that the Dublin Savings Bank,
+an institution managed by merchants of the city, for the encouragement
+of thrift, is receiving the money so withdrawn, and this confidence is
+explained by the well-known fact that the directors have publicly
+declared that on the passing of the Home Rule Bill they will pay 20s.
+in the pound and close the bank, in addition to which significant
+ultimatum they have, in writing, declared to Mr. Gladstone, that this
+course of action is due to the fact that they repudiate the security
+of the proposed Irish Legislature. To put the thing in a nutshell it
+may be said that not a single Irishman in or out of the country is
+willing to trust the Irish Legislature with a single penny of his own
+money.
+
+A curious feature of the Nationalist character is the profound
+contempt expressed for Nationalist M.P.'s. Englishmen are accustomed
+to speak of their own members, representing their own opinions, with
+respect. Not so in Dublin. A rabid Nationalist said to me, "I am an
+Irishman to the backbone. I am a Home Ruler out-and-out. But do you
+think I'd trust my property with either of the two Tims? Do you think
+such men as Tim Harrington and Tim Healy are fit to be trusted with
+the spending of 2-1/2 millions of money per annum? They have their
+job, and they work well at their job, and the Irish people have backed
+them up out of pure divilment. 'Tis mighty fine to take a rise out of
+John Bull, to harass him, to worry him, to badger him out of his seven
+sinses. The half of the voters never were serious, or voted as they
+were told by men who expatiated on the wrongs which have been dinned
+into them from infancy. But to trust these orators with their money!
+Bedad, we're not all out such omadhauns (idiots) as that! Paddy is not
+altogether such a fool as he looks."
+
+Although public feeling has suddenly deepened in intensity, the change
+has been for some time in progress. I am enabled to state on
+irrefragable authority, that Lord Houghton's sudden departure from
+Dublin on Sunday week was entirely due to his alarm at the shifting
+aspect of affairs, which rendered instant conference with Mr.
+Gladstone a matter of urgent necessity. And it should be especially
+noted that this change is most apparent not in the Protestant North,
+not among the irreconcilable black and heretic Ulsterites, but in
+Nationalist Dublin, in the Roman Catholic south--not simply among the
+moneyed classes and well-to-do shopkeepers of Dublin, but among the
+industrious poor, and the small farmers of the region round about. The
+opinions and feelings of the better classes have ever been dead
+against the Bill, and the best portion of the poorer people are
+assuredly moving in the same direction. That such is the simple fact
+is undeniable. It is thrust upon you whether you will or no. You are
+compelled to believe it, whatever your political creed. It manifests
+itself in a variety of ways. Mr. Love, of Kildare, a landed
+proprietor, now in Dublin, says that on Sunday last Dr. Gowing, parish
+priest of Kill, denounced Home Rule from the altar, and advised the
+people to have none of it.
+
+The Dubliners are beginning to publicly ridicule their Nationalist
+members. A bog-oak carving represents a typical Irishman driving a
+"conthrairy pig," which is supposed to stand for Tim Harrington. The
+interesting animal is deviating from the right way, gazing fixedly at a
+milestone which bears the legend, "IX. miles to College Green." His
+master gives him a cut of the whip and a jerk of the rope, and thus
+addresses the wayward Tim, "Arrah, don't be wastin' yer larnin', radin'
+milestones. Ye're not goin' to Dublin--ye're goin' to BRAY!" A Phoenix
+Park orator who sang amusing songs finished his appeal for coppers
+thus, "Sure, Home Rule is a splindid thing--an iligant thing intirely,
+an' a blind man could see the goodness iv it wid his two eyes. Didn't
+ye all know Tim Harrington whin he hadn't the price iv his breakfast?
+Didn't ye know him whin he would dhrop on his two marrowbones and thank
+God for the price of a shmell of calamity-wather" (whiskey). "An' now
+look at him! D'ye mind the iligant property he has outside Dublin? An
+ye'll all get the like o' that, every bosthoon among yez, av ye get
+Home Rule. But yez must sind _me_ to Parlimint. Sure I have ivery
+quollification. Wasn't I born among yez? Wasn't I rared among yez?
+Don't I know what yez wants? An' didn't I go many a day widout a male?
+Aye, that I did, an' could do it again! Sind _me_ to Parlimint, till I
+get within whisperin' distance of Misther Gladstone--within whisperin'
+distance, d'ye mind me? Ye'll all get lashins of dhrink, an' free
+quarthers at the Castle. An' all ye have to do is to pay me, an' pay me
+well." Here the speaker laid his finger along his nose and broke into a
+comic song having reference to "the broad Atlantic," which he chanted
+in a brogue almost as broad as the Atlantic itself.
+
+The better class of vacillating Nationalists are ready to give a
+plausible reason for the faith that is in them. You cannot catch an
+Irish Home Ruler napping, nor will he admit that he was ever wrong. He
+will talk to the average Englishman about Irish rights and Irish
+wrongs, Irish virtues and Irish abstinence from crime with a reckless
+disregard for truth that can only be born of a firm belief that Irish
+newspapers are never read outside Ireland, and will then walk off and
+plume himself on the assumption that because he met no point-blank
+contradiction he has duped his victim into believing the most absurd
+mass of wild misinformation that was ever crammed down the throats of
+the most gullible of his rustic countrymen. It must be admitted that
+they are shrewd critics of the Bill, of which every individual
+citizen, whatever his conviction, has an annotated copy in his
+tail-pocket. The Dublin change of front is ascribed to the "insulting
+manner in which the Bill is drafted." The Nationalists, one and all,
+roundly declare, in terms which admit of no qualification, that the
+present bill means no less than separation, and while admitting that
+this is their dearest aspiration, declare that England will only have
+herself to thank. They complain that the word "Parliament" is never
+used in the Bill when referring to the Irish Legislature, but console
+themselves with the reflection that the supremacy of Parliament proper
+is only mentioned in the preamble, which they rejoice to believe is
+not part of the bill, and therefore is not binding in law. The
+Treasury clauses they declare to have been drawn by a deadly enemy of
+Ireland, but here again they find salvation in the alleged
+inconsistency of the various provisions of the bill.
+
+They accept with exceeding great joy the provision which will enable
+them to deprive of their property, rights, and privileges all existing
+Corporations whether incorporated under Royal Charter or otherwise,
+pointing out that this means ownership and control of the Bank of
+Ireland, Trinity College, and all the churches and cathedrals, which
+hereafter are to be wrested from Protestant hands and devoted to the
+propagandism of the Roman Catholic faith; and that the Bill confers
+these powers is, they say, made clearly evident by the clause that
+places these matters in the hands of an executive "directed by Irish
+Act." By virtue of his position they have already nominated Archbishop
+Walsh on this executive, with other ecclesiastics of like kidney. This
+they admit is a good mouthful, but they scornfully assert that while
+Mr. Gladstone has left them income-tax to pay, he has also loaded them
+with the Post Office, a Greek gift, which under the best English
+management is worked at a loss of fifty thousand pounds a year! The
+two Home Rulers who in my hearing so ruthlessly dissected the Bill
+made merry over the clause which excludes the Irish Government from
+all control of the "foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or
+through-lines in connection therewith," pouring on the unhappy
+sentence whole cataracts of ridicule. "We have the thing in our hands,
+and we are not to control its working," said they. "The cable between
+England and America passes through Ireland, will be worked by our
+servants, by people who will look to us as their paymasters, and we
+are to have no control!" The preposterous absurdity of the notion
+tickled the entire company. "But if England does not please us, can we
+not cut the cable? Can we not order our own paid servants to cease
+transmitting messages, or to transmit only such as have survived the
+inspection of the accredited officials of the Irish people?" It was
+thought that this was reasonable and a possible, nay a probable
+conjuncture, and might be used as a weapon to damage English trade.
+"Let them go round or lay another cable," said one patriot.
+
+This sort of discussion, more or less reasonable, is everywhere heard,
+and should be of some value in indicating the use Irishmen expect to
+make of the Act. Not a single friendly syllable, not a word of
+amicable fellowship with England, not a scintilla of gratitude for
+favours past or to come, nothing but undisguised animosity, and a
+fixed resolution to make every clause of the Act a battlefield. I
+speak that I do know and testify that I have seen. My personal
+relations with the Irish people have been and continue to be of the
+most gratifying kind. In the homes of the highest, in the great
+manufactories, even in the lowest slums I have seen much that is
+attractive in the Irish character--much that excites warm interest,
+and is calculated to attach you to the people. I have conversed with
+scores of Home Rulers of all shades, and to the query as to whether
+ultimate separation is hoped for, I have received an invariable
+affirmative. True it is that the answer varied in terms from the blunt
+"Yes" of the uncompromising man to the more or less veiled assent of
+the more cautious, but the result was in substance ever the same. Talk
+about the Union of Hearts, the pacification of Ireland, the brotherly
+love that is to ensue, and the Unionists turn away with undissembled
+impatience, the Home Rulers with a chuckle and a sneer. As well tell
+reasonable Irishmen that the world is flat, or that a straight line
+between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round
+the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of
+science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about
+brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise.
+Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for
+Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species
+of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering Saxon." Then if they would
+return and still vote for Home Rule they are no less than traitors to
+their country and enemies to their fellow-country men.
+
+The weather is very fine, and the fashionable resorts are fairly well
+frequented, but trade daily grows worse. Wholesale houses, says a high
+authority, are "not dull, but stone dead." The pious Irish fast and
+pray during the week, and the great Roman Catholic Retreat at Milltown
+is crowded to the limits of its accommodation. The ladies wear a kind
+of half-mourning, a stylish sort of reminder of original sin.
+Sackcloth and ashes in Catholic Dublin consist of fetching brown,
+grey, or tan costumes, set off with huge bunches of fragrant violets,
+tied with a bow the exact shade of the flower, or a dull shade of
+purple, a sort of Lenten lugubriousness particularly becoming to
+blonde penitents. The ladies are indefatigable in their efforts
+against Home Rule, and one distinguished canvasser for signatures to
+the Roman Catholic petition has been warned by the police, as she
+values her life, to leave Dublin for a time. The ruffian class,
+needless to say, has undergone no change, but still demands the bill,
+and this delicate lady, for years foremost in every good and
+charitable work, is driven from her home by threatening letters--that
+accursed resort to anonymous intimidation which so discredits the
+Irish claim to superior courage and chivalry. The Catholics of Dublin
+are signing numerously, but the number of signatories by no means
+represents the opponents of the Bill.
+
+Englishmen cannot be brought to realise for one moment the system of
+terrorism and intimidation which prevails even in the very heart of
+the capital. Parnellite spies are everywhere and know everything, and
+woe to the helpless man who dares to have a mind of his own. And not
+only are the poor coerced and deprived of the liberty of the subject,
+but the wealthiest manufacturers--men whose firms are of the greatest
+magnitude--will caution you against using their names in connection
+with anything that could give a clue to their real sentiments. This
+difficulty arises everywhere and information can only be extracted
+after a promise that its source shall never be disclosed. The priests
+are credited with unheard-of influence among the poor. "At the present
+moment the ruffians are held in leash. The order has gone forth that
+pending the Home Rule debate they are to 'be good.' But if I sign that
+petition, although here in Dublin, the thing would be known at Tralee,
+200 miles away, before I reached home--and a hundred to one that the
+first blackguard that passed would put a match in my thatch, would
+burn my stacks, would hough or mutilate my cattle." The speaker was a
+Roman Catholic farmer from Kerry. Mr. Morley, in stating that the
+prosecution of the Rev. Robert Eager had ceased and determined, was
+utterly wrong. The rector's cousin, Mr. W.J. Eager, also of Tralee,
+told me that threatening letters with coffins and cross-bones were
+still pouring in in profusion. Mr. Eager was calmly requested to give
+up land which he had held for 15 years to a man who had previously
+rented it, and as the good parson failed to see the force of this
+argument he is threatened with a violent death. In England such a
+thing could only happen in a pantomime, but some of the Irish think it
+the quintessence of reasonable action. These are the class that
+support the Bill; these are the men Mr. Gladstone and his
+conglomeration of cranks and faddists hope to satisfy. A brilliant
+kind of prospect for poor John Bull.
+
+Mr. John Morley should accompany me in my peregrinations among the
+intelligent voters who have placed him and his great chief in power,
+along with the galaxy of minor stars which rise with the Grand Man's
+rising and set at his setting. "The British Government won't allow us
+to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get the Bill
+every man can take a shpade, an' begorra! can dig what he wants." "The
+Phaynix Park is all cramfull o' coal that the Castle folks won't allow
+us to dig, bad scran to them. Whin we get the Bill wu'll sink thim
+mines an' send the Castle to Blazes." But the quaintest, the funniest,
+the most sweetly ingenuous of the lot was the reason given by a
+gentleman of patriarchal age and powerful odour, whom I encountered in
+Hamilton's Lane. He said, "Ye see, Sorr, this is the way iv it. 'Tis
+the Americans we'll look to, by raison that they're mostly our own
+folks. They're powerful big invintors, but bedad, they haven't the
+wather power to work the invintions. Now _we_ have the wather power,
+an' the invintions 'll be brought over here to be worked. An' that'll
+give the poor folks imploymint."
+
+The poor man's ignorance was doubtless dense, his credulity amusing,
+his childlike simplicity interesting. But the darkness of his
+ignorance was no blacker, the extent of his credulity no more amazing,
+than the ignorance and credulity of English Gladstonian speakers, who,
+with a Primitive Methodist accent and a Salvation Army voice,
+proclaim, with a Bible twang, their conviction that Home Rule means
+the friendship of Ireland.
+
+Dublin, March 30th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 3.--ULSTER'S PREPARATIONS FOR WAR.
+
+
+Ulster will fight, and fight to the death. The people have taken a
+resolution--deep, stern, and irrevocable. Outwardly they do not seem
+so troubled as the Dubliners. They are quiet in their movements,
+moderate in their speech. They show no kind of alarm, for they know
+their own strength, and are fully prepared for the worst. They speak
+and act like men whose minds are made up, who will use every
+Constitutional means of maintaining their freedom, and, these failing,
+will take the matter in their own strong hands. Meanwhile they
+preserve external calm, and systematically make their arrangements. If
+ever they went through a talking stage, that is now over. They have
+passed the time of discussion, and are preparing for action. If ever
+they showed heat, that period also is past. They have reached the cold
+stage, in which men act on ascertained principles and not in the
+frenzy of passion. There is nothing hysterical about the Belfast men.
+They are by no means the kind of people who run hither and thither
+wringing their hands. Neither are they men who will sit down under
+oppression. And oppression is what they expect from a Dublin
+Government. Mr. Gladstone and his tribe may pooh-pooh this notion, but
+the feeling in Ulster is strong and immovable. The tens of thousands
+of Protestants thickly scattered over other provinces feel more
+strongly still; as well they may, for they have not the numbers, the
+organisation, the unity which is strength, that characterise the
+province of Ulster. They hold that Home Rule is at the bottom a
+religious movement, that by circuitous methods, and subterranean
+strategy, the religious re-conquest of the island is sought; that the
+ignorant peasantry, composing the large majority of the electorate,
+are entirely in the hands of the priests, and that these black swarms
+of Papists have a congenital hatred of England, which must bring about
+separation. These are the opinions of thousands of eminent men whose
+ability is beyond argument, who have lived all their lives on the
+spot, who from childhood have had innumerable facilities for knowing
+the truth, whose interests are bound up with the prosperity of
+Ireland, and who, on every ground, are admittedly the best judges.
+Said Mr. Albert Quill, the Dublin barrister:--
+
+"Mr. Gladstone, who in eighty-four years has spent a week in Ireland,
+puts aside Sir Edward Harland, who has built a fleet of great ships in
+an Irish port, and sneers at the opinion of the Belfast deputation who
+have lived all their lives in Ireland." A Roman Catholic Unionist, an
+eminent physician, said to me:--
+
+"I fear that Catholicism would ultimately lose by the change, although
+at first it would undoubtedly obtain a strong ascendant. The bulk of
+the Irish Catholics have a deep animosity to the English people, whom
+they regard as heretics, and the Protestants of Ireland would in
+self-defence be compelled to band themselves together, for underneath
+the specious surface of the Home Rule movement are the teeth and claws
+of the tiger. Persecution would follow separation, which is inevitable
+if the present bill be carried. A Dublin Parliament would make a
+Protestant's life a burden. This would react in time, and Catholicism
+would suffer in the long run. And for this reason, amongst others, I
+am against Home Rule."
+
+But what are the Belfast men doing? _Imprimis_ they are working in
+what may be called the regular English methods. Unionist clubs are
+springing up in all directions. The Earl of Ranfurly opened three in
+one evening, and others spring up almost every day. The Ulster
+Anti-Repeal and Loyalist Association will during the month of April
+hold over three hundred meetings in England, all manned by competent
+speakers. The Irish Unionist Association and the Conservative
+Association are likewise doing excellent work, which is patent to
+everybody. But other associations which do not need public offices are
+flourishing like green bay trees, and their work is eminently
+suggestive. By virtue of an all-powerful introduction, I yesterday
+visited what may be called the Ulster war department, and there saw
+regular preparation for an open campaign, the preliminaries for which
+are under eminently able superintendence. The tables are covered with
+documents connected with the sale and purchase of rifles and munitions
+of war. One of them sets forth the particulars of a German offer of
+245,000 Mauser rifles, the arm last discarded by the Prussian
+Government, with 50,000,000 cartridges. As the first 150,000 Mausers
+were manufactured by the National Arms and Ammunition Company,
+Sparkbrook, Birmingham, it may be interesting to record that the
+quoted price was 16s. each, the cartridges being thrown in for
+nothing. Another offer referred to 149,000 stand of arms, with
+30,000,000 cartridges. A third document, the aspect of which to a
+native of Brum was like rivers of water in a thirsty land, was said to
+have been summarily set aside by reason of the comparative antiquity
+of the excellent weapon offered, notwithstanding the tempting lowness
+of the quoted price.
+
+A novel and unexpected accession of information was the revelation of
+a deep and sincere sympathy among the working men of England, who,
+with gentlemen of position and rifle volunteers by hundreds and
+thousands, are offering their services in the field, should civil war
+ensue. The letters were shown to me, all carefully filed, and
+sufficient liberty was permitted to enable me to be satisfied as to
+the tenour of their contents. Among the more important was a short
+note from a distinguished personage, offering a contribution of Ł500,
+with his guarantee of a force of two hundred men. This also was from
+England, a fact which the scoffers at Ulster will do well to read,
+mark, learn, and inwardly digest. The guarantee fund for the first
+campaign now amounts to nearly a million and a half, which the best
+financial authority of Belfast tells me is "as good as the Bank of
+England." What the Dublin police-sergeant said of John Bull may also
+be said of the Ulsterman--"He may have faults, but--he Pays!" Funds
+for current purposes are readily forthcoming, Ł50,000 being already in
+hand, while promises of a whole year's income seem thick as autumnal
+leaves in Vallombrosa. No means is left untried, no stone is left
+unturned to render abortive what the dry and caustic Northerners call
+the Home Ruin Bill, or the Bill for the _Bitter_ Government of
+Ireland.
+
+Moving hourly among people accurately and minutely acquainted with the
+local position, you cannot fail to be struck by the marvellous
+unanimity with which all Irish Unionists predict the exact result of
+such a bill as constitutes the present bone of contention, and their
+precise agreement as to concerted action should the crisis arise. They
+ridicule the English notion that they intend to take the field at
+once. Nothing of the kind. They will await the imposition of taxes by
+a Dublin Parliament, and will steadfastly refuse to pay. The money
+must then be collected by force of arms, that is, by the Royal Irish
+Constabulary, who will be met by men who under their very noses are
+now becoming expert in battalion drill, having mastered company drill,
+with manual and firing exercise; and whose numbers--I love to be
+particular--amount to the respectable total of one hundred and
+sixty-four thousand six hundred and fourteen, all duly enrolled and
+pledged to act together anywhere and at any time, most of them already
+well armed, and the remainder about to be furnished with splendid and
+effective weapons, which before this appears in print will have been
+landed from a specially chartered steamer, and instantly distributed
+from a spot I am forbidden to indicate, by an organisation specially
+created for the purpose.
+
+All these particulars--and more--were furnished by gentlemen of high
+position and unimpeachable integrity, whose statements, of themselves
+sufficient, were abundantly confirmed by the exhibition under
+restrictive pledges, of undeniable documentary proofs, with partial
+but satisfactory glimpses of the work actually in hand. No vapouring
+here, no breathless haste, not a suspicion of excitement. Nothing but
+a cold, emotionless, methodical, business-like precision, a
+well-considered series of commercial transactions, conducted by men
+specially acquainted with the articles required and regularly trained
+to office routine. English Home Rulers, unable to see a yard in front
+of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and
+water type,--the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of
+others by their own,--may be excused their inability to conceive the
+situation. They cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the
+Ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his
+freedom. A party backboneless as the Globerigina ooze, and, like that
+sub-Atlantic production, only held together by its own sliminess, must
+ever fail to realise the grit which means resistance, sacrifice,
+endurance; cannot grasp the outlines of the Ulster character and
+spirit, which resemble those which actuated the Scottish Covenanters,
+the Puritan army of Cromwell, or even--and this illustration should be
+especially grateful to Gladstonians--the Dutch Boers of the Transvaal.
+
+But although the surface is placid the depths are turbulent. If Dublin
+is simmering, Belfast is boiling. The breed is different. The
+Northerner is not demonstrative, is slow to anger, but being moved is
+not easily appeased. The typical Irishman, with his cutaway coat, his
+pipe stuck in his conical caubeen, his "sprig of shillelagh," or
+bludgeon the Donnybrook Fair hero who "shpinds half a-crown, Mates wid
+a frind An' (for love) knocks him down" is totally unknown in these
+regions. The men who by their ability and industry have lifted Ireland
+out of the slough, given her prosperity and comparative affluence,
+marched hand in hand with the English people, have only seen, with
+wonder, the rollicking Kelt, devoid of care, forethought, and
+responsibility, during their trips to the South and West--or wherever
+Home Rulers most do congregate. Strange it is, but perfectly true,
+that in most cases an Irishman's politics may be determined by outward
+and visible signs, so plain that he who runs may read. In Dundalk,
+which should be a thriving port, you see in and around the town long
+rows of low thatch-covered cabins, with putrid dunghills
+"convaynient," dirty, half-fed, barefooted children, and--magnificent
+Catholic churches. Home Rule rules the roost. As you move northwards,
+the symptoms of poverty gradually disappear. Scarva, the annual
+meeting ground of 5,000 to 10,000 Orangemen, who on July 13, the day
+after the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, fight the battle
+o'er again, with a King William and a King James, mounted respectively
+on their regulation white and bay chargers--Scarva is neat, clean and
+civilised. Bessbrook, the Quaker colony, is, as might be expected, a
+model community. Lurgan is well built, smart, trim, and delightful, a
+wealthy manufacturing place with the general aspect of Leamington. As
+the train steamed into the station an American traveller took a
+general survey of the district, and said to the general company--
+
+"I reckon this is a Unionist place."
+
+A fierce-looking man from Dundalk admitted the soft impeachment.
+
+"Thought so. Can spot a Home Rule town far off as I can see it. Mud
+huts, whitewashed cabins with no upstairs, muck-heaps, and bad fences.
+Can spot a Home Ruler as far as I can see him. Darned if I couldn't
+track him by scent, like a foxhound. That's the rank and file--very
+rank, I should say, most of them. And old J. Bull concludes to let the
+dunghill folks, powerful lazy beggars they seem, come top-sawyer over
+the fellows that built a place like this, eh?"
+
+The Newry man, taking off his hat, revealing a head of hair like a
+disorderly halo, took from the lining a little paper which called upon
+the Irish peasantry to remember their wrongs, referred to the time
+when Englishmen could murder Irishmen with impunity, stated that the
+thing had often been done, and called upon every male from fifteen to
+fifty to enrol himself in the Irish Independent Army--referring to the
+Protestants as "a cruel and bloody minority." The Yankee returned the
+bill contemptuously.
+
+"You think this a question of counting noses. Now, I'm a sympathiser
+of Home Rule, but if I was J.B. it would be different. I'm hanged if I
+would not stick to my clean, clever, faithful friends, though they
+were outnumbered by twenty to one. An' I'm a Republican, mind ye that.
+Ye might ask me to put the muck-heap men at the head of affairs--ye
+might ask till doomsday, but ye'd never get it. An' any man's a fool
+that would do it."
+
+A placard announcing the formation of an Irish Army of Independence,
+and calling on the people to enrol themselves, has been extensively
+circulated, and it is said that the Roman Catholics, like the
+Protestants, are industriously drilling, north, south, east and west.
+I am careful to use the term Protestants, as the force available is
+drawn from the general body of Nonconformists. Orangemen are members
+of the Church of Ireland, and have always been regarded as
+Conservative. On the contrary, Presbyterians and Methodists are
+considered to be advanced Liberals, and herein lies a popular English
+fallacy--Gladstonians often refer to the Orange agitation against the
+disestablishment of the Irish Church, which they would fain compare
+with the present opposition to Home Rule, forgetting or ignoring the
+fact that the strength of Ulster resides in the Nonconformist bodies,
+and that these were all in favour of disestablishment, leaving the
+Orangemen in a hopeless minority. Now, however, the Nonconformists
+have joined their forces with those of the Orange bodies, which
+creates a very different aspect of affairs. The English Home Rulers
+say the opposition will end in smoke. It is said that the most insane
+are sometimes wiser than they dream, just as liars sometimes speak
+truth by accident. The movement will end in smoke, but it will be the
+smoke of battle. Every man who supports the Home Rule Bill incurs the
+stigma of blood-guiltiness. The bill that succeeds Home Rule will be
+the Butchers' Bill. No doubt Mr. Gladstone will explain away the
+"painful occurrences which we all deplore," and will endeavour to
+transfer the blame to other shoulders. His talent for explanation is
+unapproachable, but unhappily he cannot explain the slain to life
+again.
+
+In a former letter I pointed out how cleverly the Nationalists dissect
+the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to
+Ireland, how they prove that its provisions are inconsistent and
+unworkable, how they propose to discount the trumpery restrictions and
+the gimcrack "safeguards" of the proposed measure, how in short, they
+tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors
+in high derision. The Belfast men do not discuss the bill, do not
+examine it clause by clause, do not quibble over the purport of this
+or the probable effect of that, do not ask how the customs are to be
+collected, or who is to pay for this, that, or the other. They descend
+to no details, enter into no particulars, point out no minor
+fallacies, argue no questions of the ultimate effect of any one
+section of the bill. They reject the measure as a whole. The principle
+is bad, radically rotten, and cannot be amended. With the Home Rulers
+they agree that the bill means Separation, and therefore they put it
+away _en bloc_. They will have no part with the unclean thing, but
+cast it to the winds, bundle it out neck and crop, kick it downstairs,
+treat it with immeasurable contempt. They are well versed in the broad
+principles of Constitutional law, as it at present exists; will tell
+you that the Irish Constabulary is the only force that can be brought
+against them for the collection of the taxes, which they will
+absolutely refuse; declare that the military can only be used against
+them for this purpose by Act of Parliament; cite the preamble of the
+Army Bill, which shows that there is no standing army, but only a
+force renewed in its functions from year to year; show that the
+monarch has ceased to be generalissimo of the British troops since
+such a year, refer to the sad case of Charles I., who would fain have
+collected Ship-money from a certain John Hampden, and endeavoured to
+use the English army for this laudable purpose, meeting a fate at once
+horrible and instructive. Then comes the application. Similar causes,
+say they, will bring about similar effects, and if the quality and
+temper of the people be considered their arguments seem reasonable.
+
+The Irish army of Independence is already a subject of mockery. "Ten
+of our men would make a hundred of them run like hares. On the 27th
+ult. a party of Orangemen were fired upon near Stewartstown, and
+although unarmed they stormed the hill whence came the shots, while
+the heroic riflemen who had fired 14 bullets, luckily without effect,
+showed that if too cowardly to fight, they were not too lazy to run."
+This occurrence, of which I had the description from authority, would
+have excited some attention in England, but here it is lightly passed
+over as nothing exceptional. "We are holding back our men. The other
+party are egging us on to outbreak, in the hope that our cause will be
+discredited, and that Lord Salisbury's visit in May might be
+hindered." There is a mutual repugnance between the two peoples, but
+the character of the repulsion is different. The Roman Catholics
+manifest an unmistakable hatred--the term is no whit too strong--a
+hatred of the social and intellectual superiority of their
+fellow-countrymen, who in turn look upon the Catholics (as a whole)
+with mistrust, mingled with contempt. As well ask Brother Jonathan to
+submit to the rule of the negro, as well ask the London trader to put
+his interests in the hands of a Seven Dials' syndicate, as well ask
+Mr. Gladstone and his followers to listen to reason or to talk common
+sense, as to expect the powerful and influential Protestants of
+Belfast and Ulster generally to entrust their future to a Legislature
+elected by the most illiterate electorate in the three kingdoms, and
+under the thumb of the priests--who wield a despotic power which
+people in England cannot be made to understand. A short time ago the
+Dublin Freemasons held a bazaar in aid of a charity whose object was
+the complete care of orphan children. The Catholic Archbishop
+immediately fulminated a decree that whosoever patronised the show
+would incur the terrors of the church, which means that they would
+perish everlastingly. Some poor folks, servant girls and porters and
+the like, who were sent by their mistresses or called by their honest
+avocations, dared to enter the accursed precincts, and emerging alive,
+rushed to confession, that the leprosy of Masonic charity might be
+washed from their souls by absolution.
+
+Absolution was refused. The wretched outcasts were referred to the
+Bishop, who in this dire emergency had sole power to unlock the gates
+of heaven. Do English people know what an Irish Catholic feels when
+refused absolution? I trow not, and that therefore they cannot justly
+estimate the power of the priests. Another illustration. A friend of
+mine made some purchases and sent a man for them, one of five hundred
+Catholics in his employ. The poor fellow halted two hundred yards from
+the contaminating circle, and by the aid of a policeman, got the
+parcel brought to him--without risking his immortal soul.
+
+The bazaar realised twenty-two thousand pounds.
+
+The Ireland of the harp and vesper bell, free from the dominion of
+England, having the prestige of an independent Catholic State, the
+Ireland of excommunication by bell, book, and candle, the Ireland of
+the priest and Pope--that, and no other, according to Ulstermen, is
+the ultimate end of Home Rule. They will have none of it, their
+determination is announced, and they will stand by what they say. From
+what I have seen and heard I am convinced that Ulster means business,
+and also has the power to win. The Irish Unionists are worthy
+co-partners in the great fight, and Englishmen should stand with them
+shoulder to shoulder. But with or without English aid, Ulster may be
+trusted to hold its own.
+
+Belfast, April 1st.
+
+
+
+
+No. 4.--MR. BALFOUR'S WELCOME.
+
+
+Arriving in the northern capital from Dublin you are apt to experience
+a kind of chill, akin to that felt by the boy of easy-going parents
+who, visiting the house of a staid and sober uncle, said to his little
+cousins, "At home we can fight with pillows, and let off crackers in
+the kitchen, and ride on the poker and tongs across the dining-room
+tables, and shy oranges at the chimney ornaments, and cut the sofas
+and pull out the stuffing, but here we get no fun at all!" The
+effervescence of the sunny south is conspicuous by its absence, and be
+it observed that the political south and the geographical south of
+Ireland are entirely different, the Ulstermen invariably using the
+term to denote an imaginary line across the country just above
+Dundalk. The mention of this town reminds me of a Cork commercial
+traveller's description of the Dundalk festivities in connection with
+the visit of our famous citizen, Mr. Egan, on the occasion of his
+release--"There was a murtherin' big crowd o' the greatest ruffians ye
+ever clapped your two eyes on. Some o' them had long sticks with a
+lump o' tow on the end, steeped in petroleum or something equally
+inflammable, an' whin they got the word to march--the hero was in a
+brake--they lit up and walked away in procession without looking at
+him at all, or taking any notice of him, which was moighty strange, I
+thought. They went on an' on, a lot o' rapscallions ye wouldn't like
+to meet in a lonely lane, and whin the brake stopped, for some reason
+or other, the whole o' them were unconscious of it, an' marched on
+without the grate man, leaving him an' his brake alone. I had the
+curiosity to go to the meetin'. There were two factions in the town,
+an' only one of them was riprisinted, the others stood aloof. They are
+at daggers drawn, flyin' at each other's throat, although Catholics
+and Home Rulers, an' this meetin' was the funniest thing at all! The
+chairman was a common fellow that made money some way, an' ye may say
+he liked to hear himself spake. An' be the powdhers o' war, he had the
+convaniences for speech-makin', for he had a jaw like a bulldog, an' a
+mouth on him ye couldn't span with your two hands." Further
+description proceeded in the same strain, and even allowing for the
+exuberancies of my friend's southern imagination, and his wide command
+of figurative language, this account of the kind of people who
+constitute ninety-nine hundredths of Mr. Gladstone's allies should
+give Home Rulers pause.
+
+There is no lack of enthusiasm here, but the people mind their work,
+and do not bubble over every five minutes. They certainly showed
+warmth on Monday morning, and never was popular ruler, victorious
+general, or famous statesman welcomed with more spontaneous burst of
+popular acclaim. York Street was literally full of all classes of
+people, save and except the typical Irish poor. Of the tens of
+thousands who filled Royal Avenue, Donegal Place, and the broad road
+to the North Counties Railway, I saw none poorly clad. All were well
+dressed, orderly, respectable, and wonderfully good-humoured, besides
+being the tallest and best-grown people I have ever seen in a fairly
+extensive European experience. I was admitted to the station with a
+little knot, comprising the Marquess of Ormonde, Lord Londonderry, the
+gigantic Dr. Kane, head of the Ulster Orangemen, and Colonel
+Saunderson, full as ever of fun and fight. It was at first intended to
+keep the people outside, and a strong detachment of police guarded the
+great gates, but in vain. They were swept away by mere pressure, and
+the people occupied the place to the number of many thousands, mostly
+wearing primroses. As the train steamed in there was a tremendous rush
+and cheering--genuine British cheering, such as that with which
+Birmingham used on great occasions to greet John Bright--rendering
+almost inaudible the numerous explosions of fog-signals which perhaps
+by way of salute had been placed at the entrance to the station. There
+was a mocking shout of "Dynamite," followed by a roar of laughter, and
+despite the frantic efforts of the railway men, who humanely struggled
+to avoid the seemingly impending sacrifices _ŕ la_ Juggernaut, the
+more active members of the crowd storming the train, instantly sprang
+aloft and manned the tops of the carriages with a solid mass of
+vociferating humanity. Soon Mr. Balfour's face appeared, and a moment
+after he was standing amidst the throng, swayed hither and thither by
+loyalists who shook his hands, patted him on the back, deafened him
+with their cheers. Out came the horses, dashing through the people,
+snorting and plunging like so many Gladstonians, but happily injuring
+no one. In went the men, Mr. Balfour laughing merrily, and looking
+uncommonly fit, lifting his soft brown hat in mute recognition of the
+magnificent welcome accorded by men who are perhaps among the most
+competent judges of his merit as a benefactor of Ireland. Away went
+the carriage, amid tumultuous shouting of "No Home Rule," and "God
+save the Queen." This went on for miles, from the Northern Counties'
+Terminus to Victoria Street, when Lord Londonderry signalled to
+quicken the pace, and after a short speech at the Albert Memorial, the
+_cortége_ disappeared over the bridge, and I returned to meet the
+English working men who arrived an hour later. Splendid it was to hear
+the six hundred miners from Newcastle-on-Tyne shouting "Old Ireland
+for ever!" while the generous Irishmen responded with "Rule Britannia"
+and cheers for Old England. Cheers for Belfast and Newcastle
+alternated with such stentorian vigour, each side shouting for the
+other, that you might have been excused for imagining that the Union
+of Hearts was an accomplished fact, and that brotherly love had begun
+and must ever continue. Said a miner, "We're all surprised to see that
+the people here are just like Englishmen. An' I'm blest if they aren't
+more loyal than the English themselves."
+
+From Monday morning the city has been resounding with beat of drum and
+the shrill sounds of the fife. The houses are swathed in bunting, and
+the public buildings were already covered with banners when I arrived
+on Friday last. This, however is not characteristic Belfast form. The
+Belfasters _can_ rejoice, and whatever they do, is thoroughly done,
+but work is their vocation, as befits their grave and sober mood. They
+are great at figures, and by them they try to show that they, and not
+the Dubliners, should be first considered. They are practical, and
+although not without sentiment, avoid all useless manifestation of
+mere feeling. They are mainly utilitarian, and prefer mathematical
+proof, on which they themselves propose to rely, in proving their
+case. Here is an instance. A Belfast accountant, who is also a public
+officer, has collected a number of comparative figures on which he
+bases the claims of Belfast to prior consideration. The figures are
+certainly exact, and are submitted as evidence of the superior
+business management, and larger, keener capacity of Protestant Belfast
+as compared with those of Catholic Dublin. Beginning with the
+functions of the Dublin Lord Mayor, secretary, and so forth, which
+cost Ł4,967 a year, it is shown that the same work in Belfast--which
+is rather larger than Dublin--costs only Ł176. Let us tabulate a few
+representative cases:--
+
+                                                   Dublin.   Belfast.
+
+Mayor, &c.                                           Ł4,967       Ł176
+Town Clerk, secretaries of committees, law agents     5,659      2,752
+Treasurer, accountants, stock registrar               3,402      2,168
+Fire Brigade, salaries and lighting                   3,616      1,247
+Coroners, sanitary officials                          3,530      1,310
+Wages of sanitary staff                               2,233      1,130
+Surveyors (borough & waterworks) and Secretaries      6,070      4,472
+Clerks of Peace and Revision Officers                 2,451      1,552
+                                                     ------     ------
+                 Totals                             Ł31,928    Ł14,807
+
+
+This discrepancy is everywhere observable. The Dublin Gas
+Management costs Ł14,850 against Ł8,060 in Belfast, with the
+result that the Ulster City Gasworks yielded in 1891 a profit of
+Ł27,105, charging 2s. 9d., while the Dubliners charge 3s. 6d. and
+make no profit at all. The Belfast markets yield a profit of about
+Ł3,500, while on the Dublin markets and abattoir there was a
+deficit of Ł3,012 to be made good by the ratepayers. Dublin, with
+property amounting to Ł20,000 a year and old-established Royal
+bounties, owes nearly twice as much as Belfast, which latter city
+spends more on what may be called the advance of civilisation.
+In 1892 Belfast spent Ł8,000 on a public park--Government
+providing for this matter in Dublin--Ł5,686 on public libraries,
+and Ł4,100 on baths and workhouses, against Ł1,217 and Ł1,627
+for like purposes in Dublin. "Therefore," say the Belfast men,
+"we will not have our affairs managed by these incompetent men,
+who, besides their demonstrated incapacity to deal with finance, are
+dependent for their position on the illiterates of the agricultural
+districts, who are to a man under the thumb of the priests, and who,
+moreover, have shown that their rapacity is equal to their lack of
+integrity, and whose leading doctrine is the repudiation of lawful
+contracts," a point on which commercial Ulster is excessively severe.
+One thing is certain--Ulster will never pay taxes levied by an Irish
+Legislature in which Ulster would be utterly swamped. All classes
+are of this opinion, from the Earl of Ranfurly, who during a long
+interview repeatedly expressed his conviction that the passing of
+any Home Rule Bill would be fraught with most lamentable results,
+to the humble trimmer of a suburban hedge who, having admitted
+that he was from the county Roscommon, and (therefore) a Catholic
+Home Ruler, claimed to know the Ulster temper in virtue of 28
+years' residence in or near Belfast, and said--
+
+"What they say they mane, an' the divil himself wouldn't tur-r-n thim.
+Ah, but they're a har-r-d-timpered breed, ivery mother's son o' them.
+Ye can comether (gammon) a Roscommon man, but a Bilfast man,
+whillaloo!" He stopped in sheer despair of finding words to express
+the futility of attempting to take in a Belfast man. "An' whin ye ax
+thim for taxes, an' they say they won't pay--ye might jist as well
+whistle jigs to a milestone! 'Tis thrue what I tell ye."
+
+As for to-day, the magnificence of the pageant beggars description.
+Whether regarded from a scenic point of view or with respect to
+numbers and enthusiasm, never since Belfast was Belfast has the city
+looked upon a sight approaching it. From early morning brass bands and
+fife bands commenced to enter the city from every point of the
+compass, and wherever you turned the air resounded with the inspiring
+rattle of the drum. Monday's display of bunting was sufficiently
+lavish to suggest the impossibility of exhibiting any more, but the
+Belfasters accomplished the feat, and the bright sunshine on the
+brilliant colours of the myriad banners was strongly reminiscent of
+Paris _en fęte_ under the Empire. The Belfast streets are long,
+straight, and wide, and mostly intersect at right angles. Much of the
+concourse was thus visible from any moderate coign of vantage, and
+from the Grand Stand in Donegal Place the sight was truly wonderful.
+The vast space, right, left, and front, was from 10 o'clock closely
+packed with a mighty multitude that no man could number, and
+locomotion became every moment so painful as to threaten total
+stagnation. The crowd was eminently respectable and perfectly orderly,
+and submitted to the passage of innumerable musical organisations with
+charming good humour. Never have I seen or heard of such an assemblage
+of bands, all uniformed, all preceded by gorgeous banners bearing all
+kinds of loyal and party mottoes, all marching in splendid military
+fashion, and of themselves numerous enough to furnish a very
+considerable demonstration. Many of the tunes were of a decidedly
+martial character, and strange to English ears, such as the "Boyne
+Water," the "Orange Lily" and the "Protestant Boys," the last being a
+version of the "Lillibulero" so often mentioned by Scott. All these
+tunes, more or less distasteful to Nationalists, were interspersed
+with others less debatable, such as "Rule Britannia," "The Old Folks
+at Home," "The Last Rose of Summer," "God Save the Queen," and "See
+the Conquering Hero comes," which last generally accompanied the
+portrait of Orange William, the "Glorious, Pious, and Immortal,"
+mounted on his famous white charger, which noble animal is depicted in
+the attitude erroneously believed to be peculiar to that of Bonaparte
+when crossing the Alps. The Earl of Beaconsfield was also to the fore
+with primroses galore; indeed, the favourite flower was invariably
+worn by the ladies, who were greatly in evidence. "Our God, our
+Country, and our Empire" was the motto over Mr. Balfour, with a huge
+"Welcome" in white on scarlet ground, the whole surrounded by immense
+Union Jacks. The familiar red, white, and blue bore the brunt of the
+decorative responsibilities, although here and there the green flag of
+Ireland hung cheek by jowl with the English standard, emphasising the
+friendliness of the present Union. As time went on the crowd became
+more and more dense, and a breathless pressman, who reached his post
+at twelve o'clock, stated that the seething myriads of Donegal Place
+and the adjacent streets were "hardly a circumstance" to what he had
+seen in the York Road, where the people awaited the hero of the hour.
+Things were getting serious at 12.15, and then it was that the active
+members of the crowd swarmed on the railings, balancing themselves in
+most uncomfortable situations, and maintaining their spiky seats with
+a tenacious martyrdom which spoke volumes for the determination of the
+Ulster character.
+
+On and ever on went the bands in seemingly endless procession,
+although merely assembling for the great march past, and therefore
+only a fraction of the impending multitude. Some enterprising men
+climbed the trees bordering the square, driving away the little flocks
+of sparrows which till then had conducted a noisy committee meeting
+in the branches, heedless of the drumming and general uproar, but
+which now dispersed without so much as a vote of thanks to the chair.
+At 12.30 a foam of white faces broke over the roofs of the lofty
+buildings around, protected by stone balustrades. At the same moment a
+shout of "They are coming" was heard, followed fey a thunderous roar
+of cheering. Mr. Balfour slowly emerged from York Road, amid immense
+acclamation, his carriage, piloted by the Corporation, moving inch by
+inch through the solid mass with inconceivable difficulty. Over and
+over again the line of vehicles stopped dead, and it was clear that
+the horses had much trouble to maintain their gravity. As the carriage
+with Sir Daniel Dixon (the Lord Mayor of Belfast), Sir Samuel Black
+(Town Clerk), and Lord Londonderry neared the Grand Stand, the
+pressmen agreed that nothing equal to this demonstration had ever
+before been held within the British Islands. Mr. Balfour having gained
+the platform the procession proper commenced, headed by the banner of
+the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, while the people broke into a
+chorus, asserting that Britons never, never shall be slaves.
+
+This at 12.35 precisely. Next came the Belfast Water Commissioners,
+the Belfast Board of Guardians, the provincial Corporate bodies, and
+the provincial Boards of Guardians. A tremendous tumult of voices
+accompanied all these, but when the Trinity College graduates arrived
+the din became overpowering. Their standard was halted opposite Mr.
+Balfour, and the young fellows burst into wild and uncontrollable
+enthusiasm. The medical students of Queen's College, Belfast, with the
+_alumni_ of the Methodist and Presbyterian College succeeding, gave
+"God Save the Queen" with great vigour, and came in a close second;
+but nothing quite touched the Trinity College men. The Scottish
+Unionist clubs, a fine body, two thousand strong, confirmed the
+statement that Scots who understand the situation are against Home
+Rule. Most of these men work in the shipbuilding yards of Belfast. The
+Belfast Unionist Clubs and the Provincial Unionist Clubs were, of
+course, heartily greeted, returning the applause with interest, and
+the Independent Order of Rechabites showed that their alleged
+exclusive partiality for cold water had not diminished their lung
+power. The British Order of Ancient Free Gardeners, the Loyal Order of
+Ancient Shepherds, and the Independent Order of Oddfellows reminded
+the Brutal Saxon who might be present of his native shore, the men
+being of the familiar sturdy type, marching in dense columns, all
+gloriously arrayed. There was none of the artful spreading over the
+ground which I observed in the great Birmingham demonstration which
+was to "end or mend" the Lords; and another point of divergency
+consists in the fact that the Belfast demonstration, which was
+incomparably larger, was perfectly spontaneous, and not due to
+organisation.
+
+Baronets and other gentlemen of distinction headed the Unionist clubs,
+walking through the streets in such manner as was never known before.
+Magistrates and Presbyterian ministers tramped with the rank and file.
+Sir William Ewart, Bart., Mr. Thomas Sinclair, J.P.--a great name in
+the city--and the Rev. Dr. Lynd were especially prominent. Some of the
+teetotallers wore white sashes, which were perhaps more conspicuous
+than the gaudy colours affected by the Orangemen, and one body of
+Unionists from the suburban clubs waved white handkerchiefs, a feature
+which for obvious reasons can never occur in Nationalist processions.
+The Shepherds have a pastoral dress, each man carrying a crook, and
+the marshals of the lodges bore long halberds. The van of each column
+was preceded by a stout fellow, who dexterously raising a long staff
+in a twirling fashion peculiar to Ireland, shouted, "Faugh-a-Ballagh,"
+which being interpreted signifies "Clear the way." The Oddfellows
+marched to the tune known in England as "We won't go home till
+morning," which is the same as "Marlborough goes to war," the
+favourite air of the Great Napoleon. All this time Mr. Balfour is
+standing at my elbow as I write, bareheaded, acknowledging the finest
+reception ever accorded to any man in Ireland, not excepting Dan
+O'Connell and Parnell. The funeral of the uncrowned king was a
+comparatively small affair, while the respectability of the crowd was
+of course immeasurably below that of the Belfast concourse. An old man
+somehow got near the platform and presented Mr. Balfour with a bunch
+of orange lilies, saying that was the flower the people would fight
+under. The Young Men's Christian Association cheered lustily for the
+Union to the tune of three thousand strong. The Central Presbyterian
+Association marched past singing "God is our refuge and our strength,"
+and the Church of Ireland Young Men's Society, headed by the clergy,
+superintended by the Bishop of the diocese from the stand, made a
+brave and gallant show. Hour after hour glides by, and still the
+teeming multitude moves on, and still Mr. Balfour stands uncovered. No
+joke to be a hero nowadays. The "Young Irelands" gave a grand cheer,
+and passed in brave array, singing with the Y.M.C.A. "Hold the Fort"
+and "God Save the Queen." Dr. Kane, the Bishop of Clogher, Captain
+Somerset Maxwell, Colonel Saunderson, and the Earl of Erne, Grand
+Master of the Orangemen of Ireland, received a stupendous reception as
+they followed the Young Men Christians, mustered in overwhelming
+force. The "Marseillaise" here broke out with considerable severity,
+and Mr. Balfour broke out into a broad smile, which ran over into a
+laugh, as the too familiar strains of "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" made the
+welkin ring. Then came "The March of the Men of Harlech," mixed with
+"Home Sweet Home" and "The Boyne Water," till the senses reeled again.
+
+At 3.35 the two miles of Orangemen seemed likely to go on for ever,
+and Mr. Balfour said to me, "I think this demonstration undoubtedly
+the greatest ever seen, and if you like you may convey that as my
+message to the Unionists of Birmingham. They will know what the effect
+of this will be. I need say no more." I asked Mr. Balfour if he
+thought the bill would pass, and he replied, "Tell the Birmingham men
+what I have said already. They will require no more." At 4.10 the
+procession was in full swing, but Mr. Balfour seemed to have had about
+enough and showed symptoms of making a move, and, as a preliminary,
+put on his hat. This was the signal for cheering, which perhaps
+surpassed anything that had gone before. The great ex-Irish-Secretary
+effaced himself; and Colonel Saunderson, backed by Lord Salisbury's
+son and several Irish peers, essayed to fill the gap. I ventured in my
+timid way to tap the gallant Colonel on the shoulder with a view to
+tapping his sentiments, which proved to be exultant. He told me of the
+wire he had received from Lord Salisbury, and spoke of the meeting in
+the Botanic Gardens which had taken place while I had watched the
+procession. Then he said, "Tell the Birmingham people through the
+_Gazette_ that as we have the last Prime Minister and the present
+Chief of the Opposition with us, we cannot be called revolutionary. As
+for this meeting, it will speak for itself. I think it the biggest
+thing ever known." During the procession a copy of the Home Rule Bill
+was burnt on the top of a pole in front of the Grand Stand.
+
+After exactly four hours of watching, I accepted the proffered aid of
+an Irish friend who agreed to lead me by roundabout ways to the
+telegraph office. After many narrow passages and devious turns, we
+struck the Royal Avenue, a long, long way from our starting place.
+Here we took the still advancing procession in flank. It was now 4.45,
+and my friend said, "By jabers, there's forty million more of them. I
+believe the procession reaches all round the world, and moves in a
+continuous band." And, sure enough, they were coming on as fresh as
+ever, but I felt that four hours and a quarter of bands and drums was
+enough at once, so I made a dash for the wires before they should be
+absolutely blocked. My account is not, perhaps, quite perfect, but it
+was pencilled under extraordinary circumstances--ten people talking to
+me at once, a lady's umbrella in my side, a thousand people leaning on
+my right elbow, and five hundred bands sounding in my ear. Surely it
+may be said to have been written under fire.
+
+Belfast, April 4th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 5.--HAS MR. MORLEY LIED?
+
+
+Before leaving Belfast I obtained incontrovertible evidence anent the
+growing fears of Mr. Gladstone's Government. Mr. Morley has denied the
+existence of any such nervousness, and has repudiated the assertion
+that precautions have been taken. But what is the truth of the matter?
+Let us see whether his statement is borne out by facts.
+
+In February certain military officers received a confidential
+communication having reference to the defence of the Belfast barracks.
+They were requested to examine and report upon the possibility of
+these buildings being tenable against a _coup de main_, were ordered
+to examine the loop-holes for musketry, to prepare plans of the same,
+and to duly submit them to the proper authorities, giving their
+opinion as to the practicability and sufficiency of existing
+arrangements in the event of the buildings being assaulted by
+organised bodies of armed civilians, during the absence of soldiers
+who might be about the city, taking their walks abroad, after the
+regulation manner permitted to Mr. Thomas Atkins under ordinary
+circumstances. The order was executed, the plans were duly furnished,
+and if Mr. Morley is still unaware of the fact, I have much pleasure
+in imparting the information which I have on the best authority
+attainable in an imperfect world. He may rely on this statement as
+being absolutely undeniable, and to descend to particulars, I will add
+that plans were made of the Tram Stables Barracks, the Willow Bank
+Barracks, and the Victoria Barracks. As I have said, the instructions
+were marked Confidential, and the Irish Secretary may have relied on
+this magic word in formulating his denials. The alternative hypothesis
+is, of course, obvious enough. The work may have been ordered and
+executed without Mr. Morley's knowledge, but it has been done, and,
+after proper inquiry, he will not venture to deny it. The circumstance
+is a curious commentary on the Gladstonian affectation of perfect
+security, and the scornful references of Home Rulers to the alleged
+determination of Ulstermen, in the last resource, to push matters to
+extremity. I could tell him more than this. It would be easy to adduce
+other instances of Governmental nervousness, but prudential and
+confidential considerations intervene.
+
+However, while in the vein, let me submit for serious contemplation
+the fact that up to the morning postal delivery of Wednesday, April 5,
+1893, written offers of personal assistance in the matter of armed
+resistance to the exact number of ten thousand and five have reached a
+certain Ulster organisation from England and Scotland, the roll
+including five generals, with a percentage of Victoria Cross men. This
+statement is made on the authority of the Earl of Ranfurly, who told
+me that the matter was within his personal knowledge, and that the
+whole of these communications were entirely spontaneous and altogether
+unsolicited, and that nobody in Ireland was in any way responsible for
+their existence. Lord Ranfurly also said that while the hearty
+friendship and co-operation of these gentlemen were warmly appreciated
+by Irish Loyalists, he was quite certain that their generous aid would
+never be required, for that Home Rule was now defunct, dead, and
+buried, and beyond the possibility of resurrection. It may be
+remarked, in passing, that this is the feeling of the best-informed
+Irish Home Rulers, and that many in my hearing have offered to back
+their opinion by laying odds. The rejection of the Bill so far from
+exasperating the Nationalist party, would positively come as a relief.
+To say that they are lukewarm is only to fairly indicate a state of
+feeling which is rapidly degenerating into frigidity. They declare
+that the Bill is unworkable, and while maintaining their abstract
+right to demand whatever they choose, believe that, taking one
+consideration with another, the lot of autonomic Ireland would not be
+a happy one.
+
+Mr. Richard Patterson, J.P., the great ironmonger of Belfast, observes
+that "according to Mr. Gladstone the only people who really understand
+Ulster are those who have never been in it." My interview with him was
+both instructive and interesting. He is one of the Harbour
+Commissioners, and a gentleman of considerable scientific attainments,
+as well as a great public and commercial man. He belongs to the Reform
+Club and, with his fellow-members, was up to 1886 a devoted follower
+of Mr. Gladstone. The name of his firm, established in 1786 on the
+very ground it now occupies, is a household word in Ireland, and Mr.
+Patterson himself has the respect and esteem of his bitterest
+political opponents. He pointed out the unfairness and injustice of
+Mr. Gladstone's reference to religion, when turning a deaf ear to the
+Belfast deputation. "The report of the Chamber of Commerce," he said,
+"was a purely business statement, and had no element of party feeling.
+The fact that the Protestant members of the Chamber outnumber the
+Catholics is in no respect due to religious intolerance, which in this
+body is totally unknown. Anybody who pays a guinea a year may be
+elected a member, whatever his religion, whatever his circumstances,
+providing he is a decent member of society, which is the only
+qualification required. Members are certainly elected by ballot, but
+during the many years I have belonged to the Chamber not a single
+person has been black-balled. If the Protestants are more numerous,
+the fact simply demonstrates their superior prosperity, arising only
+from their more steady application to hard work. We live on terms of
+perfect friendship with our Catholic countrymen, and we assiduously
+cultivate the sentiment. It is only when a weak and ignorant pandering
+to disloyalty excites opposition that enmity begins. Only let us
+alone, that is all we ask. We were going on beautifully until Mr.
+Gladstone and his accomplices upset everything." Speaking of the
+difference between the Ulster men and the Irish Kelts, Mr. Patterson
+said, "Prosperity or the reverse is indicative of the breed. The
+Southern Irish had more advantages than the Ulstermen. They had better
+land, better harbours, a far more productive country, and yet they
+always seethe in discontent. Put 20,000 Northerners in Cork, and in
+twenty years the Southern port could knock Liverpool out of time."
+Addressing himself to the Home Rule Bill, he declared that the
+practical, keen-witted merchants of Belfast dismissed the whole
+concoction as unworthy of sober consideration, and declared that an
+awful responsibility rested on Mr. Gladstone. Said this experienced
+J.P.:
+
+"The Belfast riots of 1886 were terrible. Forty people were killed in
+the streets, and what I saw in my capacity of magistrate was dreadful
+in the extreme. The injuries from gun-shot wounds were almost
+innumerable, and many a local doctor gained experience in this line
+which is unknown to many an army surgeon. The riots began with the
+ruffian class, from which this great city is not entirely free, and
+gradually rose upwards to the shipbuilding yards. All this disturbance
+and awful loss of life were entirely due to the production of Mr.
+Gladstone's first bill. And now they tell us that a worse bill--for it
+is a worse bill--might become law without any inconvenience. I submit
+to any reasonable man that if the mere menace of a bill cost forty
+lives in Belfast alone, the loss of life all over Ireland, once the
+bill were passed, would be enormous. And all this will be attributable
+to the action of Mr. Gladstone, who has never been in Ulster."
+
+Walking down Royal Avenue I met Colonel Saunderson, radiant after the
+great demonstration of two days ago, wearing a big bunch of violets in
+place of Tuesday's bouquet of primroses. He stopped to express good
+wishes to the _Gazette_, and said that the Belfasters were proud of
+Birmingham, which city he regarded as being the most advanced and
+enlightened in the world. While he so spake, up came the mighty Dr.
+Kane, idol of the Ulsterites, towering over the gallant Colonel's
+paltry six feet one, and looking down smilingly from his altitude in
+infinite space on my own discreditable five feet ten. He agreed with
+the Colonel as to the merits of Birmingham, and added that every
+Unionist in Belfast cherished a deep sentiment of gratitude to the
+hardware city, requesting me to explode the misleading statements of
+the Separatist press, which asserts that Tuesday's procession
+consisted of Orangemen. "The first two hours," said the Reverend
+Doctor, "consisted of bodies who do not processionise, and who never
+perform in public, in or out of Belfast, Methodists, Presbyterians,
+and the like, while the 25,000 or 30,000 Orangemen who came in at the
+tail of the show were a mere fraction of the whole. Colonel
+Saunderson, the Earl of Erne, and myself stood up in our carriage and
+cheered the Radical Reform Club, a thing we certainly have never done
+before." Here the Colonel laughed, and said--
+
+"The union of hearts, Doctor."
+
+"Yes, the union of hearts and no mistake, as the Grand Old Man will
+find--to his cost. All classes are united against the common enemy"
+(Mr. Gladstone). "But tell me something--How is it that the English
+people are deceived by that arch-professor of cant? Tell me that!"
+
+I requested the good doctor to ask me something easier, and he
+doubtless would have done so, but at this moment up came the famous
+Dr. Traill, the Admirable Crichton of Ireland, and with my usual
+thirst for knowledge, I ventured to suggest that the mathematical
+intellect of the Trinity College Examiner might possibly grapple with
+the problem.
+
+The learned professor smiled, gripped my unworthy fin, shook out some
+words of greeting, wagged his head hopelessly, and--bolted like a
+rocket.
+
+Dr. Traill is said to be equally versed in Law, Physic, and Divinity,
+to sport with trigonometry, and to amuse his lighter moments with the
+differential calculus. But "this knowledge was too wonderful for him,
+he could not attain unto it," and to avoid confession of defeat, he
+fled with lightning speed. This erudite doctor is well known in
+England, especially among riflemen. Colonel Saunderson describes him
+as a wonderful shot at a thousand yards, and thinks he was once one of
+the Irish Eight at Wimbledon. I met him on the stand on Tuesday, when
+he amusingly described his adventures on the Continent. "The poor
+Poles," he said, "wished to take me to their collective bosom, and to
+fall on my individual neck, the moment they found I was an Irishman.
+They said we were brothers in misfortune!" Whereat this learned pundit
+laughed good-humouredly. It may be that Dr. Traill is the long-range
+rifleman of whom a Land League man remarked, on hearing that the
+marksman had made a long series of bull's eyes--
+
+"The saints betune us an' harm--but wouldn't he make an iligant
+tenant!"
+
+Dr. Kane was not surprised to see the professor run away. He said, "I
+cannot understand it all. I must and will cross the Channel
+immediately to investigate this strange phenomenon. I have always
+considered the English a people of superior mental force, men who
+could not be easily deceived. That they should pin their faith to a
+man who has proved to demonstration that Home Rule is impossible, who
+more than any other has branded the Nationalist party with ignominy, I
+cannot understand." The Doctor perhaps momentarily forgot that the
+English do not pin their faith to Mr. Gladstone, that the adverse
+majority are dead against him, and that this majority is daily
+increasing by leaps and bounds. Gallant Captain Leslie, whom I saw
+earlier in the day, more accurately hit the situation. This splendid
+old soldier said, "The English people are not to be blamed. Living
+under social conditions of perfect freedom and friendship they do not
+understand the conditions prevailing in Ireland; they cannot be
+expected to understand a state of things differing so widely from
+anything within the circle of their own experience. But all the same,
+if they grant Home Rule, if they listen to the disloyal party rather
+than to their loyal friends, if they truckle to treason rather than
+support their own supporters, the consequences will be disastrous to
+England, and where the disasters will stop is a piece of knowledge
+which 'passes the wit of man.'"
+
+Running up to Ballymena, I encountered several interesting
+personalities, each of whom had his own view of the all-absorbing
+subject, and looked at the matter from his own standpoint. An
+Irish-American of high culture, a man of science, looked up from what
+he regarded as "the most interesting book in existence," which turned
+out to be Thompson's "Evolution of Sex," and said that once Home Rule
+were in force the blackguard American-Irish would return in shoals,
+and that the Fenians of America might be expected to "boss the show."
+"How is it," he asked, "that the English people listen to what appears
+the chief argument of Separatist orators--that agitation will come to
+an end, that the Irish will be content to rest and be thankful?
+Clearly while money and power can be had by agitation, so long will
+agitation continue. That seems so obvious to me, that I wonder at the
+patience of the North of England men--I was among them during the
+general election--in listening quietly to this argument, if it be one
+at all. And with all their experience of the past to enlighten them
+into the bargain. Was not the disestablishment of the Church to remove
+all cause of discontent? Then it was the land. You gave several Land
+Acts, most favourable laws, very one-sided, all in favour of the
+tenant, far beyond what English, Scotch, or Welsh farmers hope to get.
+Have you satisfied Irishmen yet? No, and you never will. The more you
+give, the more they ask. They never will be content. ''Tis not their
+nature to.' England now suffers for her own weak good nature. The true
+curse of Ireland is laziness. I left Belfast at twenty, but I am well
+acquainted with Ireland. In the North they work and prosper. In the
+South they do nothing but nurse their grievances. Twenty years' firm
+government, as Lord Salisbury said, would enrich the country. Do the
+right thing by them--put them level with England and Scotland, and
+then put down your foot. Let them know that howling will do no good,
+and they'll stop it like a shot. Paddy is mighty 'cute, and knows when
+he has a _man_ to deal with. Put a noodle over him and that noodle's
+life will be a burden. And serve him right. Fools must expect fools'
+reward."
+
+A Catholic priest I met elsewhere was very chary of his opinions, and
+confined himself to the "hope that England would see her way to
+compensate the Church and the country for centuries of extortion and
+oppression." This he thought was a matter of "common honesty." He did
+not exactly suggest a perpetual church-rate for the benefit of the
+Catholics of Ireland, but the thing is on the cards, and may be
+proposed by Mr. Gladstone later on. Something ought to be done,
+something substantial, for the gentlemen educated under the Maynooth
+Grant. Mr. Bull has admitted the principle, and his sense of fair play
+will doubtless lead him to do the right thing, always, of course,
+under compulsion, which is now usually regarded as the mainspring of
+that estimable gentleman's supposed virtuous actions.
+
+Ballymena is a smart looking place, trig and trim, thriving and
+well-liking, a place to look upon and live. The people are all
+well-clad, and prosperous, well-fed and well-grown. The men are mostly
+big, the women mostly beautiful; the houses are of stone, handsome and
+well-built. On the bleaching grounds you see long miles of
+linen--Irish miles, of course--and all the surroundings are pleasant.
+After this, no need to say the place is one of the blackest, most
+Unionist, Protestant, and loyal in the whole country. A number of buff
+placards issued by Nationalists attract respectful attention. The same
+bill is stuck all over Belfast--in the High Street, on the hoardings
+facing the heretic meeting houses, everywhere. It purports to present
+the sentiments of the great Duke of Wellington _re_ the Roman
+Catholics of Ireland, and is to the effect that in moments of danger
+and difficulty the Roman Catholics had caused the British Empire to
+float buoyant when other Empires were wrecked; that the Roman
+Catholics of Ireland, and they only, had saved our freedom, our
+Constitution, our institutions, and in short that it is to the Irish
+Roman Catholics that we owe everything worth having. Alone they did
+it. The priest, in short, has made Mr. Bull the man he is.
+
+Can anybody in England "go one better" than this?
+
+These extracts are plainly taken from some speech on the Roman
+Catholic Emancipation Bill, and refer to the valour of the Irish
+soldiery, whose bravery in fighting for a Protestant cause was
+doubtless invaluable to the cause of liberty. There is an apocryphal
+story concerning Alfred de Musset, who on his death-bed is reported to
+have conveyed to a friend with his last breath his last, his only
+wish, to wit:--
+
+"Don't permit me to be annotated." The Iron Duke might have said the
+same if he had thought of it. He could not know that, shorn of his
+context, divorced from his drift, he would be placarded in his native
+land as an agent in the cause of sedition and disloyalty. This truly
+Grand Old Man, who, in his determination to uphold the dignity and
+unity of the Empire "stood four-square to all the winds that blew,"
+would scarcely have sided with the modern G.O.M. and his satellites,
+Horsewhipped Healy and Breeches O'Brien.
+
+One word as to the alleged "intolerance of the fanatic Orangemen of
+Belfast."
+
+The placards above-mentioned were up on Tuesday last. They are large
+and boldly printed, and attracted crowds of readers--but not a hand
+was raised to deface them, to damage them, to do them any injury
+whatever. I watched them for four-and-twenty hours, and not a finger
+was lifted against any one in the High Street or elsewhere, so far as
+I could ascertain.
+
+There are twenty thousand Orangemen in the city, and the Protestants
+outnumber the Papists by three to one. Yet the placard was treated
+with absolute respect, and although I entered several groups of
+readers I heard no words of criticism--no comment, unfavourable or
+otherwise, no gesture of dissent. The people seemed to be interested
+in the bill, and desirous of giving it respectful consideration. I
+have seen Liberal Birmingham, when in the days of old it assembled
+round Tory posters--but the subject becomes delicate; better change
+our ground. It is, however, only fair to say that the Gladstonians of
+Birmingham, who, as everybody knows, formed the extreme and inferior
+wing of the old Radical party, can hardly teach the Belfast men
+tolerance.
+
+Ballymena, April 6th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 6.--THE EXODUS OF INDUSTRY.
+
+
+Derry is a charming town, unique, indescribable. Take equal parts of
+Amsterdam and Antwerp, add the Rhine at Cologne, and Waterloo Bridge,
+mix with the wall of Chester and the old guns of Peel Castle, throw in
+a strong infusion of Wales, with about twenty Nottingham lace
+factories, stir up well and allow to settle, and you will get the
+general effect. The bit of history resulting in the raising of the
+siege still influences Derry conduct and opinions. The 'Prentice Boys
+of Derry, eight hundred strong, are ardent loyalists, and having once
+beaten an army twenty-five thousand strong, believe that for the good
+of the country, like the orator who had often "gone widout a male,"
+they too could "do it again." They do not expect to be confronted with
+the necessity, but both the Boys and the Orangemen of Derry, with all
+their co-religionists, are deeply pledged to resist a Dublin
+Parliament. "We would not take the initiative, but would merely stand
+on our own defence, and offer a dogged resistance. We have a tolerable
+store of arms, although this place was long a proclaimed district, and
+we have fifteen modern cannon, two of which are six-pounders, the rest
+mostly four-pounders, and one or two two-pounders, which are snugly
+stored away, for fear of accident." Thus spake one who certainly
+knows, and his words were amply confirmed from another quarter.
+
+Derry makes shirts. The industrious Derryans make much money, and in
+many ways. They catch big salmon in the middle of the town, and
+outside it they have what Mr. Gladstone would call a "plethora" of
+rivers. They ship unnumbered emigrants to the Far West, and carry the
+produce of the surrounding agriculturists to Glasgow and Liverpool.
+They also make collars and cuffs, but this is mere sport. Their real
+vocation is the making of shirts, which they turn out by the million,
+mostly of high quality. Numbers of great London houses have their
+works at Derry. Welch, Margeston and Co. among others. The Derry
+partner, Mr. Robert Greer, an Englishman forty years resident in the
+town, favoured me with his views _re_ Home Rule, thus:--
+
+"The bill would be ruinous to Ireland, but not to the same extent as
+to England. Being an Englishman, I may be regarded as free from the
+sectarian animosity which actuates the opposing parties, but I cannot
+close my eyes to the results of the bill, results of which no sane
+person, in a position to give an opinion, can have any doubt. We are
+so convinced that the bill would render our business difficult, not to
+say impracticable, that our London partners say they will remove the
+works, plant, machinery, and all, to the West of Scotland or
+elsewhere.
+
+"About 1,200 girls are employed in the mill, and 3,000 to 4,000 women
+at their own homes all over the surrounding country.
+
+"Mr. Gladstone may think he knows best, but here the unanimous opinion
+is that trade will be fatally injured. Ireland is no mean market for
+English goods, and the market will be closed because Ireland will have
+no money to spend. Go outside the manufacturing towns and what do you
+see? Chronic poverty. Manufacturers will remove to the Continent, to
+America--anywhere else--leaving the peasantry only. The prospective
+taxes are alarming. We know what would be one of the very first acts
+of a Dublin Parliament. They would curry favour with the poor, the
+lazy districts, by an equalisation of the poor rate. In Derry, where
+everybody works for his bread, the rate is about sixpence in the
+pound. There are districts where it runs to ten shillings in the
+pound. The wealthy traders, the capitalists, the manufacturers of the
+North will have to pay for the loafers of the South. The big men would
+gather up their goods and chattels and clear out. There are other
+reasons for this course."
+
+Here Mr. Greer made the inevitable statement that Englishmen out of
+Ireland did not understand the question; and another large
+manufacturer chipped in with:--
+
+"Leave us alone, and we get on admirably. There is no intolerance;
+everybody lives comfortably with his neighbour. But pass the bill and
+what happens? The Catholic employés would become unmanageable, would
+begin to kick over the traces, would want to dictate terms, would
+attempt to dominate the Protestant section, which would rebel, and
+trouble would ensue. They would not work together. It is impracticable
+to say: Employ one faith only and Home Rule means that Catholicism is
+to hold the sway. The Nationalist leaders foster this spirit,
+otherwise there would be no Home Rule. The workpeople would act as
+directed by the priest, even in matters connected with employment. You
+have no idea what that means to us. It means ruin. The people do not
+know their own mind, and their ignorance is amazing. My porter says
+that when the bill becomes law, which will take place in one month
+from date, he will have a situation in Dublin at a thousand a year,
+and both he and others sincerely believe in such a changed state of
+things for Catholics alone."
+
+I went over Welch, Margetson's works, a wonderful place, where were
+hundreds of women, clean and well-dressed, working at the various
+departments of shirt-making. The highest class of mill hands I ever
+saw, working in large and well-ventilated rooms, many getting a pound
+a week. Another firm over the way employs one thousand five hundred
+more. And according to the best authority, that of the owners, all
+this is to leave the country when Ireland gets Home Rule.
+
+A very intelligent Catholic farmer living a few miles out of Donegal
+said, "Farmers look at the bill in the light of the land question.
+We're not such fools as to believe in Gladstone or his bill for
+anythin' else. Shure, Gladstone never invints anythin' at all, but
+only waits till pressure is put on him. Shure, iverythin' has to be
+dhragged out iv him, an' if he settles the land question, divil thank
+him, 'tis because he knows he's bate out an' out, an' _has_ to do it,
+whether he will or no. An' now he comes bowin' an' scrapin' an'
+condiscindin' to relave us--whin we kicked it out o' his skin. Ah! the
+divil sweep him an' his condiscinshun."
+
+Ingratitude, thy name is Irish Tenant!
+
+Misther O'Doherty proceeded to say that landlords were all right now,
+under compulsion. But the tenantry demanded that they should be
+released entirely from the landlords' yoke. He said that the
+agriculturists were not in touch with the whole question of Home Rule,
+nor would they consider any subject but that of the land. The
+Nationalists had preached prairie value, and the people were tickled
+by the idea of driving out landowners and Protestants. All the evicted
+tenants, all the men who have no land, all the ne'er-do-weels would
+expect to be satisfied. Ulster is tillage--the South is mostly
+grazing. Ulster had been profitably cultivated by black Protestants,
+and their land was coveted by the priests for their own people. My
+friend admitted that, although born a Catholic, his religious opinions
+were liberal. I asked him if the Protestant minority would be
+comfortable under a Dublin Parliament. He shook his head
+negatively--"Under equal laws they are friendly enough, but they do
+not associate, they do not intermarry, they have little or nothing to
+do with each other. They are like oil and wather in the same bottle,
+ye can put them together but they won't mix. And the Protestant
+minority has always been the best off, simply because they are hard
+workers. A full-blooded Irishman is no worker. He likes to live from
+hand to mouth, and that satisfies him. When he has enough to last him
+a day through he drops work at once. The Protestants have Scotch
+blood, and they go on working with the notion that they'll be better
+off than their father, who was better off than their grandfather. And
+that's the whole of it."
+
+Mr. J. Gilbert Kennedy, of Donegal, holds similar views of Irish
+indolence. He told me that although living in a congested district he
+could not obtain men to dig in his gardens, except when thereto driven
+by sheer necessity, and that having received a day's pay they would
+not return to work so long as their money lasted. "They will put up
+with semi-starvation, cold, and nakedness most patiently. Their
+endurance is most commendable. They will bear anything, only--don't
+ask them to work." Mrs. Kennedy said that with crowds of poor girls
+around her, she was compelled to obtain kitchen maids and so forth
+from Belfast. "They will not be servants, and when they afford casual
+help, they do it as a great favour."
+
+A Scotsman who employs five hundred men in the mechanical work said:
+"I have been in Ireland fifteen years, and have gone on fairly
+smoothly, but with a world of management. For the sake of peace I have
+not five Protestants in the place; and I would have none if I could
+help it. It is, however, necessary to have Protestant foremen.
+Irishmen are not born mechanics. In Scotland and England men take to
+the vice and the lathe like mother's milk, but here it is labour and
+pain. Irishmen are not capable of steady, unremitting work. They want
+a day on and a day off. They wish to be traders, cattle-drovers,
+pig-jobbers, that they may wander from fair to fair. My men have
+little to do beyond minding machines; otherwise I must have Scots or
+English. Discharge a man and the most singular things occur. In a late
+instance I had seven written requests from all sorts of quarters to
+take the man back, although before discharge he had been duly warned.
+The entire neighbourhood called on me--the man's father, wife, mother,
+the priest, a Protestant lady, three whiskey-sellers, two
+Presbyterians, the Church of Ireland parson, God knows who. This
+lasted a fortnight, and then threatening letters set in; coffins,
+skulls, and marrow-bones were chalked all over the place, with my
+initials. Indeed you may say they are a wonderful people."
+
+Mr. E.T. Herdman, J.P., of Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone, should know
+something of the Irish people. The model village above-named belongs
+to him. Travellers to Londonderry viâ the Great Northern will remember
+how the great Herdman flax-spinning mills, with their clean,
+prosperous, almost palatial appearance, relieve the melancholy aspect
+of the peaty landscape about the Rivers Mourne and Derg. Mr. Herdman
+pays in wages some Ł30,000 a year, a sum of which the magnitude
+assumes colossal proportions in view of the surrounding landscape. The
+people of the district speak highly of the Herdman family, who are
+their greatest benefactors, but they failed to return Mr. E.T.
+Herdman, who contested East Donegal in 1892. The people were willing
+enough, but the priests stepped in and sent a Nationalist. Said Mr.
+Herdman, "Home Rule would be fatal to England. The Irish people have
+more affinity with the Americans or the French than with the English,
+and the moment international difficulties arise Ireland would have to
+be reconquered by force of arms. And complications would arise, and in
+my estimation would arise very early." A landowner I met at Beragh,
+County Tyrone, held somewhat original opinions. He said, "I refused to
+identify myself with any Unionist movement. If we're going to be
+robbed, let us be robbed; if our land is going to be confiscated, let
+it be confiscated. The British Government is going to give us
+something, if not much, by way of compensation; and my opinion is,
+that if the Grand Old Man lives five years longer he'll propose to
+give the Irish tenants the fee-simple of the lands without a penny to
+pay. That's my view, begad. I'm a sportsman, not a politician, and my
+wife says I'm a fool, and very likely she knows best. But, begad, I
+say let us have prairie value to-day, for to-morrow the G.O.M. will
+give us nothing at all."
+
+The most extraordinary curiosity of Derry, the _lusus naturć_ of which
+the citizens justly boast, is _the_ Protestant Home Ruler of brains
+and integrity who, under the familiar appellation of John Cook, lives
+in Waterloo Place. Reliable judges said, "Mr. Cook is a man of high
+honour, and the most sincere patriot imaginable, besides being a
+highly-cultured gentleman." So excited was I, so eager to see an Irish
+Home Ruler combining these qualities with his political faith, that I
+set off instanter in search of him, and having sought diligently till
+I found him, intimated a desire to sit at his patriotic feet. He
+consented to unburden his Nationalist bosom, and assuredly seemed to
+merit the high character he everywhere bears. Having heard his opinion
+on the general question, I submitted that Mr. Bull's difficulty was
+lack of confidence, and that he might grant a Home Rule Bill, if the
+Irish leaders were men of different stamp. He said they were "clever
+men not overburdened with money," and admitted that a superior class
+would have been more trustworthy, but relied on the people. "If the
+first administrators of the law were dishonest, the people would
+replace them by others. The keystone of my political faith is trust in
+the people. The Irish are keen politicians, and may be trusted to keep
+things square."
+
+I submitted that the patriots were in the pay of the Irish-Americans,
+who were no friends of England--
+
+"The present Nationalist members are not purists, but to take money
+for their services, to accept Ł300 a year is no more disgraceful than
+the action of the Lord Chancellor who takes Ł10,000. The
+American-Irish cherish a just resentment. They went away because they
+were driven out of the country by the land system of that day. And the
+Irish people must be allowed to regenerate themselves. It cannot be
+done by England. Better let them go to hell in their own way than
+attempt to spoon-feed them. But the injustice of former days does not
+justify the injustice to the landlords proposed by the present bill.
+It is a bad bill, an unjust bill, and would do more harm than good.
+England should have a voice in fixing the price, for if the matter be
+left to the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants
+were buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found
+that their four per cent. interest came lower than their rent. But
+they have quite ceased to buy, and for the stipulated three years will
+pay their rent as usual, and why? Because they expect the Irish
+legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land
+for nothing. Retributive justice is satisfied. For the last twenty
+years the landlords have suffered fearfully. The present bill is
+radically unsound, and I trust it will never become law."
+
+And this was all that the one specimen of a Protestant Home Ruler I
+have found in Ireland could say in favour of his views! His
+intelligence and probity compelled him to denounce Mr. Gladstone's
+Bill as "unjust" and radically unsound, and his patriotism caused him
+to pray that it might never become law! I left him more Unionist than
+ever.
+
+The great Orange leader of Derry, Mr. John Guy Ferguson, once Grand
+Ruler, and of world-wide fame, deprecated appeal to arms, except under
+direst necessity. "I should recommend resistance to all except the
+Queen's troops. Before all things a sincere loyalist, I should never
+consent to fire a shot on them. Others think differently, and in case
+of pressure and excitement the most regrettable things might happen.
+The people of Derry are full of their great victory of 1688, and
+believe that their one hundred and five days' resistance saved England
+from Catholic tyranny. The Bishop of Derry, as you know, had ordered
+that the troops of King James should be admitted when the thirteen
+Prentice Boys closed the gate on the very nose of his army." I saw the
+two white standards taken from the Catholic troops flanking the high
+altar of the Cathedral; which also contains the grandly-carved case of
+an organ taken from a wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588, just a
+century before the siege. The people have ever before them these
+warlike spoils, which may account for their martial spirit. An old
+Prentice Boy told me of the great doings of 1870, how a Catholic
+publican, one O'Donnell, endeavoured to prevent the annual marching of
+the Boys, who on the anniversary of the raising of the siege, parade
+the walls, fire guns, and burn traitor Lundy in effigy; how 5,000 men
+in sleeve-waistcoats entered the town to stop the procession, how the
+military intervened, and forbade both marching and burning; how the
+Boys seized the Town Hall, and in face of 1,700 soldiers and police
+burnt an effigy hanging from a high window, which the authorities
+could not reach; how Colonel Hillier broke down the doors and stormed
+the hall at the bayonet's point, to search both sexes for arms.
+Gleefully he produced an alphabetical rhyme, which he thought rather
+appropriate to the present time, and which ended as follows:--"X is
+the excellent way they (the authorities) were beaten, and exceeding
+amount of dirt they have eaten. Y is the yielding to blackguards
+unshorn, which cannot and will not much longer be borne. Z is the zeal
+with which England put down the Protestant boys who stood up for the
+crown." In 1883 Lord Mayor Dawson of Dublin wished to lecture at
+Derry, but the Boys took the Hall and held it, declining to permit the
+"colleague of Carey" (on the Dublin Town Council) to speak in the
+city. There you have the present spirit of Derry.
+
+Two miles outside the town I came on a fine Home Ruler, who had
+somewhere failed to sell a pig. "Sorra one o' me 'll do any good till
+we get Home Rule." He paid Ł5 a year for two acres of land with a
+house. "'Tis the one-half too much, Av I paid fifty shillings, I'd be
+aisy," he said. Truly a small sum to stand between him and affluence.
+I failed to sympathise with this worthy man, but my spirits fell as I
+walked through a collar factory, and thought of Mr. Gladstone. The
+dislocation of the shirt trade is less serious. Few Irish patriots
+have any personal interest in this particular branch of industry.
+
+Dublin, April 8th.
+
+
+
+
+MR. BALFOUR IN DUBLIN.
+
+
+Mr. Balfour is the most popular man in Ireland, and his Dublin visit
+will be for ever memorable. The Leinster Hall, which holds several
+thousands, was packed by half-past five; ninety minutes before
+starting time, and the multitude outside was of enormous proportions.
+The people were respectable, quiet, good-humoured, as are Unionist
+crowds in general, though it was plain that the Dubliners are more
+demonstrative than the Belfast men. The line of police in Hawkins
+Street had much difficulty in regulating the surging throng which
+pressed tumultuously on the great entrance without the smallest hope
+of ever getting in. The turmoil of cheering and singing was incessant,
+and everyone seemed under the influence of pleasurable excitement. As
+you caught the eye of any member of the crowd he would smile with a
+"What-a-day-we're-having" kind of expression. The college students
+were in great form, cheering with an inexhaustible vigour, every man
+smoking and carrying a "thrifle iv a switch." Portraits of Mr. Balfour
+found a ready sale, and Tussaud's great exhibition of waxworks next
+door to the hall was quite unable to compete with the living hero.
+Messrs. Burke and Hare, Parnell and Informer Carey, Tim Healy and
+Breeches O'Brien, Mr. Gladstone and Palmer the poisoner, with other
+benefactors and philanthropists, were at a discount. The outsiders
+were waiting to see Mr. Balfour, but they were disappointed. Lord
+Iveagh's carriage suddenly appeared in Poolbeg Street at the
+pressmen's entrance, and the hero slipped into the hall almost
+unobserved. Inside, the enthusiasm was tremendous. The building is
+planned like the Birmingham Town Hall, and the leading features of the
+auditorium are similar. The orchestra was crowded to the ceiling, the
+great gallery was closely packed, the windows were occupied, and every
+inch of floor was covered. A band played "God Save the Queen," "Rule
+Britannia," and the "Boyne Water." The word "Union," followed by the
+names of Balfour, Abercorn, Iveagh, Hartington, Chamberlain, and
+Goschen, was conspicuous on the side galleries, and over Mr. Balfour's
+head was a great banner bearing the rose, thistle, and shamrock, with
+the Union Jack and the English crown over all. Boldly-printed mottoes
+in scarlet and white, such as "Quis Separabit?" "Union is strength,"
+"We Won't submit to Home Rule," and "God Bless Balfour," abounded, and
+in the galleries and on the floor men waved the British flag. The
+people listened to the band, or amused themselves with patriotic songs
+and Kentish fire, till Mr. Balfour arrived, when their cheering, loud
+and long, was taken up outside, and reverberated through the city.
+
+The preliminaries being over, the principal speaker rose amid
+redoubled applause, which gradually subsided to the silence of intense
+expectation. Mr. Balfour's first words fell like drops of water in a
+thirsty land, and never had a speaker a more eager, attentive,
+respectful audience. Now and then stentorian shouts of assent
+encouraged him, but the listeners were mostly too much in earnest for
+noise. It was plain that they meant business, and that the
+demonstration was no mere empty tomfoolery. Parnellites were there--a
+drop in the ocean--but their small efforts at interruption were
+smilingly received. True, there was once a shout of "Throw him out,"
+but a trumpet-like voice screamed "Give him a wash, 'tis what he
+mostly needs, the crathur," upon which a roar of laughter proclaimed
+that the offender was forgiven. The outsiders continued their singing
+and cheering, and when Mr. Balfour concluded sent up a shout the like
+of which Dublin has seldom heard, if ever. Succeeding speakers were
+well received, the audience holding their ground. Mr. J. Hall, of
+Cork, evoked great cheering by the affirmation that Protestants
+desired no advantage, no privilege, unshared by their Catholic
+brethren. Similar points made by other speakers met with an instant
+and hearty confirmation that was unmistakable. Lord Sligo pointed out
+that firmness and integrity were nowhere better understood than in
+Ireland, and said that while William O'Brien, the great Nationalist,
+visited Cork under a powerful escort of police, who with the utmost
+difficulty prevented the populace from tearing him to pieces; on the
+other hand, Mr. Balfour had passed through the length and breadth of
+the land, visiting the poverty-stricken and disturbed districts of the
+West, with no other protection beyond that afforded by "his
+tender-hearted sister." Mr. Balfour rose to make a second speech, and
+the enthusiasm reached its climax. The great ex-Secretary seemed
+touched, and although speaking slowly showed more than his usual
+emotion. When he concluded the people sent up a shout such as England
+never hears--an original shout, long drawn out on a high musical note,
+something like the unisonous tone of forty factory bulls.
+
+The students went outside, and with their friends formed in military
+columns--the outside files well armed with knobby sticks as a
+deterrent to possible Parnellite enterprise. An extemporised arch of
+Union Jacks canopied Mr. Balfour in his carriage, which was drawn by
+hundreds of willing hands linked in long line. The column, properly
+marshalled, moved away, keeping step amid loud shouts of "Right, left,
+right, left," until perfect uniformity was attained, and the
+disciplined force marched steadily on to College Green, following the
+triumphal chariot with alternate verses of "God Save the Queen" and
+"Rule Britannia," each verse interpolated with great bursts of
+applause. At Trinity College the glare of torches appeared, and
+simultaneously an organised attempt at groaning boomed in under the
+cheering. Heedless of the rabble the column marched merrily on, not
+with the broken rush of an English mob, but with the irresistible
+force of unity in a concrete mass, with the multitudinous tramp of an
+army division. The yelling slummers hovered on each flank, frantic
+with impotent rage; willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, knowing
+that to themselves open conflict meant annihilation. A savage,
+unsavoury horde of rat-like ruffians, these same allies of Mr.
+Gladstone and Mr. Morley, a peculiarly repulsive residuum these Dublin
+off-scourings. They screamed "To hell with Balfour," "To hell with the
+English," "To hell with your Unionists," "To hell with Queen
+Victoria." Some of them sang a doggerel, beginning:--
+
+    Let the English remember,
+    We'll make them surrender,
+    And chase them to their boats,
+    And cut their ---- throats,
+    And make a big flood
+    Of their bad black blood--
+
+not precisely a poem to herald the famous "Union of hearts" so
+confidently expected. The Unionists tramped on cheering triumphantly,
+rejoicing in their strength, ignoring the taunting and jeering of the
+Parnellite scum as beneath contempt. An old Home Ruler expressed
+disapprobation of his party. "What's the use of showing your teeth
+when you can't bite?" he said. "Wait till we get the bill and then we
+will show them and the English what we can do."
+
+On through Grafton Street, Nassau Street, and into Dawson Street,
+always with great shouting and singing of "God Save the Queen," and
+"Rule Britannia," the torches still glaring in front. At Morrisson's
+Hotel, where Parnell was arrested, a man shouted "Three cheers for
+Gladstone," but nobody responded. The rabble may use him, but they
+refused a single shout. On the other hand groans were given with
+leonine force both for Morley and his master. Arrived at St. Stephen's
+Green, the procession halted at Lord Iveagh's residence, and Mr.
+Balfour came on the balcony, receiving a welcome right royal. He made
+another speech amid cheering and groaning of tremendous energy, making
+himself tolerably well heard under abnormal conditions. When he said
+"This day shall never fade from my recollection," the lamp beside him
+was removed and all was over. Back tramped the column, with its clouds
+of camp-followers, on the way cheering and sending to hell the member
+for South Tyrone, with other prominent politicians who live on the
+line of march. The students held their sticks aloft, striking them
+together in time to their singing. A shindy had been predicted on the
+return to College Green, and little groups of Scots Greys and Gordon
+Highlanders, the latter in their white uniforms, lounged about smoking
+their pipes in happy expectation, but beyond cheering at the statue of
+Orange William in Dame Street, nothing whatever occurred, and
+presently the crowd began to disperse. Seeing this, the police, who
+until now had been massed in strong force broke up into units, and
+moving leisurely about said, "Good night, boys; you have had enough
+fun for one day. Get to bed, all of you." Then the young men who had
+composed the great loyalist column left the square in little bands,
+each singing "God save the Queen," and every man feeling that he had
+deserved well of his country. The bill may be stone dead, but there is
+a satisfaction in the act of shovelling earth on the corpse.
+
+Dublin, April 8th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 7.--BAD FOR ENGLAND, RUINOUS TO IRELAND.
+
+
+Home Rule for Ireland means damage and loss to English working men.
+During the late general election the working men candidates of
+Birmingham, and of England generally, argued that once Ireland were
+granted Home Rule the distressful land would immediately become a
+Garden of Eden, a sort of Hibernian El-Dorado; that the poverty which
+drove Irishmen from their native shores would at once and for ever
+cease and determine, and that thenceforth--and here was the
+bribe--Irishmen would cease to compete with the overcrowded artisans
+and labourers of England. That these statements are diametrically
+opposed to the truth is well known to all persons of moderate
+intelligence, and the personal statement of several great capitalists
+with reference to their course of action in the event of Home Rule
+becoming law tends to show that multitudes of the industrious classes
+of Irish manufacturing towns will at once be thrown out of employment,
+and must of necessity flock to England, increasing the congestion of
+its great cities, competing with English labour, and inevitably
+lowering the rate of wages. Hear what comfortable words Mr. Robert
+Worthington can speak.
+
+Mr. Worthington is no politician; never has interfered with party
+questions; has always confined his attention to his business affairs.
+It was because of this that Mr. Balfour sent for him to confer anent
+the light railways, which have proved such a blessing to the country.
+It was Mr. Worthington who carried out most of these beneficent works.
+Besides this, Mr. Worthington has built railways to the amount of
+three-quarters of a million in Ireland alone. He has employed 5,300
+men at one time, and his regular average exceeds 1,500 all the year
+round. He may therefore be said to know what he is talking about. I
+called on him at 30, Dame Street, before I left Dublin, and he said,
+"The bill would be bad for England in every way, and would ruin
+Ireland. The question is certainly one for the English working man. If
+he wishes to avoid the competition of armies of Irish labourers and
+artisans he must throw out the bill. And this is how it will work--
+
+"All the railways I have constructed in Ireland have been built on
+county guarantees assisted by special grants from the Imperial
+Treasury. Without these special grants the work could never have been
+undertaken at all. If Home Rule becomes law those special grants from
+the Imperial Treasury will be no longer available; and what will be
+the result? Clearly that the work will not be undertaken; that the
+building of railways will come to an end, and that the Irish peasants
+who have devoted themselves to railway work will go to England and try
+to find employment there. Once a railway navvy, always a railway
+navvy, is a well-known and very true saying.
+
+"For my own part I shall be compelled to compete in England, having
+nothing to do in Ireland, and I shall of course transport my staff and
+labourers across the Channel.
+
+"The railways of Ireland, fostered by English capital, resting on
+England's security, have given vast employment to my countrymen. But
+they would do so no longer. Let us give an example to prove my point.
+
+"Before the introduction of the Home Rule Bill the railway stock to
+which I have referred stood at a premium of 27 per cent. Since the
+bill became public and has been the subject of popular discussion, I
+brought out the Ballinrobe and Claremorris Railway--with what result?
+Not one-seventh of the sum required has been subscribed, although in
+the absence of the bill the amount would certainly have been
+subscribed four times over, at a premium of 20 per cent. What does
+this prove?
+
+"Simply this--that the farmers and small shopkeepers who invest in
+this class of security will not trust their savings in the hands of
+the proposed Irish Legislature. The bill, therefore, stops progress,
+retards enterprise, drives away capital, and the workers must follow
+the money. That seems clear enough. Everybody here concedes so much.
+More than this. I can say from my own experience, and from the reports
+of my agents and engineers in the South and West of Ireland, that the
+Nationalists do not want this bill. I do not speak of Home Rule, but
+of this bill only. All condemn its provisions, and universally concur
+in the opinion that once it were passed it would be succeeded by a
+more violent agitation than anything we have yet seen--an agitation
+having for its object the radical amendment of the measure.
+
+"There is a complete cessation of railway work. Already the men are
+thinking of moving. But this is not all. I am now at a standstill,
+pulled up short by the bill. What is the effect on England? Under
+ordinary circumstances I buy largely all kinds of railway
+material--steel rails, sleepers, fasteners, engines, and carriages.
+Every year I send thousands and thousands of pounds to England for
+these things, and surely most of the money goes indirectly into the
+pockets of English working men, who are now suffering the loss of all
+this by reason of their apathy in this matter. I speak only as a man
+of business, anxious for the prosperity of my country. I do not
+discuss Home Rule; never did discuss it and never will. But I end
+where I began, and I repeat the bill will ruin Ireland, will be bad
+for England, and I will add that the British Government will soon be
+compelled to intervene to stave off Irish bankruptcy. Home Rulers are
+now becoming afraid of the bill; artisans, farmers, and labourers
+think it a good joke. They relished the hunt, but they don't want the
+game.
+
+"Returning to my own affairs, I say without hesitation that though the
+mere threat of the bill has paralysed my business, and that the
+passing of the bill would drive my men to England, yet--throw out the
+bill, deliver us from the impending dread, and during the next two
+years I shall myself expend Ł150,000 in railway material manufactured
+by British artisans. Emphatically I repeat that Home Rule to the
+British working man means increased competition and direct pecuniary
+loss."
+
+Mr. S. McGregor, of 30, Anglesea Street, Dublin, has been located in
+the city for 34 years, and seems to have been a politician from the
+first. Coming from the Land o' Cakes, he landed an advanced Radical,
+and a devoted admirer of the Grand Auld Mon. Once on the spot a change
+came o'er the spirit of his dream. His shop has the very unusual
+feature of indicating his political views. Her Gracious Majesty, Lord
+Beaconsfield, and Mr. Balfour look down upon you from neat frames. I
+am disposed to regard Mr. McGregor as the pluckiest man in Ireland. A
+quiet, peaceful citizen he is, one who remembers the Sawbath, and on
+weekdays concentrates his faculties on his occupation as a tailor and
+clothier. I did not seek the interview, which arose from a business
+call not altogether unconnected with a missing button, but his
+opinions and his information are well worth recording. Mr. McGregor
+said, "I thrust my opinions on none, but I have a right to my
+opinions, and I do not affect concealment. The great defect of the
+Irish Unionists is want of courage. They dare not for their lives come
+forward and boldly state their convictions. If Lord Emly or some other
+Irish Roman Catholic nobleman had come forward earlier, it might have
+induced weak-kneed members of the party to do likewise. The Unionists
+do not exercise the great influence they undoubtedly possess. They
+allow themselves to be terrorised into silence. Let them have the
+courage of their opinions and they have nothing to fear. The masses of
+the industrial population are not in favour of Home Rule. The
+corner-men, who want to spend what they never earned, and the farmers,
+who hope to get the land for nothing, are the only hearty Home Rulers
+in Ireland. I employ ten people, all Roman Catholics, some of them
+with me for twenty-five years. None of these are Home Rulers. I became
+a convert to Conservatism by my intimate knowledge and personal
+acquaintance with many of the leaders of the Fenian movement. I saw
+through the hollowness of the whole thing, and declined any connection
+therewith. Poor Henry Rowles, who was to be told off by signal to
+shoot Mr. Foster, was one of my workmen. He died in prison, some said
+from sheer fright, but two or three of his friends were hanged. He was
+mixed up by marriage with the Fenian party, and was drawn on and on
+like many another. I would rather not name the Fenian leaders I knew,
+and the reason is this. I knew them too well. Speaking of the Unionist
+lack of courage, you must not be too much surprised. During the last
+fourteen years Unionists have had to maintain a guerilla warfare for
+existence. But the strangest feature of the present position is
+this--the Home Rulers are kicking at the bill! A great Home Ruler of
+my acquaintance (Mr. McGregor referred me to him) is getting quite
+afraid. He is a farmer holding 300 acres under Lord Besborough, and
+says that he trusts things will remain as they are. He has a good
+landlord, borrows money by the subvention, and has a perfect horror
+of the class of men who will obtain the upper hand in Ireland. A
+Nationalist over the way was about to extend the buildings you see
+there. Plans were drafted, and offices were to be built. Out comes the
+bill and in goes the project. He has no confidence in the Irish
+Nationalist leaders; but, strange to say he believes in Mr. Gladstone.
+He admits that the Irish M.P.'s are not quite up to his ideal, but
+believes that the Grand Old Man's genius for accommodation and
+ingenious dovetailing of Imperial interests will pull the country
+through. Meanwhile he lays out no penny of money.
+
+"I am a Presbyterian, and what is more a United Presbyterian,
+belonging to the Presbyter of Scotland. All Scotch Presbyterians are
+advanced Radicals. We have four hundred members here. They came here
+worshippers of Gladstone and Home Rulers to the tune of 97 per cent.
+The congregation is now 99 per cent. Unionist or Conservative out and
+out. Of the four hundred we have only three Home Rulers. What will the
+English people say to that? Tell them that our minister, who came here
+a Home Ruler, is now on a Unionist mission in Scotland--the Rev. Mr.
+Procter, brother of Procter, the cartoonist of _Moonshine_ and the
+_Sketch_, to wit. My workpeople, all steady, industrious people, ask
+but one thing--it is to be let alone."
+
+Here Mr. G.M. Roche, the great Irish wool-factor and famous amateur
+photographer, said--
+
+"Ah! we must have the bill. 'Tis all we want to finish us up. We're
+never happy unless we're miserable; the bill will make us so and we'll
+never be properly discontented till we get it!"
+
+Passing through the Counties of Louth, Dublin, Londonderry, Monaghan,
+Tyrone, Donegal, and Fermanagh, I met with many farmers whose
+statements amply confirmed the words of the descendant of the great
+Sir Boyle Roche. These unhappy men had been divested of their last
+grievance, stripped of their burning wrongs, heartlessly robbed of
+their long-cherished injuries. It was bad enough before, when Irishmen
+had nothing except grievances, but at least they had these, handed
+down from father to son, from generation to generation, along with the
+family physiognomy, two precious, priceless heirlooms, remarkable as
+being the only hereditary possessions upon which the brutal Saxon
+failed to cast his blood-shot, covetous eye. And now the grievances
+are taken away, the _Lares_ and _Penates_ of the farmer's cabin are
+ruthlessly removed, and the melancholy peasant looks around for the
+immaterial antiquities bequeathed by his long-lost forefathers. "Ah;
+don't the days seem lank and long, When all goes right and nothing
+goes wrong, And isn't our life extremely flat, When we've nothing
+whatever to grumble at." The Irish farmer is with the poet, who hits
+his harrowing anguish to a hair. He folds his hands and looks about,
+uncertain what to do next. His rent has been lowered by 35 per cent.,
+he has compensation for improvements, fixity of tenure, and may borrow
+money to buy the land outright at a percentage, which will amount to
+less than his immortal Rint. What is the unhappy man to do? His
+grievances have been his sole theme from boyhood's happy days, the
+basis of his conversation, his actuating motive, the very backbone of
+his personal entity. Now they are gone, the fine gold has become dim,
+and the weapons of war have perished. Once he could walk abroad with
+the proud consciousness that he was a wronged man, a martyr, a brave
+patriot struggling nobly against the adverse fates, a broth of a boy,
+whose melancholy position was noted by the gods, and whose manly
+bearing under proffered slavery established a complete claim to high
+consideration in Olympus. But now, with heart bowed down with grief
+and woe, he walks heavily, and even as a man who mourneth for his
+mother, over the enfranchised unfamiliar turf. He peeps into the
+bog-hole, and does not recognise himself. He could pay the rent twice
+over, but he hates conventionalities, and would rather keep the money.
+He is constructed to run on grievances, and in no other grooves, and
+the strangeness of his present position is embarrassing. The tenants
+of Lord Leitrim, Lord Lifford, and the Duke of Abercorn make no
+complaint of their landlords. On the contrary, they distinctly state
+that all are individually kind and reasonable men, and while
+attributing their own improved position to the various Land Acts given
+to Ireland, which leave the actual possessor of the land small option
+in the matter, they freely admit that these gentlemen willingly do
+more than is ordained by any act of Parliament, and that over and
+above the provisions of the law, all three are fair-minded men,
+desirous of doing the right thing by their people and the country at
+large. Other landlords there were on whose devoted heads were breathed
+curses both loud and deep.
+
+The late Lord Leitrim was exalted to the skies, but his murdered
+father was visited with blackest malediction. At Clones, in the County
+Monaghan, I met a sort of roadside specimen of the _Agricola
+Hibernicus_, who explained his position thus:--"Ye see, we wor
+rayduced 35 per cent., an' 'tis thrue what ye say; but then produce is
+rayduced 50 per cent., so we're 15 per cent. worse off than iver we
+wor before. We want another Land Act that'll go to the root. An' that
+we'll get from an Oirish Parliament an' only from that. 'Tis not the
+tinints that's always the worst off. Many's the time I seen thim that
+had a farrum of their own go to the dogs, while thim that had rint to
+pay sthruggled and sthrived an' made money an' bought the freeholders
+out. For whin they had nothin' to pay they did no work, an' then,
+bedad ivery mortial thing wint to the divil. An' that's how it'll be
+wid the lazy ones once we get Home Rule, which means the land for
+nothin' or next to nothin'. Barney will kick up his heels and roar
+whirroo, but call again in a year an' ye'll see he hasn't enough money
+to jingle on a tombstone."
+
+My next from the New Tipperary, whither I journey viâ Kildare,
+Kilkenny, and Limerick, _en route_ for Cork and the Blood-taxed Kerry,
+where Kerry cows are cut and carved. Now meditation on marauding
+moonlighters makes melancholy musing mine.
+
+Limerick, April 11th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 8.--TERRORISM AT TIPPERARY.
+
+
+Tipperary is Irish, and no mistake. Walking into town from Limerick
+the first dwellings you reach are of the most primitive description,
+whether regarded as to sanitary arrangements or otherwise. The ground
+to the right slopes downwards, and the cabins are built with sloping
+floors. The architects of these aboriginal erections stuck up four
+brick walls, a hole in, a hole out, and a hole in the top, without
+troubling to level the ground. Entering, you take a downward step, and
+if you walk to the opposite exit, you will need to hold on to the
+furniture, if any. If you slip on the front step you will fall head
+first into the back yard, and though your landing might be soft
+enough, it would have a nameless horror, far more killing than a stony
+fall. The women stand about frowsy and unkempt, with wild Irish eyes,
+all wearing the shawl as a hood, many in picturesque tatters, like the
+cast-off rags of a scarecrow, rags and flesh alike unwashed and of
+evil odour. The children look healthy and strong, though some of them
+are almost _in puris naturalibus_. Their faces are washed once a week;
+one of them said so, but the statement lacks confirmation, and is
+opposed to the evidence of the senses. Scenes like these greet the
+visitor to Old Tipperary, that is, Tipperary proper, if he enter from
+Limerick. The town is said to be old, and in good sooth the dunghills
+seem to possess a considerable antiquity. In this matter the Tipperary
+men are sentimental enough--conservative enough for anything. At
+Tipperary, of all places, the brutal Saxon will learn how much has
+been bequeathed to Irishmen by their mighty forefathers.
+
+The eastern side is better. A grand new Roman Catholic church has just
+been built at a cost of Ł25,000, and in front of the gilded
+railings--for they are gilt like the railings of Paris--were dreadful
+old women, like Macbethian witches, holding out their skinny hands for
+alms. Smartly dressed young ladies, daughters of publicans and
+shopkeepers, passed in jauntily, took a splash in the holy water,
+crossed themselves all over, knocked off a few prayers, and tripped
+merrily away. The better parts of the town belong to Mr. Smith-Barry,
+the knock-me-down cabins to Mr. Stafford O'Brien, whose system is
+different. As the leases fall in the former has modern houses built,
+while the latter is in the hands of the middlemen, who sub-let the
+houses, and leave things to slide. The _laissez-aller_ policy is very
+suitable to the genius of the genuine Irish, who may be said to rule
+the roost in Tipperary.
+
+I interviewed all sorts and conditions of men, but every individual
+bound me down to closest secrecy. And although nobody said anything
+approaching high treason, their alarm on finding they had ventured to
+express to a stranger anything like their real opinion was very
+significant. The conversations took place last evening, and this
+morning before breakfast a young man called on me at the Station
+Hotel, Limerick Junction, three miles from Tipperary, "on urgent
+business." "Me father thinks he said too much, an' that ye moight put
+what he said in print, wid his name to it. Ye promised ye wouldn't,
+an' me father has confidence, but he wishes to remoind ye that there's
+plinty in Tipperary would curse him for spakin' wid an Englishman, an'
+that dozens of thim would murther him or you for the price of a pot of
+porter." Another messenger shortly arrived, bearing a letter in which
+the writer said that any mention of his name would simply ruin him,
+and that he might leave the country at once. And yet these men had
+only said what Englishmen would account as nothing.
+
+New Tipperary adjoins the old, to which it is on the whole superior.
+All the descriptions I have seen of the Land League buildings are
+untrue and unfair. Most of them were written by men who never saw the
+place, and who paraphrased and perpetuated the original error. It was
+described as a "mile or two from Tipperary," and the buildings were
+called "tumble-down shanties of wood, warped and decaying, already
+falling to pieces." The place adjoins and interlocks with the old
+town; it is not separated by more than the breadth of a street, is
+largely built of stone, and comprises a stone arcade, which alone cost
+many thousands. Some of the cottages are of wood, but they look well,
+are slated, and seem in good condition. The butter mart, a post and
+rail affair, with barbed wire decorations, is desolate enough, and
+nearly all the shops are shuttered. Enamel plates with Dillon Street
+and Emmett Street still attest the glory that has departed, but the
+plate bearing Parnell Street escaped my research. The William O'Brien
+Arcade is scattered to the winds, save and except the sturdy stone
+walls, which (_ŕ la_ Macaulay's New-Zealander) I surveyed with
+satisfaction, sketching the ruins of the structure from a broken bench
+in Dillon Street.
+
+A full and true history of the New Tipperary venture has never been
+written. As in the present juncture the story is suggestive and
+instructive, I will try to submit the whole in a form at once concise
+and accurate. The particulars have been culled with great pains from
+many quarters and carefully collated on the spot, and may be relied on
+as minutely exact and undeniable. Everyone admits Mr. Smith-Barry's
+claim to the title of a good landlord, an excellent landlord, one of a
+thousand. Before the _casus belli_ was found by William O'Brien all
+was prosperity, harmony, and peace. Mr. Smith-Barry owns about 5,000
+acres of land situate in the fat and fertile plain of Tipperary, known
+as the Golden Vale, with the best part of the county town itself.
+Tipperary is a great butter centre. The people are ever driving to the
+butter factory, which seemed to be worked in the Brittany way.
+Donkey-carts driven by women, and bearing barrels of milk, abound on
+the Limerick Road. The land is so rich, grand meadows, and heavy
+dairy-ground, that the place prospered abundantly, and was by
+commercial men reckoned an excellent place for business. But they have
+changed all that. The Tipperary folks were once thought as good as
+the Bank of England. Now they dislike to pay anything or anybody.
+Their delicate sense of _meum_ and _tuum_ is blunted. They take all
+they can get, and pay as little as they can. They affect dunghills and
+dirt, and have a natural affinity for battle, murder, and sudden
+death. How did all this come about?
+
+First, as to Mr. Smith-Barry's character. The most advanced
+Nationalists, the Fenian papers, the Catholic clergy, all concurred in
+blessing him. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne, Canon Hegarty,
+P.P., and Tim Healy spoke of him in the character of a landlord in
+highest terms. Sir Charles Russell, Tim Harrington, Mr. O'Leary
+(Chairman of the Clonakilty Town Commissioners, a violent
+Nationalist), and Canon Keller (R.C.) unanimously agreed that Mr.
+Smith-Barry must be exempted from the general condemnation of Irish
+landlords. They said he was the "kindest of landlords," and that his
+tenants were "comfortable, respectable, and happy." They proclaimed
+his "generous and noble deeds," declaring that "there have been no
+cases of oppression or hardship, and the best and most kindly
+relations have existed." All these sayings are gathered from
+Nationalist papers, which would supply thousands of similar character,
+and up to the time of O'Brien's interference, none of an opposite
+sort. But, as Serjeant Buzfuz would have said, the serpent was on the
+trail, the viper was on the hearthstone, the sapper and miner was at
+work. Thanks to the patriot's influence, the Paradise was soon to
+become an Inferno.
+
+A Mr. Ponsonby wanted his rents, or part of them. His tenants had
+lived rent-free for so long--some of them were seven years
+behind--that they naturally resented the proposed innovation. Mr.
+Smith-Barry and others came to Mr. Ponsonby's assistance, and,
+endeavouring to settle the thing by arbitration, proposed that the
+landlord should knock off Ł22,000 of arrears, should make reductions
+of 24 to 34 per cent. in the rents, and make the tenants absolute
+owners in 49 years. This was not good enough. Judge Gibson thought it
+"extravagantly generous," but the Tipperary folks resented Mr.
+Smith-Barry's connection with such a disgracefully tyrannical piece of
+business, and, at the instance of William O'Brien, determined to make
+him rue the day he imagined it. They sent a deputation to remonstrate,
+and Mr. Smith-Barry, while adhering to his opinion as to the
+liberality of the proposition, explained that he was only one of many,
+and that whatever he said or did would not change the course of
+events. The Tipperary folks required him to repudiate the arrangement,
+to turn his back on his friend and himself, and--here is the cream of
+the whole thing, this is deliciously Irish--they soberly, seriously,
+and officially proposed to Mr. Smith-Barry that in addition to the 15
+per cent. abatement they had just received on their rent he should
+make a further remittance of 10 per cent. to enable them to assist the
+Ponsonby tenants in carrying on the war against their landlord, on
+whose side Mr. Smith-Barry was fighting. They said in effect, "You
+have given us 3s. in the pound, to which we had no claim; now we want
+2s. more, to enable us to smash the landlord combination, of which you
+are the leader." This occurred in the proceedings of a business
+deputation, and not in a comic opera.
+
+Mr. Smith-Barry failed to see the sweet reasonableness of this
+delightful proposition, and then the fun began.
+
+O'Brien to the rescue, whirroo!
+
+He rushed from Dublin, and told the Tipperary men to pay Smith-Barry
+no rent. If they paid a penny they were traitors, slaves, murderers,
+felons, brigands, and bosthoons. If they refused to pay they were
+patriots, heroes, angels, cherubim and seraphim, the whole country
+would worship them, they would powerfully assist the Ponsonby folks in
+the next county, they would be saviours of Ireland.
+
+And besides all this they would keep the money in their pockets. But
+this was a mere detail.
+
+The people took O'Brien's advice, withholding Mr. Smith-Barry's rent,
+keeping in their purses what was due to him, in order that somebody's
+tenants in the next county might get better terms. Still Mr.
+Smith-Barry held out, and the Land League determined to make of him a
+terrible example. He owned most of the town. Happy thought! let the
+shopkeepers leave his hated tenements. Let their habitations be
+desolate and no man to dwell in their tents. The Land League can build
+another Tipperary over the way, the tenants can hop across, and Mr.
+Smith-Barry will be left in the lurch! The end, it was thought, would
+justify the means, and some sacrifice was expected. Things would not
+work smoothly at first. The homes of their fathers were void; new
+dunghills, comparatively flavourless, had to be made, the old
+accretions, endeared by ancestral associations, had to be abandoned,
+and the old effluvium weakened by distance was all that was left to
+them. The new town was off the main line of trade and traffic, but it
+was thought that these, with the old Tipperary odour, would come in
+time. Streets and marts were built by the Land League at a cost of
+Ł20,000 or more. The people moved away, but they soon moved back
+again. The shopkeepers could do no business, so with bated breath and
+whispering humbleness they returned to Mr. Smith-Barry. The mart was
+declared illegal, and the old one was re-opened. But while the
+agitation continued, the town was possessed by devils. Terrorism and
+outrage abounded on every side. The local papers published the names
+of men who dared to avow esteem for Mr. Smith-Barry, or who were
+supposed to favour his cause. The Tipperary boys threw bombshells into
+their houses, pigeon-holed their windows with stones, threw blasts of
+gun-powder with burning fuses into their homes. They were pitilessly
+boycotted, and a regular system of spies watched their goings out and
+their comings in. If they were shopkeepers everything was done to
+injure them, and people who patronised them were not only placed on
+the Black List but were assaulted on leaving the shops, and their
+purchases taken by violence and destroyed. Broken windows and threats
+of instant death were so common as to be unworthy of mention, and the
+hundred extra armed policemen who were marched into the town were
+utterly powerless against the prevailing rowdyism of the Nationalist
+party. Honest men were coerced into acting as though dishonest, and
+one unfortunate man, who had in a moment of weakness paid
+half-a-year's rent, pitifully besought Mr. Smith-Barry's agent to sue
+him along with the rest, and declared he would rather pay it over
+again than have it known that the money had been paid. "Ye can pay a
+year's gale for six months, but ye can't rise again from the dead,"
+said this pious victim to circumstances.
+
+At last the leaders were prosecuted, but before this the Boys had
+great divarshun. These good Gladstonians, these ardent Home Rulers,
+these patriotic purists, these famous members of the sans-shirt
+Separatist section, set no limits to their sacrifices in the Good
+Cause, stuck at nothing that would exemplify their determination to
+bring about the Union of Hearts, were resolved to take their light
+from under a bushel and set it in a candlestick. They wrecked many
+houses and sorely beat the inmates. They burnt barns, and stacks, and
+homesteads, and in one case a poor man's donkey-cart with its load of
+oats. They exploded in people's homes metal boxes, leaden pipes, and
+glass bottles containing gun-powder, in such numbers as to be beyond
+reckoning. They burnt the doors and window sashes of the empty houses,
+knocked people down at dark corners with heavy bludgeons, and fired
+shots into windows by way of adding zest to the family hearth. Poor
+John Quinlan escaped five shots, all fired into his house. Mr. Bell,
+of Pegsboro, beat this record with six. He was _believed_ to
+sympathise with Mr. Smith-Barry! Men with white masks pervaded the
+vicinity from the gentle gloaming till the witching morn, and woe to
+the weak among their opponents, or even among the neutrals, whom they
+might meet on their march!
+
+The tenants were great losers. A commercial man from Dublin assured me
+that the agitation cost him Ł2,000 in bad debts. The people were
+inconvenienced, unsettled, permanently demoralised, their peaceful
+relations rudely interrupted, themselves and their commercial
+connections more or less discredited and injured, and the whole
+prosperous community impoverished, by the machinations of O'Brien and
+Bishop Croke of Thurles, a few miles away. The inferior clergy were of
+course in their element. Father Humphreys and others were notorious
+for the violence of their language. Gladstonians who think Home Rule
+heralds the millennium, and who babble of brotherly love, should note
+the neat speech of good Father Haynes, who said, "We would, if we
+could, pelt them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of
+heaven and the fires of hell, till every British bulldog, whelp, and
+cur would be pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." This is
+the feeling of the priests, and the people are under the priestly
+thumb. That this is so is proved by recent events in Dublin. None but
+the Parnellites could make head against the Catholic Party. In the
+recent conflict the Parnellites were squelched. Tim Healy kicked and
+bit, but Bishop Walsh got him on the ropes, and Tim "went down to
+avoid punishment." The priest holds Tim in the hollow of his hand. Tim
+and his tribe must be docile, must answer to the whistle, must keep to
+heel, or they will feel the lash. Should they rebel, their
+constituencies, acting on priestly orders, will cast them out as
+unclean, and their occupation, the means by which they live, will be
+gone. Tim and his congeries hate the clerics, but they fear the
+flagellum. They loathe their chains, but they must grin and bear them.
+They have no choice between that and political extinction.
+
+The opinion of Tipperary men on the question of religious toleration
+is practically unanimous. Pass Home Rule and the Protestants must
+perforce clear out. As it is, they are entirely excluded from any
+elective position, their dead are hooted in the streets, their funeral
+services are mocked and derided by a jeering crowd. The other day a
+man was fined for insulting the venerable Protestant pastor of
+Cappawhite, near Tipperary, while the old man was peacefully
+conducting the burial service of a member of his congregation. Foul
+oaths and execrations being meekly accepted without protest, a more
+enterprising Papist struck the pastor with a sod of turf, for which he
+was punished. But, returning to our muttons, let me conclude with
+three important points:
+
+(1) Mr. Smith-Barry built the Town Hall of Tipperary at a cost of
+Ł3,000, and gave the use thereof to the Town Commissioners for
+nothing. He spent Ł1,000 on a butter weigh-house, Ł500 on a market
+yard, and tidied up the green at a cost of Ł300. He gave thirty acres
+of land for a park, and the ground for the Catholic Cathedral. He
+offered the land for a Temperance Hall (I think he promised to build
+it), on condition that it was not used as a political meeting-house.
+The Catholic Bishop declined to accede to this, and the project was
+abandoned.
+
+(2) Several dupes of the Land League, for various outrages, were
+sentenced to punishment varying from one year's hard labour to seven
+years' penal servitude.
+
+(3) O'Brien, M.P., and Dillon, M.P., who had brought about the
+trouble, were with others convicted of conspiracy, and were sentenced
+to six months' imprisonment. But this was in their absence, for soon
+after the trial commenced, being released on bail, they ran away,
+putting the salt sea between themselves and their deservings. Heroes
+and martyrs of Ireland, of whom the brutal Briton hears so much,
+receive these patriots into your glorious company!
+
+The spirit of Tipperary is ever the same. No open hostility now, but
+the fires of fanaticism are only smouldering, and only a breath is
+needed to revive the flame. Every Protestant I saw, and all the
+intelligent and enlightened Catholics, concur that this is so, and
+that Home Rule would supply the needful impulse. These men also submit
+that they understand the matter better than Mr. Gladstone and his
+patch-work party.
+
+Tipperary April 12th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 9.--TYRANNY AND TERRORISM.
+
+
+The peasantry and small shopkeepers of this district can only be
+captured by stratagem, and this for two reasons. Their native
+politeness makes them all things to all men, and their fear of
+consequences is ever before them. Their caution is not the Scotsman's
+ingrained discretion, but rather the result of an ever-present fear.
+English working men of directly opposite politics chum together in
+good fellowship, harbouring no animosity, agreeing to differ in a
+friendly way. It is not so in Ireland. The Irish labourer is
+differently situated. He dare not think for himself, and to boldly
+speak his mind would mean unknown misfortunes, affecting the liberty
+and perhaps the lives of himself and those nearest and dearest to him.
+That is, of course, assuming that his opinions were not approved by
+the village ruffians who watch his every movement, of whom he stands
+in deadly terror, and whom he dreads as almost divining his most
+secret thoughts. A direct query as to present politics would fail in
+every case. As well try to catch Thames trout with a bent pin, or
+shoot snipe with a bow and arrow. My plan has been to lounge about
+brandishing a big red guide-book, a broad-brimmed hat, and an American
+accent; speaking of antiquities, shortest roads to famous spots,
+occasionally shmoking my clay dhudeen with the foinest pisantry in the
+wurruld and listening to their comments on the "moighty foine weather
+we're havin', Glory be to God." They generally veer round to the
+universal subject, seeking up-to-date information. Discovering my
+ignorance of the question, they explain the whole matter, incidentally
+disclosing their own opinions. The field workers of this district are
+fairly intelligent. Most have been in England, working as harvesters,
+and some of the better-informed believe that in future they will be
+compelled to live in England altogether.
+
+A fine old man, living by the roadside near Oolagh, said:--"I wint to
+England for thirty-four years runnin', and to the same place, in North
+Staffordshire, first wid father, thin wid son. Whin I got too ould an'
+stiff I sent me own son. First it was old Micky, thin it was young
+Micky. He's away four months, and brings back enough to help us thro'
+the winter, thanks be to God. The other time he mostly works at the
+big farrum beyant there. Whin they cut up the big farrums into little
+ones, nayther meself nor Micky will get anything, by raison we're
+dacent, harmless people. 'Tis the murtherin' moonlighters will get the
+land, an' me son wouldn't demane himself by stoppin' in the counthry
+to work for them. First 'twas the landlords dhrove us away, next
+'twill be the tenants. We're bound to be slaughtered some way,
+although 'twas said that when we 'bolished the landlords we'd end our
+troubles. But begorra, there's more ways o' killin' a dog than by
+chokin' him wid butther." There is a growing feeling among the farmers
+that the land will be heavily taxed to raise revenue, and that this
+means expatriation to the labouring classes, who will swarm to England
+in greater numbers than ever.
+
+Another grand old man, named Mulqueen, spoke English imperfectly, and
+it was only by dint of frequent repetition that his meaning could be
+mastered. Well clothed and well groomed, he stood at his cottage door,
+the picture of well-earned repose. Thirty-two years of constabulary
+service and twenty-one years in a private capacity had brought him to
+seventy-five, when he returned to end his days on his native spot,
+among Irish-speaking people, and under the noble shadow of the Galtee
+Mountains. Divested of the accent which flavoured his rusty English,
+Mr. Mulqueen's opinions were as follows:--
+
+"I am a Home Ruler and I voted for a Nationalist. But I am now
+doubtful as to the wisdom of that course. I see that Irishmen quarrel
+at every turn, that they are splitting up already, that the country
+under their management would be torn to pieces, that the people would
+suffer severely, and that England would have to interfere to keep our
+leaders from each other's throats. It was Irish disputes that brought
+the English here at first. In the event of an Irish Legislature Irish
+disagreements would bring them here again. We'll never be able to
+govern ourselves until the people are more enlightened." I left this
+sensible and truly patriotic Irishman with the wish that there were
+more like him. He was a pious Catholic, and regretted to learn that I
+was otherwise, admitting in extenuation that this was rather a
+misfortune than a fault, and, with a parting hand-shake, expressing an
+earnest hope that "the golden gates of glory might open to receive my
+sowl, and that we might again convarse in the company of the blessed
+saints in the peaceful courts of heaven." This old-fashioned pious
+kindliness is hardly now the mode, and isolated instances can rarely
+be met with even in remote country districts.
+
+Running down to Limerick, I witnessed a warm contention between a
+Unionist from Belfast and a commercial traveller from Mullingar, a hot
+Home Ruler, the latter basing his arguments on alleged iniquitous
+treatment of his father, a West Meath farmer, and defending boycotting
+as "a bloodless weapon," which phrase he evidently considered
+unanswerable. The Land League he contended was a fair combination to
+protect the interests of the tenants, and avowed that all evictions
+were unwarrantable acts of tyranny. The Belfast man showed that these
+arguments were equally applicable to the other side, and asked the
+patriot if eviction were not likewise "a bloodless weapon," to which
+inquiry the Mullingar man failed to find the proper answer, and, not
+coming up to time, was by his backers held to have thrown up the
+sponge. This incident is only valuable as showing the poor line of
+country hunted by the more brainy Nationalists. A County Clare man
+boasted of his collection of Irish curiosities. "I have the pistol
+O'Connell shot So-and-So with, I have the pistol Grattan used when he
+met Somebody else, I have the sword of Wolfe Tone, the pike that Miles
+O'Flanagan--" Here the Ulsterman broke in with--
+
+"Excuse me, Sir. There's one thing I'd like to see if ye have it. Like
+you, I am a pathriotic Irishman, and take deloight in relics
+appertaining to the histhory of me counthry. Tell me now, have ye the
+horsewhip, the thunderin' big horsewhip, that young McDermot, of
+Thrinity College, used when he administhered condign punishment to Tim
+Healy? Have ye that, now?"
+
+The County Clare man was completely knocked out. He discontinued the
+recital of his catalogue, and surveyed the scenery in dignified
+silence. His own friends chuckled. This was the most unkindest cut of
+all. Irishmen love to see a splendid knockdown blow. They are full of
+fight, and their spirit must have vent. They fight for fun, for love,
+for anything, for nothing, with words, with blows, with tongues, with
+blackthorns, anywhere, anyhow, only let them fight. Remove Mr. Bull,
+they will fight each other. Heaven help the right when nobody stands
+by to see fair play!
+
+A Mr. Magrath, of Killmallock, was inclined to take a jocose view of
+the situation. "Faix, the English could never govern Ireland, an'
+small blame to thim for that same. Did ye see the Divil's Bit
+Mountains as ye came down from Dublin? Ye did? Av coorse, ye couldn't
+help but see them. Did ye see the big bite he tuk out o' the range--ye
+can see the marks o' the divil's own teeth, an' the very shape of his
+gums, divil sweep him! Shure, I seen it meself whin I wint to the
+Curragh races wid Barney Maloney; an' by the same token, 'twas Barney
+axplained it to me. Didn't the divil take his bite, an' then didn't he
+dhrop it on the plain out there forninst ye, the big lump they call
+the rock iv Cashel? Av coorse he did. An' if the divil himself found
+Ireland too hard a nut to crack, how can the English expect to manage
+us? Anyway, 'tis too big a mouthful for Misther Bull." One gentleman
+stood at his shop door, and having looked carefully around, said, "Ye
+niver know who ye're spakin' wid, an' ye niver know who's spyin' ye.
+Ah, this is a terrible counthry since we all got upset wid this Home
+Rule question. Did ye hear of Sadleir, of Tipperary? Ye didn't? He was
+a savin', sthrivin' man, an' he married a woman wid money. He had a
+foine shop, wid ploughs, an' sickles, an' spades for the whole
+counthry round. 'Twas a grand business he had, an' he made a powerful
+dale o' money. He was a quiet man, an' niver wint to the whiskey
+shops, where the boys they would be quarrellin' an' knockin' hell out
+iv each other. He introduced a timprance lecturer that towld the boys
+the poteen was pizenin' thim, an' 'twas wather they must dhrink. Ha!
+Ha! Will I tell ye what owld Sheela Maguire said to the timprance
+man?"
+
+I admitted a delirious delight in discursive digression.
+
+"The timprance man had a wondherful glass that made iverything a
+thousand million times as big. What's this he called it? Ye're right,
+'twas a my-cross-scrope; ye hit it to a pop; bedad 'tis yerself has
+the larnin.' An' the people looked through it at the wather he put in
+a glass, an' they seen the wather all swimmin' wid snakes an'
+scorpions; 'twas enough to terrify the mortal sowl out o' ye. An' so
+Sheela looked in an' saw them. An' the man put in the wather a good
+dhrop o' whiskey, an' he says, says he, 'Now ye'll see the effect on
+animal life,' says he. An' Sheela looked in again, an' she seen the
+snakes all doubled up, an' kilt, an' murthered an' says Sheela, says
+she:--
+
+"'May the divil fly away wid me,' says she, 'if I ever touch wather
+again till I first put in whiskey to kill them fellows!'
+
+"'Twas poor Sadleir, of Tipperary town, brought the man down. Sadleir
+must howld land; nothin' less would sarve him, an' he tuk from
+Smith-Barry a big houldin', an' paid the out-going tenant five
+thousand pounds for his interest. Whin the throubles began he refused
+to join the Land League, by raison that he'd put all his money in the
+land. They sent him terrible letthers wid skulls an' guns, an'
+coffins, an' they said Will ye join? An' he said No, once. They
+smashed ivery pane o' glass in his house, an' they said Will ye join?
+An' he said No, twice. They bate his servants next, an' said Will ye
+join? An' he said No, three times. They threw explosives into the
+house, an' said Will ye join? An' he broke down. He was afeard for his
+life. He wint in wid the rest, an' refused to pay rint', an' iv coorse
+he got evicted, an' lost his five thousand pounds he put into the
+farm, an' then he lost his business, an' before long he died with a
+broken heart. An' where did he die? Just in the workhouse. 'Twas all
+thro' William O'Brien, the great frind iv Oireland, that this
+happened. An' if O'Brien an' his frinds got into power, why wouldn't
+it happen again? But we're afeard to breathe almost in this
+unfortunate counthry, God help us!"
+
+Amid the varying opinions of the Irish people there is one point on
+which they are unanimous. They have no confidence in their present
+leaders, whom they freely accuse of blackguardism, lying, and flagrant
+dishonesty. Business men, although Home Rulers, agree that the
+destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the
+jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling
+around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the
+carcase on which they hope to batten. At the Station Hotel, Limerick
+Junction, a warm Nationalist said to me, "The country will be ruined
+with those blackguards. We have a right to Home Rule, an abstract
+right to manage our own affairs, and I believe in the principle. But I
+want such men as Andrew Jameson, or Jonathan Hogg, or that other
+Quaker, Pym, the big draper. There we have honourable gentlemen, whom
+we or the English alike might trust, either as to ability or
+integrity. We might place ourselves in the hands of such men and close
+our eyes with perfect confidence. Our misfortune is that our men, as a
+whole, are a long way below par. They inspire no confidence, they
+carry no weight, and nobody has any respect for them." Here my friend
+mentioned names, and spoke of an Irish M.P.'s conduct at Sligo. I give
+his story exactly as I heard it, premising that my informant's _tout
+ensemble_ was satisfactory, and that he assured me I might rely on his
+words:--"At the Imperial Hotel a discussion arose--a merely political
+discussion--and blows were exchanged, the 'honourable gentleman' and
+others rolling about the floor like so many savage bull dogs in a
+regular rough-and-tumble fight. The poor 'boots' got his face badly
+bruised, and for some days went about in mourning. I see that this
+same member is bringing in a Bill in the House of Commons, and I read
+it through with great interest, because I remembered the row, which
+was hushed up, and never appeared in the papers. Imagine any Irishman,
+with any respect either for himself or his country, trusting either to
+a parcel of fellows like that."
+
+My friend spoke more moderately of the objectionable Irish M.P.'s than
+they do of each other, but his opinions were obviously strong enough
+for anything. The attitude of the _Freeman's Journal_ moved him to
+contempt, and its abject subjection to the priesthood excited his
+disgust. He said, waving the despised sheet with indignity--"We have
+no paper now. We lost all when we lost Parnell. He was a Protestant,
+and could carry the English people, and with all his faults he had the
+training of a gentleman. Look at the low-bred animals that represent
+us now. Look at Blank-Blanky and his whole boiling. I swear I am
+ashamed to look an Englishman in the face. The very thought of the
+Irish members makes me puke."
+
+The mention of Mr. Jonathan Hogg reminds me that this eminent Dubliner
+submitted to me a point which I do not remember to have seen in print.
+Said Mr. Hogg: "When the Irish Legislature has become an accomplished
+fact, which is extremely improbable, the land will be divided and
+sub-divided until the separate holdings will yield incomes below the
+amount required for the payment of income-tax. The effect of this will
+be that a large number of incomes now paying tax will disappear, each
+leaving a number of small incomes paying no tax, so that a larger tax
+must be levied on the remaining incomes to meet the deficiency. Then
+the large manufacturers who can move away will certainly do so, and
+the country will suffer severely. Employment will be scarce or
+altogether lacking, and the people will go to England, by their
+competition lowering the rate of wage." The mention of Mr. Andrew
+Jameson reminds me of his opinion _re_ Customs. He said to me "The
+bill nominally deprecates Separation, and yet proposes to establish a
+Custom House between the two countries, making Ireland a foreign
+country at once." Mr. John Jameson, who was present along with Mr.
+Arundel, the business manager of the great J.J. concern, then
+expressed his fears anent the practicability of Customs' collections
+on the Irish coast. He said, "We have 1,300 coastguards at present,
+and this force is ample when backed by the Royal Irish Constabulary,
+marching and patrolling in the interior. But when the constabulary are
+no longer engaged in the direct protection of British interests the
+little force of thirteen hundred coastguards must prove quite
+insufficient, and I doubt if even thirteen thousand would prove an
+adequate force. The Irish people will have no interest in protecting
+the British Government. Their interest will be exactly the other way.
+Grave difficulties attend the proposition having regard to the Customs
+duties between the two countries." Another eminent authority then
+present referred to the encouragement which the Act would give to the
+enterprising smuggler, and thought that a small fleet of American
+steamers, smart built, fast little boats, would instantly spring into
+existence to carry on a splendidly paying trade--a trade, too, having
+untold fascination for the Yankees, while the average Irishman, as
+everybody knows, is a smuggler by nature, disposition, heredity, and
+divine right. It was also pointed out that, whereas huge quantities of
+spirits now pass to Ireland through the ports of Bristol and London,
+under the new dispensation Irish merchants would order direct, which
+would inflict loss on England. The details of this loss were fully
+explained, but I omit them for the reason that experts will
+understand, while lay readers may safely accept a statement uttered in
+the presence of the two Jamesons and receiving their assent.
+
+But my friend's conversation reminded me of something more, and I
+remembered a little story I heard in Dublin respecting a daily
+disseminator of priest-ordered politics. It owed some rent for the
+premises it occupies on the thymy banks of the odorous Liffey. It
+owed, I say, for owing, not paying, is the strong suit of the party it
+represents. It was pressed to pay, coaxed to plank down, soothered to
+shell out. A registered letter with premonitory twist of the screw
+"fetched" the patriot laggards. They or "It" paid up, but failed to
+look pleasant. In his hurry the glad recipient of the cash gave a
+receipt up to date instead of up to the time the rent was due. The
+immaculate organ of highly-rectified morality wished to hold the
+writer of the receipt to his pen-slip, to nobble the rent; and being
+reproached backed out with:--
+
+"We thought you wanted to give it as a present." The landlord is a
+strong Unionist. The rottenness of repudiation is spreading
+everywhere. Lying and theft, under other names, would be, the dominant
+influences under the new _régime_. But it may be objected--If Irishmen
+have no respect for their members, why did they elect them? If they
+object to Home Rule, why did they vote for it? And so on, and so on.
+These queries at first blush seem unanswerable, but they are not
+really so. Attentive readers of later letters will discover the reason
+why. Further, it may be remarked, in passing, that questions are more
+easily asked than answered. Here is an instance. The facts are
+undeniable, staring us in the face:--
+
+The base and bloody Balfour, unaccompanied by men who have been called
+his black and brutal bloodhounds, moves about in Ireland unmolested,
+with no other protection than that of his sister.
+
+The bright and brilliant O'Brien, the purist-patriot, visiting the
+constituency of which he is the senior member, is with difficulty
+protected by a powerful force of the police he has so often affected
+to despise.
+
+Other Nationalist members dare not appear in Nationalist quarters. How
+is this?
+
+To return to the objections given above. Since the appearance of the
+bill, Irishmen have been changing their minds. Day by day they dread
+it more and more. They still believe that under certain conditions
+Home Rule would be a good thing for Ireland. But they begin to see
+that the required conditions do not exist. They begin to see that they
+have been used by such men as O'Brien and Healy, they see the
+incompetency which has reduced the party paper to so low an ebb, they
+see the misery and degradation which the Land League inflicted on the
+once thriving districts of Tipperary; they saw their neighbours, poor,
+unlettered men, dupes of unscrupulous lying eloquence, men whom it was
+murder to deceive--they saw these men sentenced to long terms of penal
+servitude, while the instigators of the crimes for which they had
+suffered, availing themselves of the liberal English law, broke their
+bail, and, travelling first-class to Paris, lived in the best hotels
+of that gay city on the plunder they had wiled from ignorant servant
+girls, being clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously
+every day, while their friends the felons trod the tireless wheel and
+the housemaids went on with their scrubbing.
+
+The Irish people have seen these things and many more, and, as the
+French say, they have reflected. A very considerable proportion of the
+lower classes have already changed their minds, but--they dare not own
+it. So the process of education is comparatively slow. A small farmer
+said to me, "Not an hour's walk from here, a small tinant like meself
+was suspicted to be a thraitor to the cause. He was a sthrivin' man,
+an' he had really no politics, an' only wanted to get lave to work his
+land, an' earn his bit an' sup.
+
+"He had two sthrappin' daughters, as nice, dacent young girls as ye'd
+see in a summer's day. They were seen spakin' to a pliceman--that was
+all they done--an' four men came that night, four ruffians wid white
+masks, an' havin' secured the father, they dhragged the young girls
+out of bed at the dead hour, an' stripped them to the skin. Thin they
+cut off their hair close wid a knife, the way ye'd cut corn, an'
+scarified their bodies wid knives. Would ye wondher we're careful?"
+
+I asked him whether a Protestant could in his district hope to be
+elected to any public position, the Board of Guardians for instance
+(he was a good Catholic). His answer was an unqualified No. Then he
+took time, and shortly proposed the following statement of the
+position, which I present on account of its gem-like finish:--
+
+"I wouldn't say but they'd put on a Protestant av he paid for it by
+settlin' wid the priest that for certain considerations he would be
+contint wid a seat on the boord. An' thin he must renounce his
+political ideas, or promise never to mintion thim in public. But,
+begorra, he'd have to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage by
+makin' a decoy duck of himself!"
+
+In adding this great specimen to the immortal list of memorable mixed
+metaphors, I feel that my visit to Ireland has not been quite in vain.
+
+Oolagh, (Co. Tipperary), April 15th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 10.--DEFYING THE LAND LEAGUE.
+
+
+"Burn everything English except English coals." That was the first
+sentiment I heard in "rebel Cork," and it certainly expresses the
+dominant feeling of the local Nationalist party, who do not seem to
+have heard of the proposed Union of Hearts, or, if they have heard,
+they certainly have not heeded. Nor will anyone who knows for one
+moment assert that the Corkers entertain the idea. My hotel is a
+hotbed of sedition. It is the southern head-quarters of the Parnellite
+party. The spacious entrance hall is a favourite resort of the leading
+Cork Nationalists, who air their views in public with much excited
+gesture, having its basis in whiskey-nourished hatred of English rule.
+They walk to the bar, suck in the liquid bliss, and return to the spot
+whence they may look upon the beauteous promenaders of Patrick Street.
+They prefer the kaleidoscopic change of the streets to the stationary
+beauty of the bar, and while admitting the unfleeting quality of the
+fixed stars they worship the procession of the equinoxes. On Saturday
+last, the day O'Brien died, the Mayor of Cork, with Mayoral chain and
+hosts of satellites, might have been seen under the familiar portal,
+discussing the proposed public funeral of the lamented friend, once
+Mayor of the City, and described as "a gentleman who had, by his
+courageous and outspoken utterances, obtained the distinguished honour
+of imprisonment by the British Government." Particulars were not
+given, as the first two incarcerations occurred under Forster and
+Trevelyan. The third, under Balfour, was a term of fourteen days for
+assaulting a policeman. The Corporation discussed the patriot's merits
+without descending to detail. Outside, the newspaper boys were yelling
+"Arrest of Misther Balfour-r-r," but the Corporation were no buyers.
+The populace might be taken in, but official Cork know it was the
+"wrong 'un," and clave to its hard-earned pence.
+
+Public opinion here is much the same as in Dublin, only hotter.
+Respectable people who have anything to lose are, if possible, more
+seriously alarmed. The lower classes are, if possible, more bitter,
+more implacable in their animosity to everything English.
+Nevertheless, the feeling against Home Rule is assuredly gaining
+ground, even among the most ardent Nationalists. The great meeting of
+last Wednesday showed what the Unionists could do, how they could
+crowd a great platform with the intelligence of the country, and fill
+a great hall with the Unionist rank and file. The Loyalists have
+astonished themselves. They knew not their own strength. Now they are
+taking fresh heart, determined to hold out to extremity. The
+Separatists--for the Corkers are Separatists _au naturel_--are
+somewhat disconcerted, and try to minimise the effect of the meeting
+by sneering and contumely; but it will not do. They affect hilarity,
+but their laughter is not real. Perhaps nothing shows the shallowness
+of men more than the tricks they think sufficient to deceive. And then
+the leaders are accustomed to a credulous public. The place is
+eminently religious. Cork is the Isle of Saints--with a port and a
+garrison to enhance its sanctity. At certain seasons a big trade is
+done in candles, on which names are written, which being blessed and
+burnt have powerful influence in the heavenly courts. It costs a
+trifle to hallow the tallow, but no matter. A friend has seen a muddy
+little well, which is fine for sore eyes. Offerings of old bottles and
+little headless images were planted around, but the favourite gift was
+a pin, stuck in the ground by way of fee. Jolly Mr. Whicker, of
+Dublin, who represents three Birmingham houses, saw Father McFadden,
+of Gweedore, waving his hat when in custody. A policeman insisted that
+this should cease, when a man in the crowd said to Mr. Whicker:--
+
+"Arrah, now, look at the holy man. He puts on his hat widout a wurrud,
+whin he could strike the man dead wid jist sayin' a curse. 'Tis a good
+saint he is, to go wid the police, whin if he sthretched out his hand
+he could wither thim up, an' bur-rn thim like sthraws in the blazin'
+turf!"
+
+These people have votes, and to a man support the Nationalist party.
+It is proposed to place Ireland under a Government governed by these
+good folks, who are in turn governed by their sacred medicine-men.
+
+A member of the firm of Cooke Brothers, a native of Cork, in business
+in this city fifty years, said:--
+
+"There can be no doubt that the bill means ruin for Ireland, and
+therefore damage to England. The poor folks here believe the most
+extravagant things, and follow the agitators like a flock of sheep.
+They are undoubtedly wanting in energy. We have the richest land in
+Ireland, wonderful pastures that turn out the most splendid cattle in
+the world, big salmon rivers, a most fruitful country, a land flowing
+with milk and honey. As the rents are judicially fixed there can be no
+ground for complaint, but the people will not help themselves. Whether
+it is in the climate I cannot say, but I must reluctantly admit--and
+no one will gainsay my statement--that the people of the South, to put
+it mildly, are not a striving sort.
+
+"They want somebody else to do something for them. They get on a stick
+and wait till it turns to a horse before they ride. No Act of
+Parliament will help them, for they will not help themselves.
+
+"Look at the magnificent country you saw from Dublin to this city.
+Compare it with the black and desolate bogs of Ulster, and then ask
+yourself this question--How is it that the Ulster people, with far
+worse land, worse harbours, worse position, and having the same laws,
+are prosperous and content to have no change? If the Northerns and
+Southerns would swop countries, Ireland must develop into one of the
+most prosperous countries in the world. The Ulster men are
+tremendously handicapped as against the Munster folks, but--they are
+workers. Some say that if they were here the climate would enervate
+them, but I do not find that my experience countenances this
+supposition. Fifty years ago all the leading merchants and tradesmen
+of Cork were Catholics. It is not so now. What does that prove? I
+withhold my own opinion.
+
+"The Southerners are better fixed than the Ulstermen, but they are
+idle, and--this is very important--extremely sentimental."
+
+An avowed Nationalist, one Sullivan, completely bore out this last
+statement. "We want to manage our own business, and be ruled by
+Irishmen. You say in England that we shall be poor, and so we may, but
+that is no argument at all. It might influence a nation of
+shopkeepers, but it has no weight with Irishmen, who have a proper and
+creditable wish to make their country one of the nations of the world.
+The very servant girls feel this, and the poorest peasant woman now
+having what she calls a 'tay brakefast' is willing to go back to
+porridge if the country was once rid of the English. Never you mind
+what will happen to us. Cut us adrift, and that will be all we ask. If
+we need help we can affiliate with America or even France. The first
+is half our own people, the second understands the Irish nation, which
+fought for centuries in the French armies, and, under Marshal Saxe, an
+Irishman, routed the English at Fontenoy." This gentleman was civil
+and moderate in tone, but he did not promise to walk down the ages
+arm-in-arm with England, attesting eternal amity by exchanging smokes
+and drinks. "We'll be very glad to see the English as tourists," he
+said. "And they will have to behave themselves, too," he added,
+reflectively.
+
+A large trader of Patrick Street has most serious misgivings as to the
+effect of the bill. He said:--
+
+"I had just been over to England to make purchases. Arriving here, I
+found the bill just out. I read it, and at once cancelled half my
+orders. We are reducing stock. What Home Rule would do for us I cannot
+contemplate. The mere threat amounts to partial paralysis. What the
+Cork people want with Home Rule is beyond me. They have everything in
+their own hands. The city elections of all kinds are governed by the
+rural voters of five miles round. Wealth and commercial capital are
+completely swamped by these obedient servants of the priests. Mr.
+Gladstone talks of an Upper House, with a Ł20 qualification. Why, the
+qualification for the Grand Jury is Ł40. Many of the twenty-pounders
+round here cannot read or write, and yet they will be qualified for
+the Irish House of Lords.
+
+A customer came up and said:--"Gladstone wants to hand the capital and
+commerce of this country to men like Tim Healy, who expects to be
+Prime Minister, and who will succeed, if the bill passes and he can
+eat priestly dirt enough. I knew where he was reared in Waterford, in
+a little tripe and drischeen shop."
+
+I rose to a point of order. Would the honourable member now addressing
+the House kindly explain the technical term "drischeen shop?"
+"Certainly. The drischeen is a sort of pudding, made of hog's blood
+and entrails, with a mixture of tansy and other things. Tim would know
+them well for he was reared on them, which accounts for his
+characteristic career. Do you know that the Queenstown Town
+Commissioners call each other liars, and invite each other to come out
+and settle it on the landing? Get the _Cork Constitution_, look over
+the file, and you'll drop on gems that will be the soul of your next
+letter. Don't miss it. And that's the sort of folks Mr. Gladstone
+would trust with the fate of England as well as Ireland, for their
+fates would be the same. You cannot separate them. The people of
+England do not seem to see through that. They will have an awful
+awakening. And serve them right. They make a pact with traitors; they
+offer their throats to the murderer, and they say, 'Anything to oblige
+you. I know you won't hurt us much.'
+
+"The Southern Irish are the most lovable people in the world, with all
+their faults, if they were not led astray by hireling agitators, who
+ruin the country by playing on the people's ignorance, exciting the
+Catholic hope of religious domination, and trusting to damage England
+as a great spreader of Protestantism. A lie is no lie if told to a
+Protestant. To keep a Protestant out of heaven would be a meritorious
+action. And they would readily damage themselves if by doing so they
+could also damage England. Englishmen hardly believe this, but every
+commercial traveller from an English house knows it is true."
+
+I tested a number of English commercials on this point. All confirmed
+the statement above given. Many had been Gladstonians, but now all
+were Unionists. None of them knew an English or Scotch commercial who,
+having travelled in Ireland, remained a Home Ruler. Such a person,
+they thought, did not exist. Admitted that for business purposes the
+apparent _rara avis_ might possibly, though not probably, be found,
+all agreed that no Englishman in his senses, with personal knowledge
+of the subject, could over support Home Rule. Two Gladstonians went
+from Chester to Tipperary to investigate the troubles: both returned
+converted. Six men from a shop-fitting establishment in Birmingham
+worked some weeks in Dublin: all returned Unionist to the core. This
+from Mr. Sibley, of Grafton street, Dublin, in whose splendid shop I
+met the Duchess of Leinster, handsomest woman in Ireland, and
+therefore (say Irishmen) handsomest in the world. She was buying books
+for Mr. Balfour, who, she said, was a great reader of everything
+connected with Ireland or Irish affairs. Mr. Sibley is a partner of
+Mr. Combridge, of New street, Birmingham, and is a leading Irish
+Unionist. Returning to the cancelling of orders, I will add that Mr.
+Richard Patterson, J.P., of Belfast, the largest buyer of hardware in
+Ireland, has cancelled very largely, together with two other large
+firms, whose names he gave me. You will remember Mr. John Cook, the
+Protestant Home Ruler, of Derry. His manager, Mr. Smith, has written
+the Birmingham factor of the house, to omit his usual visit, as the
+firm will have no orders for him. A strange comment on Mr. Cook's
+theories of confidence. Mr. Cook is an excellent, a high-minded man.
+He asked me how I would class him among his party. I called him a
+Visionary in Excelsis.
+
+Every self-respecting Saxon visitor to Cork visits the famous castle
+of Blarney, seven miles away, to see the scenery and kiss the Blarney
+Stone, the apparent source of Home Rule inspiration.
+
+    There is a stone there
+    That whoever kisses
+    Och! he never misses
+        To grow eloquent.
+    'Tis he may clamber
+    To a lady's chamber,
+    Or become a member
+        Of Parliament.
+
+    A clever spouter
+    He'll sure turn out, or
+    An out-an'-outer
+        To be let alone!
+    Don't hope to hindher him
+    Or to bewildher him--
+    Sure, he's a pilgrim
+        From the Blarney stone!
+
+The walk is delightful, not unlike that from Colwyn Bay to Conway, but
+more beautiful still, as instead of the London and North Western
+Railway a lovely river runs along the valley on your right. The Cork
+and Muskerry Light Railway occupies the roadside for the first four
+miles, relic of the beneficent Balfour--winding by the river side for
+the rest of the journey, through fat meadows dotted with thriving
+kine, and having a background of richly-wooded hills. At Carrickrohane
+your left is bounded by a huge precipitous rock, covered from base to
+summit with ivy and other greenery, a great grey building on the very
+brink of the abyss, flanked by Scotch firs, peering over the
+precipice. A fine stone bridge, garrisoned by salmon-fishers, leads to
+the Anglers' Rest, and here I found a splendid character, one Dennis
+Mulcahy, who boasted of his successful resistance to the Land League.
+Having told me of his adventures in America, and how his oyster-bar
+experiences in the Far West had opened his eyes to the fact that the
+Irish people were being humbugged, he narrated his return to his
+native land, on his succession to a small farm left him by "an ould
+aunt he had." His language was so forcible and picturesque that I
+despair of conveying its effect, more especially as no pen can
+describe the rich brogue, which, notwithstanding his two years'
+residence in the States, was still thick enough to be cut with a
+knife. Apart from its amusing side, his story has a moral, and may be
+instructively applied.
+
+"'Twas at Ballina I was, the toime o' the Land Lague. 'Twas there
+Captain Moonlight started from, an' the whole disthrict was shiverin'
+in their shoes. I refused to subscribe to the Land Lague, an' they
+started to compil me, but, be the powers, they tackled the wrong
+tom-cat whin they wint to coarce Dennis Mulcahy. Threatenin' letthers,
+wid pictures o' death's-heads, an' guns, an' pikes, an' coffins, was
+but a thrifle to the way they wint on. But they knew I had a thrifle
+of a sivin-shooter, an' bad luck to the one o' thim that dared mislist
+me at all. At last it got abroad that I was to get a batin' wid
+blackthorn sticks, for they wor tired the life out o' them, raisonin'
+wid me. Well, says I, I'm here, says I, an' the first man that raises
+a hand to me, I'll invite him to his own inquist, says I, for, bedad,
+I'll perforate him like a riddle, says I. Well, it wint on an' on,
+till one day I was stayin' at a bit of a shebeen outside the place,
+when a slip o' a girleen kem to me--I was sittin' on a bench in the
+back garden, the way I'd enjoy my pipe in the fresh air, an', says
+she, 'Get out o' this, for there's a whole crew o' thim inside going
+to bate you.' That was six or seven o' a fine summer's night, an' I
+walked into the house an' took a look at thim--a thievin' heap o'
+blayguards as iver ye seen wid your two eyes."
+
+"I wint out again an' sat in the haggard, where I could kape my eye on
+the dure. Prisintly out comes one o' thim, to commince the row, I
+suppose.
+
+"He spoke o' the Land Lague, an' I towld him I didn't agree wid it at
+all, and 'twas a thievin' invintion o' a set o' roguish schamers.
+
+"'Ye'd betther mind yer manners,' says he, 'onless ye have yer
+revalver,' says he, lookin' at me maningly.
+
+"Faix, 'tis here, says I, pullin' out the tool.
+
+"'But can ye handle it?' says he.
+
+"Begorra, says I, I'd shoot a fly off yer nose; an' wid that I looked
+round for a mark, an' I seen in a three foreninst me a lump o' a crow
+sittin' annoyin' me. 'Will ye quit yer dhrimandhru?' says I, to the
+botherin' ould rook.
+
+"'Caw, caw, caw,' says he, vexin' me intirely.
+
+"Bang! says I, an the dirty blackburd comes fluttherin' down, an'
+dhropped in the haggard like a log o' limestone.
+
+"Ye should have seen that fellow! The landlord wid the whole rout o'
+thim runs out. 'What's the matter?' says he, starin' round like a sick
+cod-fish.
+
+"'I'm afther charmin' a burd out iv a three; 'tis a way I have,' says
+I, shovin' in a fresh cartridge from my waistcoat pocket, fair an'
+aisy, an' kapin' me back to the haystack.
+
+"'Was it you kilt the jackdaw?' says he.
+
+"''Twas meself,' says I, 'that did it,' says I.
+
+"'An' ye carry a murdherin' thing like that in a paceful counthry,'
+says he. ''Tis yer American thrainin' says he, sneerin'.
+
+"I tuk off me hat an' giv' him a bow an' a scrape. 'Is it yerself
+would insinse me into the rudiments o' polite larnin'?' says I. Thin I
+looked him straight into the white iv his eye, an' give him the length
+o' my tongue. Me blood was up whin I seen this spalpeen wid his dirty
+set o' vagabones waitin' to murther me if they ketched me unbeknownst.
+'Michael Hegarty,' says I, 'where did ye scour up yer thievin' set o'
+rag-heaps?' says I. 'Ye'd bate me wid blackthorns, would ye? Come on,
+you and your dirty thribe, till I put sivin shots into yez. Shure I
+could pick the eye out o' yez shure I could shoot a louse off yer
+ear,' says I. 'Anger me,' says I, 'an' I'll murther the whole parish;
+raise a stick to me, an' I'll shlaughter the whole counthry side.' An'
+wid that I cocked me little shootin'-iron.
+
+"Ye should have seen that shebeen-keeper; ye should have seen the
+whole o' them whin I raised me voice an' lifted me little Colt!
+
+"They tumbled away through the dure, crossin' each other like threes
+ye'd cut down, lavin' the landlord, struck all iv a heap, the mug on
+him white as a new twelve-pinny, staggerin' on his two shin-bones, an'
+thrimblin' an' shiverin' wid fright, till ye'd think he'd shake the
+teeth out iv his head.
+
+"The murdherin' vilyans want shtandin' up to, an' they'll rispict ye.
+I had no further trouble. That was the last o' thim. 'Tis the wake an'
+difinceless people they bate an' murther. I heerd there was talk o'
+shootin' me from the back iv a ditch; an' that one said, 'But av ye
+missed?' says he. 'What thin?' says he.
+
+"Ye should sind ould Gladstone an' Morley an' the other ould women to
+Carrignaheela till I give them a noggin' o' right poteen an' insinse
+thim into the way iv it. The only way o' managin' me counthrymin is to
+be the masther all out, an' 'tis thrue what I spake, an' sorra one o'
+me cares who hears me opinion. I'm the only man in the counthry that
+dares open his teeth, an' yet they all thrate me well now, an' the
+priest invites me to his house. An' all because I spake me mind, an'
+don't care three thraneens for the whole o' thim. 'Twas in America I
+larned the secret."
+
+Cork, April 20th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 11.--THE CRY FOR PEACE AND QUIETNESS.
+
+
+"What's the next place to this?" I asked, as the Southern and Western
+Railway deposited me at Tralee. I was uncertain as to whether the
+place was a terminus, but the gintleman who dhrove the cyar I hailed
+marvelled greatly at my ignorance. He surveyed me from top to toe with
+a compassionate expression. No doubt he had heard much of the
+ignorance of the uncivilised English, but this beat the record. Not
+to know that Tralee was on the sea, not to know that the little port
+frowned o'er the wild Atlantic main, as Mr. Micawber would have said.
+He struggled for a moment with his emotion and then said,
+
+"Musha, the next parish is Amerikay!"
+
+I apologised for my imperfect geographical knowledge, but the cyar-man
+was immovable. No pardoning look stole over his big red face, which
+was of the size and complexion of a newly cut ham. Nor would he enter
+into conversation with the inquiring stranger. He cursed his horse
+with a copiousness which showed his power of imagination, and with a
+minute attention to detail which demonstrated a superior business
+capacity. Put him in the House amongst the Nationalist members, and he
+is bound to come to the front. The qualifications above-mentioned
+cannot fail to ensure success. We have the examples before us, no need
+to mention names. A hard cheek, a bitter tongue, and a good digestion
+are the three great steps in the Irish Parliamentary _gradus ad
+Parnassum_, the cheek to enable its happy possessor to "snub up" to
+gentlemen of birth and breeding, the tongue to drip gall and venom on
+all and sundry, the digestion to eat dirt _ad libitum_ and to endure
+hebdomadal horsewhippings. Such a man, I am sure, was the dhriver of
+my cyar, who may readily be identified. His physiognomy is very like
+the railway map of Ireland, coloured red, with the rivers and mountain
+ranges in dark-blue or plum-colour. As a means of ready reference he
+would be invaluable in the House of Commons. How interesting to see
+Mr. Gladstone poring over his cheek (Connaught and Leinster), his jaw
+(Munster, with a pimple for Parnellite Cork), and his forehead
+(Ulster, with the eyes for Derry and Belfast). The G.O.M. would find
+the Kerry member invaluable. Like the rest he would probably be devoid
+of shame, untroubled by scruples, and a straight voter for his side,
+so long as he was not allowed to go "widout a male." Who knows but
+that, like the Prime Minister's chief Irish adviser, he may even have
+been reared on the savoury tripe and the succulent "drischeen"?
+
+All the Tralee folks are shy of political talk. They eye you for a
+long time before they commit themselves, but when once started they
+can hardly stop, so warm are they, so intensely interested in the
+great question. Running down the line, a Cork merchant said "The Kerry
+folks are decent, quiet folks by nature. Do not believe that these
+simple villagers are the determined murderers they would seem to be.
+No brighter intellects in Ireland, no better hearts, no more
+hospitable hosts in the Emerald Isle. They are very superstitious.
+There you have it all. 'Tis their beautiful ingenuousness that makes
+them so easily led astray. What do these simple country folks, living
+on their farms, without books, without newspapers, without
+communication with large centres--what do they know about intricate
+State affairs? What can they do but listen to the priest, regarded as
+the great scholar of the district, reverenced as almost--nay, quite
+infallible, and credited with the power to give or withhold eternal
+life? For while in England the people only respect a parson according
+to the esteem he deserves as a man, in Ireland the priestly office
+invests the man with a character entirely different from his own, and
+covers everything. These poor folks felt the pinch of hard times, and
+the agitators, backed by their Church, saw their opportunity and
+commenced to use it. Hence the Kerry moonlighters, poor fellows,
+fighting in their rude and uncouth way for what they believed to be
+patriotism and freedom. They should be pitied rather than blamed, for
+they were assuredly acting up to their light, and upon the advice of
+men they had from childhood been taught to regard as wise, sincere,
+and disinterested counsellors.
+
+"Ah me, what terrible times we had in Cork! Belfast may boast, but
+Belfast is not in it. We were in the centre of the fire. The
+shopkeepers of Patrick Street deserve the fullest recognition from the
+British nation. They had to furnish juries to well and truly try the
+moonlighters of Kerry, Clare, and several other counties. They sat for
+eight months, had to adjourn over Christmas, and those men returned
+true bills at the peril of their lives. The venue was changed to Cork
+for all these counties, and every man jack of the jury knew full well
+that any day some fanatic friend of the convicted men might shoot or
+stab him in the street. The loyalty of Belfast is all the talk, but it
+has never undergone so severe a test. There the Loyalists have it all
+their own way. Here the Loyalists, instead of being three to one, are
+only one to three. The Ulstermen are the entrenched army; the Cork
+Unionists are the advanced picket. More judges got promotion from Cork
+than elsewhere. We changed the barristers' silk to ermine, too. All
+this shows what we went through. Everything is quiet now; Balfour
+terrified the life out of them, and Captain Moonlight at the mention
+of that name would skip like spring-heeled Jack."
+
+The Kerry folks turned out bright as their reputation. It was hard to
+believe that these simple, kindly peasants had ever stained their
+beautiful pastoral country with the bloodiest, cruellest deeds of
+recent times. They have a polite, deferential manner without
+servility, and a pious way of interpolating prayer and thanksgiving
+with their ordinary conversation.
+
+"Good morning, Sir."
+
+"Good mornin', an' God save ye, Sorr."
+
+"Fine weather."
+
+"'Tis indeed foine weather, glory be to God."
+
+"Nice country."
+
+"Troth, it is a splindid country. The Lord keep us in it."
+
+A prosperous-looking shop with a portly personage at the door looked
+so uncommonly Unionistic that I ventured to make a few inquiries _re_
+the antiquities of the district. The inevitable topic soon turned up,
+and to my surprise my friend avowed himself a Home Ruler and a
+Protectionist. His opinions and illustrations struck me as
+remarkable, and with his permission I record them here.
+
+"Yes, I am a Home Ruler--in theory. I think Home Rule would be best
+for both. Best for you and best for me, as the song says; but mark me
+well--NOT YET.
+
+"You are surprised that I should say Not Yet so emphatically, but the
+fact is I love my country, and, besides, all my interests and those of
+my children are bound up with the prosperity of the country. This
+ought to sharpen a man's wits, if anything could do it, and I have for
+many years been engaged in thinking out the matter, and my mind is now
+made up.
+
+"Home Rule from Gladstone will ruin us altogether. We must have Home
+Rule from Balfour. We _must_ have Home Rule, but we must have it from
+a Conservative Government. You smile. Is that new to you? It is? Just
+because Home Rulers in this country cannot afford to express their
+views at this moment. But the hope is entertained by all, I will say
+all, the most advanced Irish Home Rulers. By advanced I mean educated,
+enlightened. Let me give you an illustration which I heard from a
+friend in Cork.
+
+"Here is Ireland, a delicate plant requiring untold watching and
+careful training. Around it on the ground are a number of slugs and
+snails. Or call them hireling agitators if you like. I sprinkle salt
+around the roots to kill off the brutes and save my darling plant.
+That salt is Conservatism. It is furnished by people of property, by
+men who have interests to guard. Salt is a grand thing, let me tell
+you! Balfour is the man to sprinkle salt. Home Rule from him would be
+safe. He is the greatest man that ever governed Ireland, but that must
+be stale to you. You must have heard that everywhere. He put his foot
+on rebellion and crushed it out of existence. On the other hand the
+poor folks of the West coast would lie down and let him walk over
+them. They hold him in such esteem that they would regard it a favour
+if he would honour them by wiping his feet on them. He might walk
+unarmed and unattended through Ireland from end to end with perfect
+safety. But which of the Nationalist members could do that? Not one.
+The city scum, the criminal, irreclaimable class, shout 'Hell to
+Balfour,' but these poor readers of the _Freeman's Journal_ and
+such-like prints, prepared for their special use and written down to
+their level, must not be classed with the people of Ireland at all.
+Every country has its ruffian element, every country has its poisonous
+press. Ireland is no worse than other countries in these respects."
+
+My Irish Conservative Home Ruler would have gone on indefinitely,
+furnishing excellent matter, for he improved as he warmed up, but
+unhappily a priest called on him to make some purchase, and he had to
+leave me without much notice. "Over the way," he said. "Trip across to
+the opposite shop, and you'll find another Tory Home Ruler."
+
+As I "tripped" across I thought of the Pills and Ointment man who
+amassed a colossal fortune by fifty years' advertising of the fact
+that wonders never will cease. Mr. Overtheway was not quite so Tory as
+might be supposed, after all. He said:--
+
+"I have no objection to Home Rule, but, although a Catholic, I have
+the greatest objection to Rome Rule, which is precisely what it means.
+I object to this great Empire being ruled from Rome. The greatest
+Empire that the world ever saw to be bossed by a party of priests! Do
+the English know what they are now submitting to?
+
+"Let me put the thing logically, and controvert me if you can.
+
+"If Mr. Gladstone wished to go to war to-morrow, is he not at the
+mercy of the Irish Nationalist party? Could he get votes of supply
+without their aid? In the event of any sudden, or grave emergency, any
+serious and critical contingency, would they not hold the key of the
+position, would they not have the power to make or mar the Empire?
+Surely they would. And are not these men in the hands of the priests?
+Surely they are. That is a matter of common knowledge, as sure as that
+water will drown and fire will burn. A pretty position for a sensible
+man like John Bull to be placed in by a blethering idiot, who can
+argue with equal volubility on either side, but with more conviction
+when in the wrong. Bull must have been drunk, and drunk on stupid
+beer, when he placed his heart strings between the finger and thumb of
+a quack like that, who, whatever the result, whether we get Home Rule
+or not, has ruined the country for five-and-twenty years.
+
+"Yes, I am a Home Ruler. But for heaven's sake don't thrust
+self-government on an unfortunate country that is not ready for it.
+That country cries for it, you say. The snuffling old air-pump across
+the Channel says the same thing. Says he: 'Beloved brethren, I greet
+you. I fall on your neck and kiss your two ears, and give you all you
+ask. For why, beloved brethren? Why do I this thing. Let us in a
+spirit of love enquire. Because it is the wish of the country; because
+it is the aspiration of the people; because I feel a deep-seated,
+internal affection for your beautiful land, in whose affairs, during
+my eighty-four years' pilgrimage in this vale of tears, I have, as you
+know, always shown the strongest, the warmest, the most passionate
+interest, and on whose lovely shores I have during my seven dozen
+years spent (altogether) nearly a week. It has been said that I have
+never been in Ulster, and that, therefore, I am unable to appreciate
+the situation. An atrocious falsehood. I have spent two hours (nearly)
+in the northern province, having landed from Sir Somebody's yacht to
+see the Giant's Causeway. I have studied the Irish question by means
+of mineral specimens gathered from the four provinces, and I am,
+therefore, competent to settle the Irish question for ever. Do you
+know a greater man than myself? I confess I don't. Bless you, my
+children. You ask for Home Rule. Enough. The fact that you ask proves
+a Divine right to have what you ask for. You are a people rightly
+struggling to be free,' says owld Gladstone. 'Hell to my sowl,' says
+he, 'but that's what ye are,' says he.
+
+"And he starts to murder us by giving what the most ignorant,
+unthinking, unpatriotic, self-seeking people in the country have asked
+for, and swears that because they ask they must have.
+
+"As well give a razor to a baby that cried for it.
+
+"Ireland must be treated as an infant.
+
+"An Irish Legislature would lead to untold miseries. We might arrive
+there some day, but not at a jump. The change is too sudden. We want a
+little training. We want to grow, and growth is a thing that cannot be
+forced. It takes time. Give us time for heaven's sake. Give us Home
+Rule, but also give us time. Give us milk, then fish, then perhaps a
+chop, and then, as we grow strong, beefsteak and onions. A word in
+your ear. This is certain truth, you can go Nap on it. Tell the
+English people that the people are getting sick of agitation, that
+they want peace and quietness, that they are losing faith in
+agitators, having before them a considerable stretch of history,
+which, notwithstanding the scattered population, is filtering down
+into the minds of the people, with its morals all in big print. The
+Irish folks are naturally quick-witted. They are simple and confiding,
+many of them very ignorant, if you will, but they find out their
+friends in the long run. Look at Balfour. Not a man in the whole world
+for whom the people have so much affection. Which do you think would
+get the best welcome to-morrow--Balfour or Morley? Balfour a hundred
+thousand times. Ah, now; my countrymen know the real article when they
+see it. Home Rule we want for convenience and for cheapness. We don't
+want to be compelled to rush to London before we can build a bridge.
+But rather a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than
+hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow.
+We're not such fools as ye take us for. Don't we know these heroes?
+And when we see them and Gladstone and Morley and Humbug Harcourt with
+his seventeen chins, all rowling together in Abraham's bosom (as ye
+may say)--Harcourt licking Harrington's boots, when only yesterday Tim
+was spittin' in his eye--we say to ourselves 'Wait yet awhile, my
+Boys, wait yet awhile.' But when ye've finished yer slavering and
+splathering, and when Tim Healy can find time to take his heel off
+Morley's neck, then, and not before, we'll have something to say to
+you.
+
+"But you should call on my friend on the right. He is also a Home
+Ruler--like myself."
+
+Number three had powerfully-developed opinions. He said--"Home Rule on
+Conservative lines is my ticket. We'll get it on no other. I console
+myself with that idea. Otherwise it would be a frightful business, and
+what would become of us, I cannot tell. But I do not believe that even
+Gladstone would be so insane as to give it us. I cannot believe that
+the middle class voters of England would stand by and see the
+corresponding class in this country exterminated. Home Rule as much as
+you like, if we had the right men. The very poorest peasants are
+becoming alive to the fact that under present circumstances the thing
+would never do for them. They want the right men, that is, men of
+money and character, to come forward. And I declare most solemnly,
+that I am convinced that the Irish people would fall into line, and
+see the bill thrown out with perfect quietude. Now the push has come,
+they really do not want Home Rule, and, what is more, they absolutely
+dread it, and I firmly believe that a general election at the present
+moment would send a majority of Unionists to power. The priests are
+working for life and death. They see that this is their best chance,
+perhaps their very last opportunity. I am a Catholic; but then I am a
+Parnellite, a Tory Parnellite. And I have no intention of bartering
+away my political freedom to my Church, which, in my opinion, should
+keep clear of politics. The clergy have now advised payment of rent,
+so that the Government may not be embarrassed at a very critical
+juncture. And the tenants are paying their rent, although the present
+period is one of great agricultural depression. Look at this: The
+Ulster farmers are terribly hard up, are complaining that they cannot
+pay. This is the Protestant province, where the priests have little
+scope. But in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, the people are paying
+the landlord. The word has gone round--pay the landlord, whomever else
+you don't pay! The oilcake man, the implement man, the shopkeeper, are
+not getting their dues, but notwithstanding the pinch of the present
+moment, the landlord (who knows all about it) is paid. And the priests
+in some cases are actually remitting the clerical dues to enable the
+small men to pay the rint. Pay the rint, say they, if you pledge your
+very boots, if you have to go to the gombeen man (money-lender), if
+you have almost to rob the Church. They want to get possession, they
+want to get power, they want to get Home Rule; and then they know
+that, as Scripture says, 'All these things shall be added unto them.'
+Let them once get the upper hand, and they can very soon recoup
+themselves.
+
+"The priests are showing England their power, with a view to future
+good bargains. 'You see what we can do,' say they. Arrange the matter
+with us. We are the boys. The Reverend Father O'Codling is the man.
+Have no dealings, except such as are authorised by us, with the
+red-headed Tim Healy Short. The Clergy have only one idea; that is, of
+course, the predominance of their Church. Very natural, and, from
+their point of view, very proper. I find no fault with them, but I say
+their object hardly commends itself to my undivided admiration, and,
+being still friendly, we on this subject part company. I wish to let
+the priests down easy. They are mostly very good men, apart from
+politics. They are good customers to me, and they pay very promptly.
+They spend their money in the country, and I'd have no fault to find
+if they'd lave politics alone. Mind that owld Gladstone doesn't become
+a Papist all out. 'Twould be better for him, no doubt, and as the
+whole jing-bang that turned round with him before would no doubt
+still follow at his heels, we'd get a considerable quantity of
+converts, if we could say little about the quality. D'ye hear what
+that owld woman's singing?"
+
+I listened with interest. The minstrelsy of Ireland seems to have
+drifted into the hands of the most unpoetical people in the green
+isle. The poor old creature walked very, very slowly along the gutter,
+ever and anon giving herself a suggestive twitch, which plainly
+indicated some cutaneous titillation--the South is a grazing country.
+This was all I heard--
+
+    Owld Oireland was Owld Oireland
+      Whin England was a pup.
+    Oireland will be Owld Oireland
+      Whin England's bur-r-sted up!
+
+If my friends are right as to the change of feeling _re_ Home Rule,
+the dear old lady was hardly up to date. But the great author of
+"Dirty Little England"--I judge of the author by the internal evidence
+of sentiment, style, and literary merit--certainly composed the above
+beautiful stanza in the sure and certain hope that the present bill
+would become law.
+
+Number Three qualified his remarks on rent, when speaking of the
+County Clare. "There they embarrass the Government by refusing to pay,
+and by shooting people in the good old way, just at the most ticklish
+time." He said, "Clare has always been an exceptional county. Clare
+returned Daniel O'Connell, by him secured Catholic Emancipation, and
+from that time has called itself the premier county of Ireland. They
+are queer, unmanageable divils, are the Clare folks, and we are only
+divided from them by the Shannon. So the Kerry folks go mad sometimes
+by contagion. I should advise you to keep away from Clare. You might
+get a shot-hole put into you. Every visitor is noticed in those lonely
+regions, and the little country towns only serve to disseminate the
+arrival of a stranger to the rural districts. Suppose you walk five
+miles out of Ennis the day after you arrive there, I would wager a
+pound the first woman that sees you pass her cottage will say, 'That's
+the Englishman that Maureen O'Hagan said was staying at the Queen's
+Hotel.' The servants are regular spies, every one of them. I couldn't
+speak politics in my house because I've a Catholic nurse. Good bye, I
+hope ye won't get shot."
+
+I thanked him for the interest expressed, but failed to share his
+nervousness. After having mingled with the Nationalist crowd that
+followed the Balfour column in the Dublin torchlight procession, after
+having escaped unhurt from the blazing Nationalists who swarm in the
+Royal Victoria Hotel, Cork, having walked down the Limerick entrance
+to the balmy Tipperary, a little shooting, more or less, is unworthy a
+moment's consideration. Besides which, my perpetual journeying and
+interviewing and scribbling have made me so thin that Captain
+Moonlight himself would be bound to miss. However, it is well to be
+prepared for the worst, so--_Pax vobiscum_, and away to County Clare.
+
+Tralee (Co. Kerry), April 20th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 12.--ENGLISH IGNORANCE AND IRISH PERVERSITY.
+
+
+A most enchanting place when you have time to look at it. My flying
+visit of ten days ago gave the city no chance. Let me redeem this
+error, so far as possible. There are two, if not three Limericks in
+one, a shamrock tripartition, a trinity in unity,--English-town,
+Irish-town, and New Town Perry. New Limerick is a well-built city,
+which will compare favourably with anything reasonable anywhere. Much
+of it resembles the architecture of Bedford Square, London. The streets
+are broad and rectangular, the shops handsome and well furnished. But
+it is the natural features of the vicinity which "knock" the
+susceptible Saxon. The Shannon, the classic Shannon, sweeps grandly
+through the town, winding romantically under the five great bridges,
+washing the walls of the stupendous Castle erected by King John, the
+only British sovereign who ever visited Limerick--serpentining through
+meadows backed by mountains robed in purple haze, reflecting in its
+broad mirror many a romantic and historic ruin, its banks dotted with
+salmon-fishers pulling out great fish and knocking them on the head,
+its promenades abounding with the handsomest women in the world. For
+the Limerick ladies are said to be the most beautiful in Ireland, and
+competent English judges--I know nothing of such matters--assure me
+that the boast is justified. Get to Cruise's Royal Hotel, which for a
+hundred years has looked over the Shannon, take root in its airy, roomy
+precincts, pleasant, clean, and sweet, with white-haired servitors like
+noble earls in disguise to bring your ham and eggs, Limerick ham, mind
+you, which at this moment fetches 114s. per cwt. in London; and with
+the awful cliffs of Kilkee within easy distance, where the angry
+Atlantic Ocean, dashing with gigantic force against the rock-bound
+coast, sends spray two or three miles inland, the falls of Castleconnel
+with the salmon-fisheries under your very nose, and the four hours
+river-steamer to Kilrush, with more Cathedrals, statues, antiquities,
+curiosities, novelties, quaintnesses than could be described in a
+three-volume novel--do all those things, and, while on your back in the
+smoke room, after a hard day's pleasure, you will probably be heard to
+murmur that in the general Fall some of us dropped easily enough, and
+that, all things considered, Adam's unhappy collapse was decidedly
+excusable.
+
+The Limerick folks are said to be the most Catholic people in Ireland.
+They are more loyal than the Corkers. Why is this? The more Catholic,
+the more disloyal, is the general experience. Nobody whose opinion is
+worth anything will deny this, and however much you may wish to
+dissociate religion from politics, you cannot blink this fact. In
+dealing with important matters, it is useless to march a
+hair's-breadth beside the truth. Better go for it baldheaded, calling
+things by their right names, taking your gruel, and standing by to
+receive the lash. You are bound to win in the long run. I say the
+Catholic priests are disloyal to the Queen. Men of the old school, the
+few who remain, are loyal, ardently loyal. The old-timers were
+gentlemen. They were sent to Douai or some other Continental
+theological school, where they rubbed against gentlemen of broad
+culture, of extensive view, of perfect civilisation. They returned to
+Ireland with a personal weight, a cultivation, a refinement, which
+made them the salt of Irish earth. These men are still loyal. The
+Maynooth men, sons of small farmers, back-street shopkeepers,
+pawnbrokers, and gombeen men, aided by British gold, these half-bred,
+half-educated absorbers of eleemosynary ecclesiasticism, are deadly
+enemies to the Empire. This is Mr. Bull's guerdon for the Maynooth
+grant. My authority is undeniable. The statement is made on the
+assurance of eminent Catholics. Two Catholic J.P.'s yesterday
+concurred in this, and no intelligent Irish Catholic will think
+otherwise. Surely this consideration should be a factor in arguments
+against Home Rule.
+
+Then why are the Limerick Catholics loyal? Because the Limerick Bishop
+is loyal. Bishop O'Dwyer is opposed to Home Rule. Said Mr. James
+Frost, J.P., of George's Street: "When the Bishop first came here he
+invited some four hundred Catholics to a banquet at the palace. After
+dinner he proposed the health of the Queen, and all the company save
+two or three rose and received the toast with enthusiasm, waving their
+handkerchiefs and showing an amount of warmth that was most gratifying
+to me. I need not tell you that an average Home Rule audience would
+not have accepted the toast at all. This shows you the feeling of the
+most intelligent Catholics. The people of education and property are
+loyal. It shows also that they are opposed to Home Rule."
+
+"But if the best Catholics are opposed to Home Rule, why don't they
+say so publicly?"
+
+"A fair question, which shall have a precise answer. But first, we
+must go back to Mr. Balfour's great Land Act, and the lowering of the
+franchise, and observe the effect of these two enactments.
+
+"The people were at one time terribly ill-used. That is all over now,
+but the memory still rankles. The Irish are great people for
+tradition. The landlords have for ages been the traditional embodiment
+of tyranny and religious ascendency. The Irish people have long
+memories, very long memories. Englishmen would say: 'No matter what
+happened to my great-grandfather; I am treated well, and that is
+enough for me.' Irishmen still go harping on the landlord, although he
+no longer has any power. The terrible history of the former
+relationship between landlord and tenant is still kept up and
+remembered, and will be remembered for ages, if not for ever.
+Presently you will see the bearing of all this on your question--Why
+do not the best Catholics come forward and speak against Home Rule?
+
+"When the franchise was lowered the rebound from repression was
+tremendous, like a powerful spring that has been held down, or like an
+explosive which is the more destructive in proportion as it is more
+confined. People newly made free go to the opposite extreme.
+Emancipate a serf and he becomes insolent, he does not know how to use
+his freedom, and becomes violent. The great majority of the people are
+smarting from the old land laws, which have left a bitter animosity
+against English rule, which is popularly denounced as being
+responsible for them.
+
+"To speak against Home Rule is to associate yourself with the worst
+aspects of the land question. The bulk of the people are incapable of
+making a distinction. And while they entertain some respect for a
+Protestant opponent, they are irreconcilable with Unionist Catholics,
+just as the English Gladstonians have a far more virulent dislike for
+the Liberal Unionists than for the rankest Tories. They say to the
+Protestants, 'We know why you uphold Unionism'--that is, as they
+believe, landlordism--'for the landlords are English and Protestant;
+your position is understandable.' But to the Catholic they say, 'You
+are not only an enemy, but a renegade, a traitor, and a deserter.' And
+whatever that man's position may be, the people can make things
+uncomfortable for him."
+
+Another Catholic living near, said: "'How would Home Rule work?' you
+ask. Most destructively, most ruinously. Under the most favourable
+circumstances, whether Home Rule passes or not, the country will not
+recover the shock of the present agitation for many a year; not, I
+think, in my lifetime. I was over in the North of England last year,
+and I found that the people there knew nothing of the question,
+literally nothing. Clever men, intelligent men, men who had the ear of
+the people, displayed a profundity of ignorance on Irish questions,
+conjoined with a confidence in discussing them, surpassing belief.
+They changed their minds on hearing my statements, and on obtaining
+exact information. I must give them credit for that. I believe the
+English Gladstonians are only suffering from ignorance. Their leader
+is certainly not less ignorant than the bleating flock at his heels.
+They smugly argue from the known to the unknown on entirely false
+premises. They know that when Englishmen act in this or that way, such
+and such things will happen. They know what they themselves would do
+in certain conjunctures, and when they are told by Irishmen that
+Irishmen under similar conditions would act quite differently, they
+snort and say 'nonsense.' They are too dense to appreciate the radical
+difference between the two races. The breeds don't mix and don't
+understand each other. It was miserable to hear these men--I am sure
+they were good men--prattling like bib-and-tucker babies about Irish
+affairs, and speaking of Gladstone as possessing a quality which we
+Catholics only ascribe to the Pope. Ha! ha! They think that vain old
+cataract of verbiage to be infallible. He knows nothing of the matter,
+does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom
+could buy and sell him and simple, clever Morley twenty times over.
+Both Gladstone and Morley _are_ clever in books, in words, in
+theories, adepts in debating, smart and adroit in talk. But they know
+no more of Paddy than the babe unborn. I say nothing of Harcourt and
+the other understrappers. They'll say anything that suits, whatever it
+may be. We reckoned them up long since. Cannot the English people see
+through these nimble twisters and time-servers, this crowd of lay
+Vicars of Bray?"
+
+Catholic Home Ruler Number Three said, "I agree with all who say that
+the priests would do their best to secure a dominating influence in
+political affairs. And although I think we ought to have an Irish
+Legislature, although I believe it would be good for us, yet if the
+priestly influence were to become supreme for one moment of time--if
+you tell me that the Catholic Church is to hold the reins for one
+second, then I say, away with Home Rule, away with it for ever! Better
+stay as we are."
+
+This gentleman seems to have about as much logical foresight as some
+of those he criticises. He dreads priestly domination above
+everything, and yet would approve of giving the priests a chance of
+being masters. He continued:--
+
+"The present Irish leaders are the curse of the movement, which,
+should it succeed, would in their hands bring untold sorrows on the
+country. As a Catholic Home Ruler, I put up my hands in supplication,
+and I beg, I implore of the English people to withhold their assent.
+For God's sake don't give it us at present. We must have it sooner or
+later, but wait till we have leaders we can trust. Have you met a
+decent Home Ruler who trusts the present men? No. I knew you would say
+so. Such a man cannot be found in Ireland. Then why send them to
+Parliament, say you? That is just what you Englishmen do not
+understand. That is one of the points old Gladstone is wrecking the
+country on. You think it unanswerable. Listen to me.
+
+"When the franchise was lowered, then the mistake was made. You let in
+an immense electorate utterly incapable of discussing any question of
+State; and, rushing from the extreme of abject servility to a sort of
+tyrannical mastery, they elected as their representatives, not the
+most able men, not the most orderly men, not the men of some training
+and education, not the men who had some stake in the country, but the
+most violent men, the glibbest men, the most factious, the most
+contumacious, the most pragmatical men were the men they elected. Look
+at the Poor-Law Boards. See the set sent there. Those are the men who
+will be sent to the Dublin Parliament. Are they men to be trusted with
+the affairs of State? Look up your Burke, and observe the
+qualifications he thinks necessary to a statesman. Then look at the
+blacksmith who represents the county Tipperary, the mason who
+represents Meath, the drapers' assistants and bacon factors' clerks
+who represent other places. You don't quite see this in England. These
+men perhaps tell you that they are kings in their own country.
+Ireland is a long way off, and far-away hills are green.
+
+"Reverse the situation. Let Dublin be the seat of Empire and London
+wanting Home Rule. You really want it, and think it would be best for
+both--a convenience for yourself and a saving of time for all. Would
+you not draw back at the last moment if under the circumstances I have
+named, your country was to be handed over to fellows whose sole income
+was derived from their political work, artisans, clerks, and
+shopkeepers' assistants? What would these men do with their power?
+Make haste to be rich--nothing more. Patriots are they? Rubbish; they
+are mere mercenaries. Parnell knew that. He said to me:--
+
+"'Under the circumstances I must use these men, whom I would not
+otherwise touch with a forty-foot pole. Adversity makes us acquainted
+with strange bedfellows. Any port is good in a storm. These men will
+fight well--for their pay, and will work the thing up. But when we get
+the bill, when we come into power, their work is done. They will be
+dropped at once, or furnished with places where they may get an honest
+living.'"
+
+Catholic Home Ruler Number Four said: "The Meath election shows the
+feeling of the priests, and what they would do if they could. They
+loathed Parnell, but he was too strong for them. And weren't they glad
+to give him the slip on the ground of morality. Home Rule was
+comparatively a safe thing while Parnell lived. Now I would not advise
+it for some years. We must have better men to the fore. We in Limerick
+are loyal, although Catholics and Home Rulers. Don't laugh at that. It
+is a fact, though I admit it is hard to believe. Put it down, if you
+like, to the influence of the Bishop. The young priests I say nothing
+about. Their loyalty is a negligeable quantity. They do not object to
+Protestants _qua_ Protestants, but they object to them as
+representatives of English rule."
+
+This reminded me of Dr. Kane, of Belfast, who said to me, "They hate
+us, not because we are Protestants, not because we are Orangemen, not
+because we are strangers in the land, but because we are the hated
+English garrison."
+
+Here I am bound to interpolate a word of qualification. The Mardyke
+promenade of Cork, a mile-long avenue of elms, has many comfortable
+seats, whereon perpetually do sit the "millingtary" of the
+sacrilegious Saxon, holding sweet converse with the Milesian
+counterparts of the Saxon Sarah Ann. The road is full of them, Tommy's
+yellow-striped legs marching with the neat kirtle of Nora, Sheela, or
+Maureen. As it was in the Isle of Saints, so it was in Ulster, is now
+in Limerick, and shall be in Hibernia _in sćcula sćculorum_. A
+Limerick constable said, "A regiment will come into the city at four
+o'clock, and at eight they'll every man walk out a girl. The
+infatuation of the servant-girl class for the military is surprisin'.
+Only let them walk out with a soldier, and they 'chuck' everything,
+even Home Rule." The hated garrison are not among the people who
+never will be missed. Wherever Tommy goes he seems to be able to
+sample the female population. The soldiers always have a rare good
+time.
+
+A carman who drove me to Castleconnel proved the most interesting
+politician since Dennis Mulcahy, of Carrignaheela. He knew all about
+the average English voter, and resented his superior influence in
+Irish affairs. "Shure, we're all undher the thumb o' a set o' black
+men that lives undher the bowils o' the airth. Yer honner must know
+all about thim miners in the Black Counthry, an' in Wales, an' the
+Narth o' England? Ye didn't? Ah, now, ye're jokin' me, ye take me for
+an omadhaun all out. Ye know all about it; ye know that these poor men
+goes down, an' down, an' down, till ye'd think they'd niver shtop, an'
+that they stay there a whole week afore they come up agin. An' then
+they shtand in tubs while their wives an' sweethearts washes an'
+scrubs thim, an' makes white men out o' the black men that comes up,
+an' thin walks thim off home. Now, shtandin' in a tub at the mouth o'
+the pit to be washed by yer wimmenfolks is what we wouldn't do in this
+counthry--'tisn't black naygurs we are--an' these men that lives in
+the dark and have no time to think, an' nothin' to think wid, these
+are the men ye put to rule this counthry, men that they print sich
+rubbish as _Tit-Bits_ for, because they couldn't understand sinse. An'
+the man that first found out that they couldn't understand sinse, an'
+gave thim somethin' that wanted no brains, they say has made a
+fortune. Is that thrue, now?
+
+"As for owld Gladstone, I wouldn't trust him out o' me sight. We'll
+get no Home Rule, the owld thrickster doesn't mane it. 'Tis like a man
+I knew that was axed to lind a friend Ł100. He didn't like to lind,
+an' he was afeared to say No, an' he was in a quondairy intirely. So,
+says he 'I'll lind ye the money,' says he, 'if ye'll bring the
+securities down to the bank,' says he, 'an' get the cash off me
+banker.' Thin he went saycretly to the banker, an' says he, 'This
+thievin' blayguard,' says he, 'wants the money, and he'll never repay
+me; I wouldn't thrust him,' says he. 'Now, will ye help me, for I
+couldn't say No, by raison he's a relative, an' an owld acquaintance,'
+says he.
+
+"'An' how'll I do that?' says the banker.
+
+"'Ye can tur-rn up yer nose at the securities.'
+
+"'Ha, Ha,' says the banker, 'is it there ye are? Ye're a deep one;
+begorra ye are. Nabocklish,' says he, 'I'll do it for ye,' says he.
+
+"So whin the borrower wint for the money, the banker sent out word
+that the securities wor not good enough, an' that he wouldn't advance
+a farden.
+
+"Then the borrower goes to his frind an' complains, an' thin the frind
+acts all out the way Gladstone'll act when the bill's refused at the
+Lords, or may be at the Commons. 'Hell to him,' he roars, 'the
+blayguard thief iv a thievin' banker. I'll tache him to refuse a
+frind, says he. 'Sarve him right,' says he, 'av I bate his head into
+a turnip-mash an' poolverise him into Lundy Foot snuff. May be I
+won't, whin I meet him, thrash him till the blood pours down his
+heels,' says he. That'll be the way iv it. That's what Gladstone will
+say whin the bill's lost, which he manes it to be, the conthrivin'
+owld son o' a schamer.
+
+"A gintleman axed me which o' them I like best o' the two Home Rule
+Bills, an' I towld him that whin I lived at Ennis, an' drove a car at
+the station there, the visithors, Americans an' English, would be
+axin' me whin they lepped on the car which was the best hotel in
+Ennis. Now, whiniver I gave them my advice they would be cur-rsin' an'
+sinkin' at me whin they met me aftherwards in the sthreet, be raison
+that there was only two hotels in the place, an' nayther o' thim was
+at all aiqual to what they wor used to in their own counthries. So I
+got to know this, an' iver afther, whin they would be sayin' to me,
+
+"'Which is the best hotel in Ennis?' says they, an' I would answer,
+
+"'Faix, there's only two o' thim, an' to whichiver one ye go ye will
+be sorrowin' that ye didn't go to the other,' says I.
+
+"An' that's my reply as to which of the two Home Rule Bills I like
+best."
+
+In the city of Limerick itself all is quiet and orderly. Outside,
+things are different. Disturbed parts of the County Clare are
+dangerous to strangers, and, what is more to the point, somewhat
+difficult of access. The country is not criss-crossed with railways as
+in England, and vehicles for long journeys are rather hard to get.
+However, I have chartered a car for a three-day trip into what may be
+called the interior, have fired several hundred cartridges from a
+Winchester repeating rifle, and written letters to my dearest friends.
+I start to-morrow, and if I do not succeed in bottoming the recent
+outrages--which are hushed up as much as possible, and of which the
+local newspaper-men, both Nationalist and Conservative, together with
+Head-Constable MacBrinn, declare they cannot get at the precise
+particulars--if I cannot get to the root of the matter, I shall in my
+next letter have the honour of stating the reason why.
+
+Limerick, April 22nd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 13.--THE CURSE OF COUNTY CLARE.
+
+
+Once again the difference between Ireland and England is forcibly
+exemplified. It was certain that several moonlighting expeditions had
+recently been perpetrated in the neighbourhood of Limerick, which is
+only divided by the Shannon from the County Clare. You walk over a
+bridge in the centre of the city and you change your county, but
+nobody in Limerick seems to know anything about the matter. The local
+papers hush up the outrages when they hear of them, which is seldom or
+never. The people who know anything will not, dare not tell, and even
+the police have the utmost difficulty in establishing the bare facts
+of any given case. English publicity is entirely unknown. Local
+correspondents do not always exist in country towns, and the distances
+are so great, in comparison with the facilities for travel, that
+newspaper-men seldom or never visit the scene of the occurrence. And
+besides the awkward and remote position of the country hamlets and
+mountain farms, there are other excellent reasons for journalistic
+reticence. The people do not wish to read such news, the editors do
+not wish to print these discreditable records, and the police,
+although eminently and invariably civil and obliging, are debarred by
+their official position from disclosing what they know. The very
+victims themselves are often silent, refusing to give details, and
+almost always declining to give evidence. That the sufferers usually
+know and could easily identify the cowardly ruffians who so cruelly
+maltreat them is a well-ascertained fact. That they usually declare
+they have no clue to the offenders is equally well known. The
+difficulty of arresting suspected men is enhanced by the fact that the
+moonlighters have a complete system of scouts who in this bare and
+thinly populated district, descry the police when miles away, giving
+timely warning to the marauders; these, besides, are readily concealed
+by their neighbours and friends, who in this display an ingenuity and
+enthusiasm worthy a better cause. Suppose the villains are caught
+red-handed; even then the difficulties are by no means over. In
+Ireland a felon once in the hands of the police, by that one
+circumstance at once and for ever becomes a hero, a martyr, a man to
+be excused, to be prayed for, to be worshipped. No matter how black
+his offence, the touch of the constabulary washes him whiter than
+snow, purifies him from every earthly taint, surrounds him with a halo
+of sanctity. Those whom he has injured will not bear witness against
+him, because their temerity might cost them their lives, the loss of
+their property, the esteem of their fellow-men. What this means we
+shall shortly see. The cases I have examined will speak for
+themselves. And let it be remembered that close proximity to the
+scenes described produces an incomparably stronger effect than any
+description, however minute, however painstaking. The utter
+lawlessness of the districts I have visited since penning Monday's
+letter has produced a profound, an indelible impression. I pass over
+the means employed to get over the ground, merely stating that
+horseflesh has borne the brunt of the business. That and pedestrianism
+are the only means available, with untold patience and perseverance to
+worm out the true story. People will not show the way, or will direct
+you wrongly. Their ignorance, that is, their assumed ignorance, is
+wonderful, incredible. They are all sthrangers in those parts. They
+never knew a family of that name, never heard of any moonlighting,
+swear that the amusement is unknown thereabouts, assert that the
+whole thing is a fabrication of the police. All the people round are
+decent, honest, hard-working folks, without a fault; pious, virtuous,
+immaculate. You push on, and your friend runs after you. Stay a
+moment, something has struck him. Just at the last distressing hour,
+his brain displayed amazing power. Now he comes to think of it,
+something was said to have happened over there, at Ballygammon, ten
+miles in the opposite direction. A stack was fired, and they said it
+was the Boys. It was the police who burnt the hay, but they deny it
+"av coorse." He is suspiciously anxious to afford all the information
+he can. Ballygammon is the spot, and Tim Mugphiller your man. Mention
+Mike Delany and you will get every information, and--have ye a screw
+of tobacky these hard times. You pursue your way certain that at last
+you are on the right track, and Mike's jaw drops to his knees. Too
+late he sees that his only chance of altering your course was to point
+out the right one.
+
+Dropping for once scenery and surroundings, let us at once plunge, as
+Horace advises, _in medias res_. The district in Mr. Balfour's time
+was pleasant and peaceable. Curiously enough its troubles commenced
+with the change of Government. From March 18 to April 18 the police of
+Newcastlewest received tidings of fifteen outrages. How many have been
+perpetrated no man living can tell, for people often think it wisest
+to hold their peace. Ireland is often said to be almost free from
+crime, except of the agrarian kind, and moonlighting is partly
+condoned by reason of its alleged cause. How must we class the
+following case?
+
+On February 19, 1893, four armed men with blackened faces and dressed
+as women, attacked the dwelling of T. Donoghue, of Boola, not far from
+Newcastle. They burst open the door and entered, not to revenge any
+real or fancied wrong, but purely and simply to obtain possession of a
+sum of Ł150, which Donoghue's daughter had brought from America. They
+believed they would have an easy prey, but they were mistaken; there
+were two or three men in the house, and the heroes decamped instanter,
+followed, unknown to themselves, by one of Donoghue's family. Having
+duly run them to earth, he informed the police, who caught them neatly
+enough, their shoes covered with fresh mud, and with every
+circumstance of guilt. The Donoghue folks identified them. The case
+was perfectly clear--that is the expressed opinion of everybody I have
+met, official and otherwise. It was tried at the Limerick Spring
+Assizes, and the jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty!" These
+patriotic jurors had doubtless much respect for their oaths, more for
+the interests of justice, more still for their own skins. This case is
+public property, and is only cited to prove that when the difficulty
+of arrest and the greater difficulty of obtaining evidence are with
+infinite pains overcome, the jury will not convict, no matter what the
+crime. Before he commences his career of crime, the moonlight marauder
+knows the chances of being caught are immensely in his favour, that
+should luck in this matter be against him, his very victim will
+decline to identify him, nay, will affirm that he is not the man, and
+that when the worst comes to the worst, no jury in the counties of
+Kerry, Clare, or Limerick will convict.
+
+Here are some results of my researches. The particulars of these cases
+now first appear in print.
+
+A man named James Dore, who keeps a public-house in Bridge Street,
+Newcastlewest--I can vouch for his beer--also held a small farm of
+forty-nine acres from the Earl of Devon, for which he paid the modest
+rent of Ł11 10s. per annum--the land maintaining sixteen cows and
+calves, which, on the usual local computation of Ł10 profit on each
+cow, would leave a gain of Ł148 10s.--not a bad investment, as Irish
+farming goes. So it was considered, and when the tenant-right was
+announced as for sale by auction, two cousins of Dore, who held farms
+contiguous, agreed to jointly bid for the tenant-right, and having
+secured the land, to arrange its partition between themselves. They
+went to Ł400, but this was not regarded as enough, and the
+tenant-right was for a specified time held over for purchase by
+private agreement. A farmer named William Quirke offered Ł590, which
+was accepted, and the money paid. After this, the two cousins came
+forward and said they would purchase the tenant-right, offering Ł40
+more than Quirke had paid. They were told that they were too late, and
+the Earl's agent (Mr. Curling) said nothing could now be done. This
+was on the 13th of the present month of April. On the 14th, Mr. James
+Cooke, Lord Devon's bailiff, was seen showing the purchaser Quirke
+over the newly-acquired holding. Poor Quirke little knew what was at
+that moment hanging over him. He had not long to wait. The dastard
+demon of moonlight ruffianism was on his track.
+
+Quirke had a son aged fourteen years, but looking two years younger, a
+simple peasant lad, who cannot have injured his country very much. He
+was tending a cow, which required watching, his father and mother
+taking their rest while the child sat out the lonely hours in the
+cowhouse. He heard something, and listened with all his ears. Not
+voices, but a subdued whispering. It was the dead hour of night, two
+or half-past two, and the boy was frightened. The place is lonely,
+seven miles or more from Newcastlewest, and up towards the mountains.
+He listened and listened, and again heard the mysterious sounds. He
+says he "thought it was the fairies." He stole from the byre and went
+to the house. A horrible dread had crept over him, and father and
+mother were there. As he opened the door a terrible blow from behind
+struck him down. He was not stunned, though felled by the butt-end of
+a gun. They beat and kicked him as he lay. He gave an anguished cry.
+The mother heard and recognised her boy's voice, and, waking the
+father, said "Go down, they're killing my lad." The old man, for he is
+an old man, went down the stairs naked and unarmed. The foul marauders
+met him half-way up, and served him as they had served the boy,
+throwing him down, kicking him, and beating him with butt-ends of
+guns; with one terrible blow breaking three of his ribs; and saying,
+"Give it up, give it up." He said he would "give it up"; promised by
+all he held sacred, begged hard for his life, and implored them at
+least to spare the young lad. Their reply to this was to fire a charge
+of shot into the boy's legs, a portion of the charge entering the
+limbs of an old woman--his grandmother, I think--who was feebly trying
+to shield the lad. This was such excellent sport that more was thought
+expedient. A charge of shot was fired into the father's legs, and as
+one knee-joint is injured, the elder Quirke's condition is precarious
+even without his broken ribs and other injuries. The cowardly hounds
+then left, in their horrid disguise adding a new terror to the lonely
+night. The evening's entertainment was not yet over. They crossed a
+couple of fields to a house where dwelt Quirke's married son. They
+burst open the door of his cottage and dragged the young fellow--he is
+about twenty-five--from his bed, beating him sorely, and in the
+presence of his wife firing a charge of shot into his legs. Then they
+went home, each man to his virtuous couch, to dream fair dreams of the
+coming Paradise, when they and their kind may work their own sweet
+will, free from the fear of a hireling constabulary, and under the
+ćgis of a truly national senate, given to a grateful country by a
+Grand Old Man.
+
+The Quirkes know their assailants, but they will not tell. "What good
+would it do me to have men imprisoned?" says William Quirke, senior.
+"My lad's life might pay for it, and perhaps my own." The most
+influential people of the district have remonstrated with him, argued,
+persuaded, all in vain. William Quirke has a wish to remain in this
+sublunary sphere. His spirit is not anxious to take unto itself the
+wings of a dove, that it may fly away and be at rest. Like the dying
+Methodist, whose preacher reminded him of the beauties of Paradise, he
+likes "about here pretty well." Mr. Heard, Divisional Commissioner in
+charge of the constabulary organisation of the Counties of Cork,
+Limerick, and Kerry can get nothing out of William Quirke.
+County-inspector Moriarty can stir nothing, nor Major Rolleston,
+Resident Magistrate, nor Inspectors Wright, Pattison, and Huddy, all
+of whom have done their level best. These gentlemen assert that
+obviously Quirke knows the moonlighters, and for my own part, I am
+certain of it. The married son is equally dumb. "They were disguised,"
+he says. "But you would recognise their voices." Then comes the
+strangest assertion, "They never spoke a word." In other words, he
+affirms that a number of men, not less than seven or eight, burst open
+his door, dragged him from bed, maltreated and shot him, to the
+accompaniment of his wife's terrified screaming and his own
+protestations, without uttering a single syllable! The bold
+Gladstonians whose influence removed Mr. Balfour from office and
+delivered the country into ruffian hands, will say: And serve the
+people right! If they will not bear witness let the victims suffer.
+You cannot help people who will not help themselves. The police are
+there, the magistrates are there, the prisons are there, the hangman,
+if need be, is there. If they will not avail themselves of the
+protection provided, let them suffer. Let them go at it. All their own
+fault. Nobody but themselves to blame.
+
+All very plausible and reasonable--in theory. Let us look a little
+closer into this matter. What does William Quirke say:--"Nobody can
+help an Irish farmer in a lonely part of Ireland. There are too many
+ways of getting at him. Suppose I gave such evidence as would satisfy
+anybody--I do not say I could--I don't know anything; but suppose I
+knew and told, would a Limerick jury convict? Certainly not. Everybody
+knows that. The police, the magistrates, will tell you that, every one
+of them. Nobody will say anything else. Then, why rouse more enmity? I
+shall give up the land even if I lose the money, the savings of a
+life-time, added to a loan, which I can repay in time. That is
+settled. What good would the land do me, once I were dead? I value my
+life more than my money, and more especially do I think of those
+belonging to me. Suppose I held on, and kept the land. Every time the
+lad went out I'd expect him to be brought in shot to his mother and
+me. And when I saw the lad's dead face, what would I think? And what
+would I say when his mother turned round and said, 'Ye have the land,
+haven't ye, William?' Our lives would not be worth twopence if I held
+on. Do you remember Carey, the informer? The British Empire couldn't
+protect him, though it shipped him across the world. How would I be
+among the mountains here? I could be shot going to or coming from
+market, my cattle houghed or mutilated, nobody would buy from me,
+nobody would sell to me, nobody would work on my farm. My stacks would
+be burnt. Look at the hay burnt in the last few weeks! You say I'd get
+a presentment against the county--and if I did I'd have to wait till
+next March for the money. Where's the capital to carry on? Suppose I
+wanted thirty tons of hay between this and that. That would cost Ł90.
+Where would I get the money? But that's not it. Life is dear, and life
+might at any moment be taken. If my stacks were burnt in July I'd have
+to wait a year for my money. I'd be cut off from all communication
+with the people, and shunned as if I'd the plague. If I went to market
+the people would leave the road to me, would cross over to the other
+side when they saw me coming. You never saw boycotting; you don't know
+what it means."
+
+In a lonely stretch of gorse-bordered road, steep and rough, I came
+upon two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, with rifles,
+sword-bayonets, and bâtons. We had a chat, and I examined their short
+Sniders while they admired the humble Winchester I carried for
+company, and which on one occasion had acted like a charm. They
+carried buckshot cartridges and ball, and had no objection to express
+their views. "Balfour was the man to keep the country quiet. Two
+resident magistrates could convict, and the blackguards knew that, if
+caught, it was all up with them. They are the most cowardly vermin on
+the face of the earth, for although if any of our men (who never go
+singly, but always in twos or threes) were to appear unarmed, they'd
+be murdered at sight. Yet although they often fire on us, they mostly
+do it from such distances that their bullets have no effect, so that
+they can run away the moment they pull the trigger. Lately things have
+been looking rather blue over there." One pointed to the hills
+dividing the county from Kerry. "The Kerry men are getting rifles. I
+know the 'ping' of the brutes only too well. Let them get a few men
+who know their weapons, and we'll be potted at five hundred yards
+easily enough. Yes, they have rifles now, and what for? To shoot
+sparrows? No. You can't guess? Give it up? Ye do? Then I'll tell you.
+To carry out the Home Rule Bill. Yes, I do think so. Will you tell me
+this? Who will in future collect rates and taxes? The tenants do not
+think they will have any more rent to pay. Lots of them will tell you
+that. These very men have the members of the Irish Parliament in their
+hands. That is; they can return whomsoever they choose. The
+representation of the country is in their hands. And the priests agree
+with them. No difference there, their object is one and the same, and
+when the priests and the farmers unite, who can compel them to pay up?
+Is the Irish Legislature which will be returned by these men--is it a
+likely body to compel payment of tribute to the hated Saxon at the
+point of the bayonet? When the British Government, with all the
+resources of Gladstonian civilisation, failed to put down boycotting,
+how do you suppose a sympathetic Government, returned by the farmers,
+consisting of farmers' sons, with a sprinkling of clever attorneys,
+more smart than honest, will proceed with compulsory action? Why they
+could do nothing if they wished, but then they will have no desire to
+compel. The English people are only commencing their troubles. They
+don't know they're born yet. Gladstone will have some explaining to
+do, but he can do it, he can do it. He'd explain the shot out of the
+Quirke family's legs. Ah! but he's a terrible curse to this country."
+
+The other officer said:--"Our duty is very discouraging. We are
+hindered and baffled on every side by the people, whose sympathies are
+always against the law. Now in England your sympathies are with the
+law, and the people have the sense to support it, knowing that it will
+support them, so long as they do the right thing. It was bad enough to
+have the people against us, but now things are a hundred times worse.
+When Balfour was in power, we felt that our labour was not in vain. We
+felt that there was some chance of getting a conviction--not much,
+perhaps, but still a chance. Now, if we catch the criminals redhanded,
+we know no jury will convict. We try to do our duty, but of course we
+can't put the same heart into it as we could if we thought our work
+would do any good. And another thing--we knew Balfour, so long as we
+were acting with integrity, would back us up. Now we never know what
+we're going to get--whether we shall be praised or kicked behind. This
+Government is not only weak but also slippery. Outrages are
+increasing. News of three more reached the Newcastlewest Barracks this
+very day. We had a man on horseback scouring the mountains for
+information. The outraged people sometimes keep it close. What's the
+good, they say. We hear of the affair from other people, and the
+principals, so to speak, ask us to make no fuss about it, as they
+don't want to be murdered. The country is getting worse every day.
+We'll have such a bloody winter as Ireland never saw."
+
+Another small moonlighting incident, now appearing for the first time
+on this or any other stage. Some tenants years ago were evicted on the
+Langford estates. Negotiations were proceeding for their proximate
+restoration, but nothing could be settled. A few days ago a small
+farmer named Benjamin Brosna, aged 55, agreed with the proper
+authorities to graze some cattle on the land in question pending the
+arrangement of the matter. A meeting at Haye's Cross was immediately
+convened by two holy men of the district, to wit, Father Keefe, P.P.,
+and Father Brew, C.C., both of Meelin, and under the guidance of these
+good easy men, it was resolved that any man grazing cattle on the
+Langford land was as bad as the landlord, and must be treated
+accordingly. On the same day, April 18, or rather in the night
+succeeding the day of the meeting, eleven masked and armed men entered
+Brosna's house, and one of them, presenting a gun, said, "We have you
+now, you grass-grabber." Brosna seized the gun, and being hale and
+active, despite his 55 years, showed such vigorous fight that he fell
+through the doorway into the yard along with two others, where he was
+brutally beaten, and must have been killed--it was their clear
+intention--but for the pitchy darkness of the yard and the number of
+his assailants, who in their fury fell over each other, enabling
+Brosna, who being on his own ground knew the ropes better than they,
+in the darkness to glide under a cart and escape over an adjacent
+wall, where he hid himself. They lost him, and returned to the house,
+firing shots at whatever they could damage, and smashing everything
+breakable, from the windows upwards. Brosna will lose the sight of one
+eye, which is practically beaten out. His servants, named Larkin, have
+been compelled to leave by means of threatening letters. Their father
+has also been threatened with death unless he instantly removes them
+from Brosna's house.
+
+I could continue indefinitely, continuing my remarks to the
+occurrences of one month or so; and if I abruptly conclude it is
+because time presses, my return to civilisation having been effected
+at 3.30 this morning, after a ten miles' mountain walk, followed by
+three hours' ride in the blissful bowels of an empty cattle-truck.
+But for the good Samaritan of a luggage train I must last night have
+camped beneath the canopy of heaven. No scarcity of fun in
+Ireland--which beats the world for sparkling incident.
+
+Rathkeale (Co. Limerick), April 24th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 14.--LAWLESSNESS AND LAZINESS.
+
+
+The fruits of Gladstonian rule are ripening fast. Mr. Morley's visit
+to Cork _en route_ for Dublin corresponds with Inspector Moriarty's
+visit to the Irish capital. Mr. Moriarty is the county inspector in
+whose district most of the recent outrages have been perpetrated, and
+is therefore able to give the Irish Secretary plenty of news. His
+report will doubtless remain secret, as it is sensational. Mr. Morley
+has too much regard for the sensibilities of Mr. and Mrs. Bull, and
+when the Limerick inspector, entering the State confessional of Dublin
+Castle, advances and says, "I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
+Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes,
+like stars, start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks
+to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon
+the fretful porcupine,"--when Mr. Moriarty utters the familiar and
+appropriate words the Irish Secretary will say with deprecatory
+gesture, "Enough, enough. 'Twas ever thus. This is the effect of
+kindness. What ho, my henchmen bold! A flagon, a mighty flagon of most
+ancient sack. I feel that I am about to be prostrated. Such is the
+fate of greatness. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. It is a
+great and glorious thing, To be an Irish Sec. But give to me my hollow
+tree, A crust of bread and liberty. The word is porpentine, not
+porcupine, Mr. Inspector. A common corruption. Verify your quotations.
+Have them (in future) attested by two resident magistrates. And now to
+work. All in strict confidence. Let not the world hear of these
+things. Let not the people know that violence and rapine walk
+hand-in-hand with my administration. Nameless in dark oblivion let it
+dwell. Let it be _sub rosâ, sub sigillâ confessionis, sub-auditer,
+sub_ everything. Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in Askalon, for
+behold, if the people heard, they would marvel, and fear greatly;
+and--be afraid."
+
+The officer would then produce his budget, with its horrors, its
+indecencies, its record of trickery, treachery, cowardly revenge, and
+midnight terrorism. The local press correspondents of the rural
+districts are nearly all Nationalists, and they either furnish garbled
+reports, or none at all. The reporters of Conservative papers,
+comparatively Conservative, I mean, are also Nationalists. The Irish
+themselves know not what is taking place ten miles away. How is
+England to learn the precise state of things? I have fished up a few
+recent samples of minor occurrences which will form part of Mr.
+Moriarty's news. These smaller outrages invariably lead up to murder
+if the victim resist. They are so many turns of the screw, just to let
+the recalcitrant feel what can be done. In the large majority of cases
+he gives way at the first hint. Let us relate some neighbouring
+experiences.
+
+David Geary, of Castlemahon, late in the evening heard an explosion at
+the door of his cottage. He ran out, and found a fuse burning, lying
+where it had been cast, while a volley of large stones whizzed past
+his head. There had been some litigation between a man named Callaghan
+and a road contractor, and Geary had allowed the road contractor's men
+to take their food in wet weather under his roof.
+
+On April 15, at two in the morning, a party of masked moonlighters
+visited the cottage of Mrs. Breens, of Raheenish, and having fired two
+shots through the parlour window, shattering the woodwork by way of
+letting the widow know they were there, fired a third through her
+bed-room window to expedite the lady's movements. Almost paralysed
+with fear, she parleyed with the besieging force, which, by its
+spokesman, demanded her late husband's gun, threatening to put
+"daylight through her" unless it were instantly given up. It was in
+her son's possession, and she hurried to his room. The young dog came
+on the scene, and instead of handing out the gun, fired two shots from
+a revolver into the darkness. Whereupon the band of Irish
+hero-patriots outside fled with electric speed, and returned no more.
+At Ardagh the police found a haystack burning. They saved about ten
+tons, but Patrick Cremmin claims Ł88 from the county. He had offended
+somebody, but he declares he knows not the motive. In other words, he
+wants to let the thing drop--bar the Ł88. Another stack of hay, partly
+saved by the police, was burnt because evictions had taken place:
+damage Ł20, which the county must pay. R. Plummer, a labourer with
+Brosna, whose case was given in my last, has received a letter
+threatening him with death unless he left Brosna's employ. Some say
+the name is Brosnan or Bresnahan. Beware of the quibbling of Irish
+malcontents, who on the strength of a misprint or a wrongly-spelt
+name, boldly state that no such person ever existed, and that
+therefore the case is a pure invention. Here is a specimen of the
+toleration Loyalists and Protestants may expect:--A special train
+having been run from Newcastle to Limerick to enable people to attend
+a Unionist meeting in the latter city, the Nationalists took steps to
+mark their sense of the railway company's indiscretion, and a train
+soon afterwards leaving Newcastle for Tralee, they hurled a great
+stone from the Garryduff Bridge, smashing the window of the guard's
+van and doing other injury. At Gurtnaclochy, to deter a witness in a
+legal case, a threatening letter was sent, sixty yards of a sod fence
+thrown down, and a coffin and gun neatly cut on the field. On the
+Roman Catholic Chapel wall at Ashford a notice was posted threatening
+with death anyone who bought hay or turnips from a boycotted man, and
+the same day a man named Herlihy received a threatening letter. On
+April 15 a party of armed, disguised men with blackened faces, called
+on a poor man at Inniskeen, and having smashed the windows, tried to
+force the door, but stopped to parley. They called on "Young Patrick"
+to hand out the father's gun, and the young man complied. Being
+twitted with this he said, "I want to live. If I had refused the gun
+my life would not be worth twopence. I would be 'covered' from a bush
+or a fence when I walked out, or shot dead in the door as I looked
+down the lane, as was done in another case. I know the parties well,
+but I would not give evidence. Neither will I give the police any more
+information. It would not hurt the criminals, but it would hurt me.
+For while the jury would not convict, the secret tribunal that sat on
+me would not be so merciful, and many a man would like the distinction
+of being singled out to execute the secret decrees of the Moonlight
+fraternity." Another person standing by said, "What happened at
+Galbally, near Tipperary? A priest denounced a Protestant named Allen
+from the altar, and a week after the man was shot dead in his tracks.
+Everybody knew perfectly well who did the deed. All knew the man who
+wanted Allen's land, and it was thought that there was evidence enough
+to hang him twenty times. He is alive and well, and if you go any
+Saturday to the Tipperary market Father Humphreys will introduce you
+to him. He was discharged without a stain on his character, and brass
+bands met him on his return, also a torchlight procession."
+
+In Ireland, even more than in England, brass bands are necessary to
+the expression of the popular emotion. Brass bands met Egan, the
+liberated, everywhere. Brass bands accompanied the march of O'Brien's
+mourners at the Cork funeral last week. Not a murderer in Ireland
+whose release would not be celebrated with blare of brass bands, and
+glare of burning grease. Mr. Morley could not land in Cork, however
+privately, for he did not wish to speak, without a brass band being
+loosed on his heels. The great philosophical Radical, the encyclopćdia
+of political wisdom, the benefactor, the saviour, the regenerator of
+Ireland, left Cork to the strains of the Butter Exchange Band--_con
+amore_, _affetuoso_, and doubtless _con spirito_. Yet some will say
+that the Irish are not grateful! Mr. Morley stayed at the hotel I had
+just left, the Royal Victoria, which I justly described as a hot-bed
+of sedition. It was here, in room No. 72, that Dalton so terribly
+punched the long-suffering head of Tim Healy. At the Four Courts,
+Dublin, I saw a waiter who witnessed the famous horsewhipping in that
+city. I asked him if it were a severe affair, or whether, as the
+Nationalist papers affirmed, only a formality, a sort of
+Consider-yourself-flogged. How that waiter expanded and enjoyed the
+Pleasures of Memory! "It was a most thrimindious affair, Sorr.
+McDermott was a fine, powerful sthrip of a boy, an' handled the
+horsewhip iligant. Ye could hear the whack, whack, whack in the
+refreshment room wid the doors closed, twenty yards away. It was for
+all the world a fine, big, healthy kind of batin' that Tim got. An'
+the way he wriggled was the curiousest thing at all. 'Twas enough to
+make yer jump out of yer skin wid just burstin' with laffin'."
+
+Leaving outrages and violence to Messrs. Morley and Moriarty, let me
+narrate the effect of the impending Home Rule Bill on some of the
+commercial community. A well-known tradesman says: "A man in
+Newcastlewest owed me Ł24 for goods delivered. He had a flourishing
+shop and also an excellent farm. He was so slow in paying, and
+apparently so certain that in a little while he would escape
+altogether, that I sued him for the amount. It was a common action for
+a common debt, between one Irish tradesman and another. But I am a
+Unionist, and therefore fair game. I got judgment, but no instalments
+were paid. I remonstrated over and over again, and was from time to
+time met with solemn promises, the debtor gaining time by every delay.
+At last I lost patience, and determined to distrain. Everybody laughed
+at me. 'Where will you get an auctioneer, and who will bid? they
+asked. I determined to carry through this one case, if it cost a
+hundred pounds. I got a good revolver, and succeeded in bringing an
+auctioneer from a distance. The debtor said he would brain me with a
+bill-hook if I put my foot on his ground, and another man promised to
+shoot me from a bed-room window. It was necessary, to carry out the
+sale at all, to have police protection. I went to the barracks and
+submitted the case. Had I a sheriff's order, &c., &c., &c.? All
+difficulties overcome I went to the 'sale.' We seized a cow, a watch,
+and some of my own goods, and commenced the auction. Nobody bid but
+myself, and when I had covered the amount due the sale ceased, the
+aspect of the people being very menacing. Remember, this was not
+agrarian at all. The debt was for goods delivered to be sold in the
+way of trade. Most of them were there before my face. The debtor came
+and said, 'You can't take the things away. But we like your pluck, and
+if you will settle the matter for Ł5 I will give you the money.' I
+declined to take Ł5 for Ł24 and costs, although the police looked on
+the offer as unexpectedly liberal, and the bystanders shed tears of
+emotion and said that Gallagher was 'iver an' always the dacent boy.'
+When I wished to remove the things the troubles began. I had my
+revolver, the police their rifles, but things looked very blue. I
+drove the cow to the station and got her away, but the other things
+could not walk aboard, and how to get them there was hard to know. I
+asked people I knew to lend me their carts--people who were under some
+obligation to me, men I had known and done business with for years.
+They all refused; they feared the evil eye of the vigilance committee
+of a Fenian organisation still in full swing among us, and keeping
+regular books for settlement when they have the power. I was
+determined not to be beat, so I went to Limerick, nearly thirty miles
+away, to get a float or wagon. The news was there before me, not a
+wheel to be had in the city. At last, by means of powerful influence,
+I got a cart, on condition that the owner's name should be taken off,
+and my name painted on. Then I returned to Newcastle and bore away the
+goods in triumph. Alas! my troubles were only beginning! I had been
+told that the goods were not the debtor's, but belonged to someone
+else. The cow, they said, was a neighbour's, who had 'lent' it to my
+debtor. The watch, they said, was the property of a friend, who had
+handed it to my debtor that he might take it somewhere to be repaired.
+The landlord of the house claimed that he had previously seized
+everything, but had allowed things to remain out of kindness. I was
+cited in four actions for illegal distraint, all of which were so
+evidently trumped-up that they were quashed. But the time they took!
+And the annoyance they caused. The expense also was considerable, and
+the idea of getting expenses out of these people--but I need add
+nothing on that score.
+
+"There were six witnesses in one case, and they could never be found,
+so long as the judge could have patience to wait. Every lie, trick,
+subterfuge you can imagine, was practised on poor me. At last all was
+over, but at what a cost! The big chap who had threatened me with the
+bill-hook came humbly forward and said: "Plase yer honner's worship,
+I'm very deaf, an' I'm short sighted, and I'm very wake intirely, an'
+ye must give me toime to insinse meself into the way of it." And that
+rascal had everything repeated several times, until I was on fifty
+occasions on the point of chucking up the whole thing.
+
+"Before the Home Rule Bill had implanted dishonest ideas in his head,
+before the promises of unscrupulous agitators had unsettled and
+demoralised the people, that man was a straightforward, good, paying
+fellow. Only he thought that by waiting till the bill was passed he
+would have nothing to pay. The ignorant among us harbour that idea,
+and the disloyalty of the lower classes is so intense that you could
+not understand it unless you lived here at least two years."
+
+English friends who praise the affection of the Irish people, and who
+speak of the Union of Hearts, may note the lectures of the popular
+Miss Gonne, who is being enthusiastically welcomed in Nationalist
+Ireland. No doubt the local papers expurgated the text; at the present
+moment the word has gone round:--"Let us get the bill, let us get the
+bill, and then!" But enough remains to show the general tone.
+Addressing the Irish National Literary Society, of Loughrea, Miss
+Gonne said that she must "contradict Lord Wolseley in his statement
+that England was never insulted by invasion since the days of William
+the Conqueror. It would be deeply interesting to the men and women of
+Connaught to hear once again how a gallant body of French troops,
+fighting in the name of Liberty and Ireland, had conquered nearly the
+whole of that province at a time when England had in her service in
+Ireland no less than one hundred and fifty thousand trained troops.
+She would remind them that France was the one great military nation of
+Europe that had been the friend of Ireland"--a remark which was
+received with loud and prolonged applause. "And it would be a matter
+of some pride to us to reflect that in these military relations the
+record of the Irish brigades in the service of France compared not
+without advantage with the military services which France had been
+able to render to Ireland." This passage clearly refers to the aid the
+two countries have afforded each other as against England, and the
+whole lecture seems to have aimed at the heaping of ignominy on the
+British name. The stronger the denunciation of England, the more
+popular the speaker. The Union of Hearts gets "no show" at all. The
+phrase is unknown to Irish Nationalists. However deceitful they may
+be, it cannot yet be said that they have sunk thus low.
+
+Looking over Wednesday's _Cork Examiner_, I observe that amid other
+things the Reverend John O'Mahony attributes the fact that "The
+teeming treasures of the deep were almost left untouched," that is,
+off the Irish coast, and that this is "a disgrace and a dishonour to
+the people through whose misrule and misgovernment the unhappy result
+was brought about." Father O'Mahony is a Corker, and should know that
+he is talking nonsense. Let me explain.
+
+In Cork I met a gentleman for twenty-five years engaged in supplying
+fishermen with all their needs. He said, "The Irish fishermen are the
+laziest, most provoking beggars under the sun." He showed me two sizes
+of net-mesh and said, "This is the size of a shilling, this is the
+size of a halfpenny. The Scotsmen and Shetlanders use the shilling
+size. The difference seems small, but it is very important. The
+Irishmen use the halfpenny size, and will use no other. They say that
+what was good enough for their fathers is good enough for them. When
+the fish are netted they make a rush, and many of them escape the
+larger mesh, which they can get through, unless of the largest size.
+The small mesh catches them by the gills and hangs them. This,
+however, is a small matter. The most important thing is the depth of
+fishing. The Scotsmen and Shetlanders come up to the Irish coast,
+which is remarkably rich in fish, and when they meet a school of fish
+they fish very deep and bring them up by tons, while the Irishmen are
+skimming the tops of the shoals, and drawing up trumpery dozens,
+because their fathers did so. Years ago I used to argue the point, but
+I know better now. When the water is troubled, when the wind is
+blowing, and things are a trifle rough, then is the time to fish. The
+herrings cannot see the net when the water is agitated. The Scotsmen
+are on the job, full of spirits and go, but Paddy gets up and takes a
+look and goes to bed again. He waits for fine weather, so as to give
+the fish a chance. The poor Shetlanders come over long leagues of sea,
+catch ling a yard long, under Paddy's nose, take it to Shetland, cure
+it, and bring it back to him, that he may buy it at twopence a pound.
+At the mouth of the Blackwater are the finest soles in the world, but
+the Irish are too lazy to catch them;--great thick beggars of fish
+four inches thick, you never saw such soles, the Dover soles are lice
+to them, they'd fetch a pound apiece in London if they were known.
+Change the subject. Every time I come round here I get into a rage.
+The British Government finds these men boats. The Shetlanders
+sometimes land, and when they contrast the fat pastures and teeming
+south coast of Ireland with their own cold seas and stony hills they
+say with the Ulstermen, 'Would that you would change countries!'"
+
+I asked him how he accounted for this extraordinary state of things.
+He said:--
+
+"As an Irishman I am bound to answer one question by asking another.
+Was there ever a free and prosperous country where the Roman Catholic
+religion was predominant?"
+
+I could not answer him at the moment, but perhaps Father O'Mahony, who
+knows so much, may satisfy him on the point. Or in the absence of this
+eloquent kisser of the Blarney Stone some other black-coated Corker
+may respond. Goodness knows, they are numerous enough. All are well
+clothed and well fed, while the flock that feed the pastor are mostly
+in squalid poverty, actually bending the knee to their greasy
+task-masters, poor ignorant victims of circumstances.
+
+Among the many nostrums offered to Ireland, nobody offers soap. The
+greatest inventions are often the simplest, and with all humility I
+make the suggestion. Ireland is badly off for soap, and cleanliness is
+next to godliness. Father Humphreys, of Tipperary, boasts of his
+influence with the poor--delights to prove how in the matter of rent
+they took his advice, and so on. Suppose he asks them to wash
+themselves! The suggestion may at first sight appear startling. All
+novelties are alarming at first; but the mortality, except among old
+people, would probably prove less than Father Humphreys might expect.
+He would have some difficulty in recognising his flock, but the
+resources of civilisation would probably be sufficient to conquer this
+drawback. Persons over forty might be exempted, as nothing less than
+skinning would meet their case, but the young might possibly be
+trained, against tradition and heredity, to the regular use of water.
+But I fear the good Father will hardly strain his authority so far. An
+edict to wash would mean blue ructions in Tipperary, open rebellion
+would ensue, and the mighty Catholic Church would totter to its fall.
+The threat to wash would be an untold terrorism, the use of soap an
+outrage which could only be atoned by blood. And Father Humphreys (if
+he knew the words) might truly say _Cui bono_? Why wash? Is not soap
+an enemy to the faith? Do not the people suit our purpose much better
+as they are? _Thigum thu_, brutal and heretic Saxon?
+
+Killaloe (Co. Clare), April 27th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 15.--THE PERIL TO ENGLISH TRADE.
+
+
+As the great object of public interest in the city of Limerick is the
+Treaty Stone, a huge block of granite, raised on a pedestal on the
+Clare side of Thomond Bridge, to commemorate the Violated Treaty so
+graphically described by Macaulay, and to keep in remembrance of the
+people the alleged ancient atrocities of the brutal Saxon--so the
+key-note of Ennis is the memorial to the Manchester Martyrs, erected
+outside the town to commemorate the people who erected it. That is how
+it strikes the average observer. For while the patriotic murderers of
+the Manchester policemen, to wit, O'Brien, Allen, and Larkin, have
+only one tablet to the three heroes, the members of the committee who
+were responsible for this Nationalist or rather Fenian monument have
+immortalised themselves on three tablets. But although party feeling
+runs high, and the town as a whole appears to be eminently disloyal
+and inimical to England, there are not wanting reasonable people who
+look on the proposed change with grave suspicion, even though they
+nominally profess to support the abstract doctrine of Home Rule.
+Naturally, their main opinions are very like those I have previously
+recorded as being prevalent in the neighbouring counties of Limerick,
+Cork, and Kerry. They believe the present time unseasonable, and they
+have no confidence in the present representatives of the Nationalist
+party. They believe that the Irish people are not yet sufficiently
+educated to be at all capable of self-government, and they fail to see
+what substantial advantages would accrue from any Home Rule Bill. More
+especially do they distrust Mr. Gladstone; and although in England the
+Nationalist leaders speak gratefully of the Grand Old Man, it is
+probable that such references would in Ireland be received in silence,
+if not with outspoken derision. A well-known Nationalist thus
+expressed himself on this point:--
+
+"Gladstone's recent attack on Parnell was one of the meanest acts of a
+naturally mean and cowardly man, whose whole biography is a continuous
+story of surrender, abject and unconditional. Parnell was his master.
+With all his faults, Parnell was much the better man. He was too cool
+a swordsman for Gladstone, and, spite of the Grand Man's tricky
+dodging and shifting, Parnell beat him at every point, until he was
+thoroughly cowed and had to give in. What surprises me is that the
+English people are led away by a mere talker. They claim to be the
+most straightforward and practical people in the world. Answer me
+this:--Did you, did anybody, ever know Gladstone to give a
+straightforward answer to any one question? Straight dealing is not in
+him. He is slippery as an eel--with all his 'honesty,' his piety, his
+benevolence. But as he reads the Bible in Hawarden Church, the English
+believe in him. They have no other reason that I can see. Have you
+heard any Irishman speak well of Gladstone? No, and you never will.
+How long in the country? Five weeks only? You may stay five years, and
+you will not hear a word expressing sincere esteem. About separation?
+Well, most of the unthinking people, that is, the great majority,
+would vote in favour of it to-morrow. All sentiment, the very romance
+of sentimentality. I have been in England, I have been in America, and
+you could hardly believe the difference in the people's views. The
+Irish are not practical enough. 'Ireland a nation' is bound to be the
+next cry, if Home Rule become law under the present leaders of the
+Nationalist party."
+
+"But how about the pledges, the solemn and reiterated pledges, of
+Michael Davitt and the rest?"
+
+"I suppose you ask me seriously? You do? An Irishman would regard the
+question as a joke. The pledges are not worth a straw. Their object is
+to deceive, and so to carry the point at issue. Would John Bull come
+with an injured air and say, with tears in his voice, 'You said you'd
+be good. You promised to be loyal. You really did. Did you not, now?'
+Don't you think John would cut a pretty figure? Davitt knows where to
+have him. He knows that a quiet, moderate, reasonable tone fetches
+him. Parnell, too, knew that the method with John was a steady, quiet
+persistence without excitement. John listens to Davitt, and says to
+himself, 'Now this is a calm, steady fellow. Nothing fly-away about
+_him_. No shouting and screaming there. This is the kind of man who
+_must_ boss the show. Give him what he wants.'
+
+"Look how Morley was taken in. And so, no doubt, was many another.
+
+"If England trusts the assurances of these men, and if the bill under
+present conditions becomes law, we shall have two generations of
+experiment, of corruption, of turmoil, of jobbery such as the British
+Empire has never seen.
+
+"Yes, I am a Home Ruler--at the proper time. But Home Rule in our
+present circumstances would mean revolution, and, a hundred to one,
+the reconquest of Ireland. And in the event of any foreign
+complication you would have all your work cut out to effect your
+purpose."
+
+A gentleman from Mallow said, "The Gaelic clubs all over the country
+are in a high state of organisation, and a perfect state of drill. The
+splendid force of constabulary which are now for you would be against
+you. The Irish Legislature, from the first, would have the power to
+raise a force of Volunteers, and the Irish are such a military nation
+that in six months they could muster a very formidable force. I am a
+Unionist, a Protestant too, but I find that my Catholic and Home Rule
+friends, that is, the superior sort, the best-read, the most thinking
+men, agree with me perfectly. But while I can understand Irish Home
+Rulers, even the most extreme sort, I cannot understand any sensible
+Englishman entertaining such an insane idea. As manager of one of the
+largest concerns in Cork I have made many visits to England, and I
+found the supporters of Mr. Gladstone so utterly misinformed, so
+credulous, so blankly ignorant of the matter, that I forbore to debate
+the thing at all. And their assumption was on a level with their
+ignorance, which is saying a good deal."
+
+Mr. Thomas Manley, the great horse dealer, a famous character
+throughout the three kingdoms, said to me, "The Limerick horse fair of
+Thursday last was the worst I ever attended in forty years. There is
+no money in the country. The little that changed hands was for horses
+of a common sort, and every one, I do believe, was bought for England
+and Scotland, tramcar-horses and such like. Home Rule is killing the
+country already. I farmed a thousand acres of land in Ireland for many
+a long year, and since I went more fully into the horse-dealing
+business I kept two hundred and fifty acres going. I have horsed the
+six crack cavalry regiments of the British army, and I know every nook
+and corner of Ireland; know, perhaps, every farmer who can breed and
+rear a horse, and I also know their opinions. Give me the power and I
+would do four things. Here they are:--
+
+"I would first settle the land question, then reform the poor-laws,
+then rearrange the Grand Jury laws, then commence to reclaim the land,
+which would pay ten per cent.
+
+"The Tories should undertake these measures. They would then knock the
+bottom out of the Home Rule agitation. The people are downright sick
+of the whole business. They expected to be well off before this. They
+find themselves going down the nick."
+
+Mr. Abraham P. Keeley said: "There is much fault found with the
+landlords, but they are by no means so much to blame as is supposed.
+Put the saddle on the right horse. And the right horse is the steam
+horse. The rapid transit of grain and general farm produce has lowered
+the value of land more rapidly than the landlords could lower the
+rent. Every year the prairie lands of America are further opened up by
+railways; India and Egypt and Australia are now in the swim, and
+Ireland, as a purely agricultural country, must suffer. A curious
+illustration of the purely rural condition of the country was
+mentioned the other day. Nearly all the great towns drink the water of
+the rivers upon which they stand. Cork drinks the Lee; Limerick drinks
+the Shannon; you can catch trout from the busiest quay in Limerick.
+Now, the towns of England don't drink their own rivers. You don't
+drink the Rea at Birmingham, I think?"
+
+I was obliged to admit that the pellucid waters of the crystal Rea
+were not the favourite table beverage of the citizens of Brum, but
+submitted that Mr. Joseph Malins, the Grand Worthy Chief Templar, and
+his great and influential following might possibly use this innocent
+means of dissipation.
+
+Mr. Thomas Manley continued: "The tenant farmer has cried himself up,
+and the Nationalists have cried him up as the finest, most
+industrious, most honest, most frugal, most self-sacrificing fellow
+in the world. But he isn't. Not a bit of it. The landlords and their
+agents have over and over again been shot for rack-renting when the
+rents had been forced up by secret competitions among neighbours and
+even relations.
+
+"Ask any living Irish farmer if I am right, and he will say, Yes, ten
+times yes.
+
+"The Irishman has a land-hunger such as is unknown over the water. And
+why? Because the land is his sole means of living. We have no
+enterprise, no manufactures to speak of. The Celtic nature is to
+hoard. The Englishman invests what the Irishman would bury in his back
+garden, or hang up the chimney in an old stocking. So we have no big
+works all over the country to employ the people. And as we are very
+prolific, the only remedy is emigration. Down at Queenstown the other
+day I saw 250 Irish emigrants leaving the country. A Nationalist
+friend said, 'If they'd only wait a bit till we get Home Rule, they
+needn't go, the crathurs.' What's to hinder it? How will they be
+better off? Will the land sustain more with Home Rule than without it?
+And when capital is driven away, as it must and will be the moment we
+pass the bill, instead of more factories we'll have less, and England
+and Scotland will be over-run with thousands of starving Irish folks
+whose means of living is taken away.
+
+"As an Irish farmer, and an Irish farmer's son, living on Irish farms
+for more than sixty years, having an intimate acquaintance with the
+whole of Ireland, and almost every acre of England, I deliberately say
+that the Irish farmer is much better off than the English, Scotch, or
+Welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but in the matter of
+soil.
+
+"In many parts of England the soil must be manured after every crop.
+Every time you take out you must put in. Not so in Ireland. Nature has
+been so bountiful to us that we can take three, and even six, crops
+off the land after a single dose of manure. Of course the farmer
+grumbles, and no wonder. The price of stock and general produce is so
+depressed that Irish farmers are pinched. But so they are in England.
+And yet you have no moonlighting. You don't shoot your landlords. If
+the land will not pay you give it up and take to something else. An
+Irishman goes on holding, simply refusing to pay rent. His neighbours,
+who are in the same fix, support him. When the landlord wishes to
+distrain, after waiting seven years or so, he has to get a decree. The
+tenants know of it as soon as he, and they set sentinels. When the
+police are signalled the cattle are driven away and mixed with those
+of other farmers--every difficulty that Irish cleverness can invent is
+placed in the way. Then the landlord, whether or not successful in
+distraining, is boycotted, and the people reckon it a virtue to shoot
+him down on sight. Conviction is almost, if not quite, impossible, for
+even if you found a willing witness--a very unlikely thing I can tell
+you--even then the witness knows himself marked for the same fate. If
+he went to America or Australia he would be traced, and someone would
+be found to settle him. Such things have happened over and over again,
+and people know the risk is great. But about rack-rents.
+
+"I have told you of Irish avariciousness in the matter of land, and
+have explained the reason of it. Rents have been forced up by people
+going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their
+eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. Landlords are
+human; agents, if possible, still more human. They handed over the
+land to the highest bidder. What more natural? The farmers are not
+business men. They offered more than the land could pay. You know the
+results. But why curse and blaspheme the landlords for what was in
+many cases their own deliberate act?"
+
+On Friday last I had a small object-lesson in Irish affairs. Colonel
+O'Callaghan, of Bodyke, went to Limerick to buy cattle for grazing on
+his estate. The cattle were duly bought, but the gallant Colonel had
+to drive them through the city with his own right hand. I saw his
+martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and
+even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting
+interesting matter, did I swoop down on the unhappy Colonel, startling
+him severely with my sudden dash. He said, "I'm driving cows now,"
+and, truth to tell, there was no denying it. Even as he spoke, a
+perverse beast of Nationalist tendencies effected a diversion to the
+right, plainly intending a charge down Denmark Street, _en route_ for
+Irish Town, and the gallant Colonel waiving ceremony and a formidable
+shillelagh, hastened by a flank movement to cut off this retreat, and
+to guide the erring creature in the right way to fresh woods and
+pastures new. I fired a Parthian arrow after the parting pair.
+"Appointment?" I shouted, but the Colonel shook his head. It was no
+time for gentle assignations. The cursed crew in front of him absorbed
+his faculties, and then he half expected to be shot from any street
+abutting on his path. Perhaps I may nail him yet. He has been
+attempting to distrain. If the Colonel refuses to speak I will
+interview his tenants. I have said I will pursue, I will overtake, I
+will divide the spoil--with the readers of the _Gazette_. _Dixi._ I have
+spoken! There is much shooting on the Bodyke estates, and in Ennis
+they say that sixty policemen are stationed there to pick up the game.
+Nobody has been bagged as yet, but the Clare folks are still hoping.
+To-morrow a trusty steed will bear me to the spot. Relying on a
+carefully-considered, carefully-studied Nationalist appearance, an
+anti-landlord look, and a decided No-Rent expression in my left eye, I
+feel that I could ride through the most dangerous districts with
+perfect impunity. "Base is the slave that pays," says Ancient Pistol.
+That is my present motto. One touch of No Rent makes the Irish kin.
+
+The English people should be told that nearly all Irishmen, whether
+Unionist or otherwise, are strong Protectionists. The moment Home Rule
+becomes law a tremendous attempt will be made to shut out English
+goods. "The very first thing we do," said to me an influential
+Dubliner I met here, "is to double the harbour dues; you can't prevent
+that, I suppose? The first good result will be the choking-off of all
+the Scotch and Manx fishermen who infest our seas. At present they
+bring their fish into Dublin, whence it is sent all over Ireland,
+competing against Irish fishermen. Then we'll tax all manufactured
+goods. We will admit the raw material duty-free, but we must be
+permitted to know what suits us best, and we must, and will, tax
+flour, but not wheat. We in Ireland, forsooth, must submit to having
+all our flour mills closed to suit the swarming populations of
+Manchester and Birmingham. They must have a cheap loaf. Dear me! and
+so flour comes here untaxed, having given employment to people in
+America, while our folks are walking about idle. Go down the river
+Boyne, from Trim to Drogheda. What do you see? Twelve mills, with
+machinery worth Ł100,000 or more, lying idle. One of those mills once
+employed fifty or sixty men. Now it employs none. Tax flour, I say,
+and so says everybody. We must have Protection, and very stringent
+Protection. Irish manufacturers must be sustained against English
+competition. Twenty years ago Dublin was a great place for cabinet
+work. Now nothing is done there, or next to nothing. Everything must
+come from London. At the same period we did a great trade in leather.
+The leather trade is gone to the devil. We did a big turnover in boots
+and shoes. Now every pair worn in the city comes from Northampton.
+Ireland and Irish goods for the Irish, and burn everything English but
+English coals. Give us Home Rule, and all these trades will be
+restored to us."
+
+Thus spoke the great Home Ruler, who declined to permit his name to
+appear, as he said it might affect his business. His sentiments are
+universal, and, as I have said, his opinions are shared by the great
+majority of Irishmen, even though professedly Unionist.
+
+A word of comment on the patriotic sentiments of my friend. I went to
+Delany, of George Street, Limerick, for a suit of Blarney tweed. He
+had not a yard in the place. He was indicated as the leading clothier
+and outfitter of the city, but the Mahony Mills were not represented
+amongst his patterns. He had Scotch tweeds, Yorkshire tweeds, West of
+England tweeds, but although the Blarney tweeds are said to be the
+best in the world as well as the handsomest, I had to seek them
+elsewhere. An English friend says, "The Irish politicians are rather
+inconsistent. They came into this hotel one evening, six of them,
+red-hot from a Nationalist meeting, cursing England up hill and down
+dale, till I really felt quite nervous. I hadn't got a Winchester like
+that. (I hope it won't go off.) They agreed that to boycott English
+goods was the correct thing, and of course they were for burning all
+but English coals, when the leader of the gang said, 'Now, boys, what
+will you drink,' and hang me! if they didn't every one take a bottle
+of Bass's bitter beer! Did you ever know such inconsistency?"
+
+The quirks and quips of the Irish character would puzzle a
+Philadelphia lawyer. Spinning along the lane to Killaloe, with Mr.
+Beesley, of Leeds, and Mr. Abraham Keeley, of Mallow, balanced on
+opposite sides of a jaunting car, we came on a semi-savage specimen of
+the genuine Irish sort. Semi-savage! he was seven-eighths savage, and
+semi-lunatic, just clever enough to mind the cows and goats which,
+with a donkey or two, grazed by the way-side. He might be
+five-and-twenty, and looked strong and lusty. His naked feet were
+black with the dirt of his childhood, and not only black, but shining
+and gleaming in the sun. His tattered trousers were completely worn
+away to the knee, showing his muscular legs to perfection. The rags
+that clothed his body were confusing and indefinite. You could not
+tell where one garment ended and another began, or whether there were
+more than one at all. Cover a pump with boiling glue, shake over it a
+sack of rags, and you will get an approximate effect of his costume.
+His tawny, matted hair and beard had never known brush, comb, or
+steel. It was a virgin forest. He scratched his head with the air of
+the old woman who said "Forty years long have this generation troubled
+me;" and ran after the car with outstretched hand. I threw him a
+penny, upon which he threw himself at full length, his tongue hanging
+out, a greedy sparkle in his eye. My Irish friend instantly stopped
+the car.
+
+"Now I'll show you something. This man is more than half an idiot, but
+watch him." Then he cried:
+
+"Come here, now, I'll toss you for the penny."
+
+The man came quickly forward.
+
+"Now then, put down your penny, and call. What is it? Head or harp,
+speak while it spins!"
+
+"Head," shouted the savage, and head it was.
+
+He picked up the second penny with glee, and said with a burst of wild
+laughter. "Toss more, more, more; toss ever an' always; toss agin,
+agin, agin."
+
+The car-driver was disgusted. "Bad luck to ye for a madman. Ye have
+the gamblin' blood in ye. Bedad, ye'd break Monty Carly, ye would."
+
+Then looking at the gambler's black and polished feet, he said:--
+
+"Tell me, now, honey, is it Day an' Martin's ye use?"
+
+Ennis (Co. Clare), April 29th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 16.--CIVIL WAR IN COUNTY CLARE.
+
+
+The name of Bodyke is famous throughout all lands, but few people know
+anything about the place or the particulars of the great dispute. The
+whole district is at present in a state of complete lawlessness. The
+condition of matters is almost incredible, and is such as might
+possibly be expected in the heart of Africa, but hardly in a civilised
+country, especially when that country is under the benignant British
+rule. The law-breakers seem to have the upper hand, and to be almost,
+if not quite, masters of the situation. The whole estate is divided
+into three properties, Fort Ann, Milltown, and Bodyke, about five
+thousand acres in all, of which the first two comprise about one
+thousand five hundred acres, isolated from the Bodyke lands, which
+latter may amount to some three thousand five hundred acres. Either by
+reason of their superior honesty, or, as is sometimes suggested, on
+account of their inferior strategic position, the tenants of the Fort
+Ann and Milltown lands pay their rent. The men of Bodyke are in a
+state of open rebellion, and resist every process of law both by
+evasion and open force. The hill-tops are manned by sentries armed
+with rifles. Bivouac fires blaze nightly on every commanding eminence.
+Colonel O'Callaghan's agent is a cock-shot from every convenient
+mound. His rides are made musical by the 'ping' of rifle balls, and
+nothing but the dread of his repeating rifle, with which he is known
+to be handy, prevents the marksmen from coming to close quarters. Mr.
+Stannard MacAdam seems to bear a charmed life. He is a fine athletic
+young man, calm and collected, modest and unassuming, and, as he
+declares, no talker. He has been described as a man of deeds, not
+words. He said, "I am not a literary man. I have not the skill to
+describe incident, or to give a clear and detailed account of what has
+taken place. I have refused to give information to the local
+journalists. My business is to manage the estate, and that takes me
+all my time. You must get particulars elsewhere. I would rather not
+speak of my own affairs or those of Colonel O'Callaghan."
+
+There was nothing for it but to turn my unwilling back on this
+veritable gold mine. But although Mr. MacAdam could not or would not
+speak, others were not so reticent, and once in the neighbourhood the
+state of things was made plainly evident. The road from Ennis to
+Bodyke is dull and dreary, and abounds with painful memories.
+Half-an-hour out you reach the house, or what remains of it, of
+Francis Hynes, who was hanged for shooting a man. A little further and
+you reach the place where Mr. Perry was shot. A wooded spot,
+"convaynient" for ambush, once screened some would-be murderers who
+missed their mark. Then comes the house of the Misses Brown, in which
+on Christmas Eve shots were fired, by way of celebrating the festive
+season. From a clump of trees some four hundred yards from the road
+the police on a car were fired upon, the horse being shot dead in his
+tracks. The tenantry of this sweet district are keeping up their rifle
+practice, and competent judges say that the Bodyke men possess not
+less than fifty rifles, none of which can be found by the police. Said
+one of the constabulary, "They lack nerve to fire from shorter
+distances, as they think MacAdam is the better shot, and to miss him
+would be risky, as he is known to shoot rabbits with ball cartridge.
+At the same time, I remember Burke of Loughrea, who was shot, had
+also a fine reputation as a rifleman, but they settled him neatly
+enough. I saw him in the Railway Inn, Athenry, just before he was
+killed, with a repeating rifle slung on his back and a revolver on his
+hip. I saw him ride away, his servant driving while Burke kept the
+cocked rifle ready, the butt under his armpit, the trigger in his
+hand. He sat with his back to the horse, keeping a good look-out, and
+yet they shot both him and his servant as they galloped along. The
+horse and car came in without them. To carry arms is therefore not a
+complete security, though no doubt it is, to some extent, a deterrent.
+But my opinion is that when a man is ordered to be shot he will be
+shot. Clare swarms with secret societies, and you never know from one
+moment to another what resolutions they will pass. I don't know what
+the end of it will be, but I should think that Home Rule, by giving
+the murderers a fancied security, would in this district lead to
+wholesale bloodshed. The whole country would rise, as they do now, to
+meet the landlord or his agent, but they would then do murder without
+the smallest hesitation."
+
+His companion said--the police here are never alone--"The first thing
+Morley did was to rescind the Crimes Act. When we heard of that we
+said 'Now it's coming.' And we've got it. Every man with a head on
+him, and not a turnip, knew very well what would happen. The police
+are shot at till they take no notice of it. Sometimes we charge up the
+hills to the spot where the firing started, but among the rocks and
+ravines and hills and holes they run like rabbits, or they hand their
+arms to some fleet-footed chap to hide, while they stay--aye, they do,
+they actually stand their ground till we come, and there they are
+working at a hedge or digging the ground, and looking as innocent and
+stupid as possible. They never saw anybody, and never heard any
+firing--or they thought it was the Colonel shooting a hare. We hardly
+know what to do in doubtful cases, as we know the tenants have the
+support of the Government, and it is as much as our places are worth
+to make any mistake under present circumstances. The tenants know that
+too, so between them and Morley we feel between two fires."
+
+The trouble has been alive for fifteen years or so, but it was not
+until 1887 that Bodyke became a regularly historic place. The tenants
+had paid no rent for years, and wholesale evictions were tried, but
+without effect. The people walked in again the next day, and as the
+gallant Colonel had not an army division at his back he was obliged to
+confess himself beaten at every point. He went in for arbitration, but
+before giving details let us first take a bird's eye view of his
+position. I will endeavour to state the case as fairly as possible,
+premising that nothing will be given beyond what is freely admitted by
+both parties to the dispute.
+
+The Colonel, who is a powerfully-built, bronzed, and active man,
+seemingly over sixty years old, left the service just forty years ago.
+Four years before that his father had died, heavily in debt, leaving
+the estate encumbered by a mortgage, a jointure to the relict, Mrs.
+O'Callaghan, now deceased (the said jointure being at that time
+several years in arrear), a head rent of a hundred guineas a year to
+Colonel Patterson, with taxes, tithe rent-charges, and heaven knows
+what besides. In 1846 and 1847 his father had made considerable
+reductions in the rents of the Bodyke holdings, but the tenants had
+contrived to fall into arrears to the respectable tune of Ł6,000, or
+thereabouts. Such was the state of things when the heir came into his
+happy possessions.
+
+A Protestant clergyman said to me--"Land in Ireland is like
+self-righteousness. The more you have, the worse off you are." Thus
+was it at Bodyke.
+
+Something had to be done. To ask the tenants for the Ł6,000 was mere
+waste of breath. The young soldier had no agent. He was determined to
+be the people's friend. Although a Black Protestant, he was ambitious
+of Catholic good-will. He wanted to have the tenants blessing him. He
+coveted the good name which is better than rubies. He wished to make
+things comfortable, to be a general benefactor of his species; if a
+Protestant landlord and a Roman Catholic tenantry can be said to be of
+the same species at all, a point which, according to the Nationalist
+press, is at least doubtful. He called the tenants together, and
+agreed to accept three hundred pounds for the six thousand pounds
+legally due, so as to make a fresh start and encourage the people to
+walk in the paths of righteousness. When times began to mend, the
+Colonel himself a farmer, commenced to raise the rents until they
+reached the amount paid during his father's reign. The people stood it
+quietly enough until 1879, when the Colonel appointed agents. This
+year was one of agricultural depression. A Mr. Willis succeeded the
+two first agents, but during the troubles he resigned his charge. The
+popular opinion leans to the supposition that his administration was
+ineffective, that is, that he was comparatively unused to field
+strategy, that he lacked dash and military resource, and that he
+entertained a constitutional objection to being shot. The rents came
+under the judicial arrangement, and reductions were made. Still things
+would not work smoothly, and it was agreed that bad years should be
+further considered on rent days. This agreement led to reductions on
+the judicial rent of 25 to 30 per cent., besides which the Colonel, in
+the arbitration of 1887, had accepted Ł1,000 in lieu of several
+thousand pounds of arrears then due. After November, 1891, the tenants
+ceased to pay rent at all, and that is practically their present
+position. The Colonel, who being himself an experienced farmer is a
+competent judge of agricultural affairs, thinks the tenants are able
+to pay, and even believes that they are willing, were it not for the
+intimidation of half-a-score village ruffians whose threatened
+moonlighting exploits, when considered in conjunction with the bloody
+deeds which have characterised the district up to recent times, are
+sufficient to paralyse the whole force of the British Empire, when
+that force is directed by the feeble fumblers now in office.
+
+That they can pay if they will, is clearly proved by recent
+occurrences. Let us abandon ancient history and bring our story down
+to date. The number of incidents is so great, and the complications
+arising from local customs and prejudices are so bewildering that only
+after much inquiry have I been able to sort from the tangled web a few
+clear and understandable instances, which, however, may be taken as a
+fair sample of the whole.
+
+New brooms sweep clean. The new agent, Mr. MacAdam, began to
+negotiate. Pow-wows and palavers all ended in smoke, and as meanwhile
+the charges on the estate were going on merrily, and no money was
+coming in to meet them, writs were issued against six of the best-off
+farmers; writs, not decrees, the writ being a more effective
+instrument. One Malone was evicted. He was a married man, without
+encumbrances, owed several years' arrears, had mismanaged his farm, a
+really good bit of land, had been forgiven a lot of rent, and still he
+was not happy. A relative had lent him nearly Ł200 to carry on, but
+Malone was a bottomless pit. What he required was a gold mine and a
+man to shovel up the ore, but unhappily no such thing existed on the
+farm. The relative offered to take the land, believing that he could
+soon recoup himself the loan, but Malone held on with iron grip,
+refusing to listen to the voice of the charmer, charmed he never so
+wisely. The relative wished to take the place at the judicial rent,
+and offered to give Malone the house, grass for a cow, and the use of
+three acres of land. Malone declined to make any change, and as a last
+resort it was decided to evict him. On the auspicious day MacAdam
+arrived from Limerick, accompanied by two men from Dublin, whom he
+proposed to instal as caretakers in Malone's house. The Sheriff's
+party were late, and MacAdam, waiting at some distance, was discovered
+and the alarm given. Horns were blown, the chapel bell was rung, the
+whole country turned out in force. Anticipating seizure, the people
+drove away their cattle, and shortly no hoof nor horn was visible in
+the district. A crowd collected and, observing the caretakers, at once
+divined their mission, and perceived that not seizure, but eviction,
+was the order of the day. They rushed to Malone's house, and, with his
+consent and assistance, tore off the roof, smashed the windows, and
+demolished the doors. The place was thus rendered uninhabitable.
+
+This having been happily effected, the Sheriff's party arrived an hour
+or so late, in the Irish fashion. Possession was formally given to the
+agent, who was now free to revel in the four bare walls, and to enjoy
+the highly-ventilated condition of the building. The crowd became more
+and more threatening, and if they could have mustered pluck to run in
+on the loaded rifles, Sheriff, agent, and escort must have been
+murdered without mercy. The shouting and threatening were heard two
+miles away. But the tenants had taken other measures. A firing party
+was posted on a neighbouring hill, and as the Sheriff left the shelter
+of the walls a volley was poured in from a clump of trees four
+hundred yards away, one bullet narrowly missing a man who ducked at
+the flash. The riflemen were visible among the trees, and the Sheriff
+returned the fire. Several policemen also fired into the clump, but
+without effect, and their fire was briskly returned from the hill,
+this time just missing the head of a policeman covered by a bush, a
+bullet cutting off a branch close to his ear. The police then prepared
+to charge up the hill, when the firing party decamped. No arrests were
+made, although the marksmen must have been dwellers in the
+neighbourhood. A policeman said, "We know who they are; you can't
+conceal these things in a country place; but we have no legal
+evidence, and although we saw them at four hundred yards, who will
+accept our identification at such a distance? And of course no jury
+would convict. We have no remedy in this unfortunate country. So long
+as Gladstone and such folks are bidding for the people's votes so long
+we shall have lawlessness. But for the change of Government all would
+long have been settled amicably. But I heard a young priest say to the
+people, 'Hold on a bit till the new Government goes in.'"
+
+To return to the Malone affair, Mr. MacAdam applied to the police for
+resident protection not for himself, but for the caretakers, whom he
+now proposed to instal in a farmhouse in the occupation of one of the
+Colonel's servants, and from which no one had been evicted. The
+authorities refused protection on the very remarkable plea that the
+situation of the aforesaid premises was so dangerous! so that had the
+place been quite safe, they would have consented to protect it.
+MacAdam determined to carry out his plan, with or without protection.
+He left Limerick at midnight with an ammunition and provision train of
+seven cars, with two caretakers and four workmen, with materials to
+fortify the place. He had previously given the authorities notice that
+he meant to occupy Knockclare, the house in question, and before he
+started they sent a police-sergeant from Tulla, a twenty miles drive,
+to formally warn him off, for that his life would assuredly be taken,
+and the officer also demanded that he should be permitted to
+personally warn the caretakers of the risk they ran. This was granted,
+but the men stuck to their guns. At the eviction a man had funked,
+frightened out of his seven senses. The police declined all
+responsibility, but offered to guard the farm for a shilling per man
+per day. MacAdam thought this proposal without precedent, and left the
+police to their own devices, driving along the twenty miles of hilly
+road, with sorry steeds that refused the last hill, so that the loads
+had to be pushed and carried up by the men. This was at eight or nine
+in the morning, after many hours' toilsome march. The fun was not over
+yet. Like the penny show, it was "just a-goin' to begin."
+
+The crowd turned out and with awful threats of instant death menaced
+the lives of the party, who, with levelled rifles, at last gained the
+building. The people brought boards, and showed the caretakers their
+coffins in the rough. They spoke of shooting, and swore they would
+roast them alive that night by burning the house in which they were
+sheltered. A shot was fired at MacAdam. A sergeant with one man
+arrived from Tulla police-barracks and urged the party to leave before
+they were murdered. MacAdam would hold his post at all risks. Later
+eight armed policemen arrived, and then two carmen started to go home.
+A wall of stones blocked the road. They somehow got over that, and
+found a second wall a little further on. Here was a menacing crowd,
+and the police who followed the car drew their revolvers, and with
+great determination advanced on the mob, saving the carmen's lives,
+for which they were publicly praised from the Bench. But the jarveys
+returned, and by a circuitous route reached Limerick viâ Killaloe,
+thanking Heaven for their whole skins, and vowing never to so risk
+them again. The County Inspector who refused the party police
+protection explained that he did so "out of regard for the safety of
+his men." He said, "I had more than Mr. MacAdam and his party to
+consider. I must preserve the lives of the men in my charge."
+
+At present the two caretakers hold the citadel, which is also
+garrisoned by a force of sixteen policemen regularly relieved by day
+and by night, every man armed to the teeth. Now and then the foinest
+pisintry in the wuruld turn out to the neighbouring hills and blaze
+away with rifles at the doors and windows of the little barn-like
+structure. The marksmen want a competent instructor. Anyone who knows
+anything of shooting knows the high art and scientific knowledge
+required for long-range rifle practice. These men are willing, but
+they lack science. Knowledge to their eyes her ample page, Rich with
+the spoils of time, has ne'er unrolled. Mr. Gladstone might bring over
+from the Transvaal a number of the Boers whose shooting impressed him
+so much to coach these humble Kelts in the mysteries of rifle
+shooting. Such a measure would perceptibly accelerate the passage of
+the Home Rule Bill.
+
+Such is the state of things in Bodyke at this moment. Colonel
+O'Callaghan has had no penny of rent for years--that is, nothing for
+himself. What has been paid by the tenants of Fort Ann and Milltown
+has been barely sufficient to meet the charges on the estate. The
+Colonel thinks that the more he concedes the more his people want. He
+has had many narrow escapes from shooting, and rather expects to be
+bagged at last. He seems to be constitutionally unconscious of fear,
+but the police, against his wish, watch over him. In the few instances
+in which Mr. MacAdam, his agent, has effected seizures, the people
+have immediately paid up--have simply walked into their houses,
+brought out the money, and planked down the rent with all expenses,
+the latter amounting to some 20 or 25 per cent. They _can_ pay. The
+Colonel, who lives by farming, having no other source of income, knows
+their respective positions exactly, and declines to be humbugged. The
+tenants believe that they will shortly have the land for nothing, and
+they are content to remain in a state of siege, themselves
+beleaguering the investing force, lodged in the centre of the
+position. The fields are desolate, tillage is suspended, and the whole
+of the cattle are driven out of sight. Armed men watch each other by
+night and by day, and bloodshed may take place at any moment. The
+farming operations of the whole region are disorganised and out of
+joint. Six men have been arrested for threats and violence, but all
+were discharged--the jury would not convict, although the judge said
+the evidence for the defence was of itself sufficient to convict the
+gang. A ruffian sprang on MacAdam with an open knife, swearing he
+would disembowel him. After a terrible struggle the man was disarmed
+and secured, brought up before the beak, and the offence proved to the
+hilt. This gentleman was dismissed without a stain on his character.
+MacAdam asked that he should at least be bound over to keep the peace.
+This small boon was refused. Comment is needless. How long are the
+English people going to stand this Morley-Gladstone management?
+
+I have not yet been able to interview Colonel O'Callaghan himself, but
+my information, backed by my own observation, may be relied on as
+accurate. The carman who drove me hither said "The Bodyke boys are
+dacent fellows, but they must have their sport. Tis their nature to be
+shootin' folks, an' ye can't find fault with a snipe for havin' a long
+bill. An' they murther ye in sich a tinder-hearted way that no
+raisonable landlord could have any objection to it."
+
+I have the honour of again remarking that Ireland is a wonderful
+country.
+
+Bodyke (Co. Clare), May 2nd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 17.--RENT AT THE ROOT OF NATIONALISM.
+
+
+The tenants of the Bodyke property stigmatise Colonel O'Callaghan as
+the worst landlord in the world, and declare themselves totally unable
+to pay the rent demanded, and even in some cases say that they cannot
+pay any rent at all, a statement which is effectually contradicted by
+the fact that most of them pay up when fairly out-generalled by the
+dashing strategy of Mr. Stannard MacAdam, whose experience as a racing
+bicyclist seems to have stood him in good stead. The country about
+Bodyke has an unfertile look, a stony, boggy, barren appearance. Here
+and there are patches of tolerable land, but the district cannot
+fairly be called a garden of Eden. Being desirous of hearing both
+sides of the question, I have conversed with several of the
+complaining farmers, most of whom have very small holdings, if their
+size be reckoned by the rent demanded. The farmers' homes are not
+luxurious, but the rural standard of luxury is in Ireland everywhere
+far below that of the English cottar, who would hold up his hands in
+dismay if required to accommodate himself to such surroundings.
+Briefly stated, the case of the tenants is based on an alleged
+agreement on the part of Colonel O'Callaghan to make a reduction of
+twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents and thirty-seven and a half
+per cent. on non-judicial rents, whenever the farming season proved
+unfavourable. This was duly carried out until 1891, when the question
+arose as to whether that was or was not a bad year. The tenants say
+that 1891 was abnormally bad for them, but that on attending to pay
+their rent, believing that the reductions which had formerly been
+made, and which they had come to regard as invariable, would again
+take place, they were told that the customary rebate would now cease
+and determine, and that therefore they were expected to pay their
+rents in full. This they profess to regard as a flagrant breach of
+faith, and they at once decided to pay no rent at all. The position
+became a deadlock, and such it still remains. They affect to believe
+that the last agent, Mr. Willis, resigned his post out of sheer
+sympathy, and not because he feared sudden translation to a brighter
+sphere. They complain that the Colonel's stables are too handsome, and
+that they themselves live in cabins less luxurious than the lodgings
+of the landlord's horses. There is no epithet too strong to express
+their indignation against the devoted Colonel, who was described by
+one imaginative peasant, who had worked himself up to a sort of
+descriptive convulsion, as a "Rawhacious Vagabone," a fine instance of
+extemporaneous word-coining of the ideo-phonetic school, which will
+doubtless be greedily accepted by Nationalist Parliamentarians who,
+long ago, exhausted their vocabulary of expletives in dealing with Mr.
+Gladstone and each other.
+
+The Bodykers have one leading idea, to "wait yet awhile." Home Rule
+will banish the landlords, and give the people the land for nothing at
+all. The peasantry are mostly fine-grown men, well-built and
+well-nourished, bearing no external trace of the hardships they claim
+to have endured. They are civil and obliging, and thoroughly inured to
+the interviewer. They have a peculiar accent, of a sing-song
+character, which now and then threatens to break down the stranger's
+gravity. That the present state of things is intolerable, and cannot
+last much longer, they freely admit, but they claim to have the tacit
+sympathy of the present Government, and gleefully relate with what
+unwillingness police protection was granted to the agent and his men.
+They disclaim any intention of shooting or otherwise murdering the
+landlord or his officers, and assert that the fact that they still
+live is sufficient evidence in this direction. Said one white-headed
+man of gentle, deferential manner:--
+
+"The days o' landlord shootin' is gone by. If the Boys wanted to shoot
+the Colonel what's to hinder them? Would his double-barrel protect
+him, or the four dogs he has about him, that he sends sniffin' an'
+growlin' about the threes an' ditches. If the word wint out he
+wouldn't live a day, nor his agint nayther. An' his durty emergency
+men, that's posted like spies at the house beyant, could be potted any
+time they showed their noses. An' couldn't we starve thim out?
+Couldn't we cut off their provisions? Why would we commit murther whin
+we have only to wait till things turn round, which wid the help of God
+will be afore long. We're harassed an' throubled, always pullin' the
+divil by the tail, but that won't last for ever. We'll have our own
+men, that ondershtands Oireland, to put us right, an' then O'Callaghan
+an' all his durty thribe'll be fired out of the counthry before ye can
+say black's the white o' my eye; an' black curses go wid thim."
+
+The caretakers are not accessible. Stringent orders forbid the giving
+of information to any person whatever. This is unfortunate, as a look
+at their diaries would prove amusing. They must feel like rabbits
+living in a burrow bored in a sporting district, or the man in the
+iron mask, or the late respected Damocles, or the gentleman who saw
+the handwriting on the wall. Their sleep must be troubled. They must
+have ugly dreams of treasons, stratagems, and spoils, and when they
+wake, swearing a prayer or two, they doubtless see through the gloom,
+MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN (I quote from memory), in lurid letters on
+the ceiling of their stronghold. Their waking visions and their daily
+talk must be of guns and pikes, of graves and coffins, shrouds and
+skeletons. Perhaps they, like Mr. MacAdam and some others, have
+received missives sprinkled with blood, and ornamented with skulls and
+cross-bones, those famous national emblems which the Irish tenant
+sketches with a rude, untutored art; bold, freehand drawings, done in
+gore by hereditary instinct. It may be that they see the newspapers,
+that they learn how the other day the house of a caretaker at
+Tipperary was, by incendiaries, burned to the ground, the poor fellow
+at the time suffering from lockjaw, taking his food with difficulty,
+owing to his having some time previously been shot through the face.
+Or they may read of the shooting case at Castleisland, and how Mr.
+Magilicuddy suggests that such cases be made public, that the people
+may know something of the present lawlessness of the country, or of
+the narrow squeak of Mr. Walshe, a schoolmaster, living just outside
+Ennis, who barely escaped with his life from two bullets, fired at
+him, because his wife had been appointed mistress of the girls; or the
+sad affair of Mr. Blood of the same district, who being an admittedly
+kind and amiable man, is compelled to be always under the escort of
+four armed policemen for that he did discharge a herdman without first
+asking permission from the local patriots. Or they may meditate on the
+fate of the old man near Clonmel, who was so beaten that he has since
+died, his daughter, who might have aided him, having first been
+fastened in her room. These and a hundred similar instances of outrage
+and attempted murder have crept into print during the last few days.
+Red ruin and the breaking-up of laws herald the Home Rule Bill. And
+if the premonitory symptoms be thus severe, how shall we doctor the
+disease itself?
+
+The other day I stumbled on Mr. Lynn, of Dublin, whom I first met at
+the Queen's Hotel, Portadown, County Armagh. He said, "We ought to
+know what the Home Rule Bill will do. We know the materials of which
+the dish is composed, we have seen their preparation and mixing, we
+now have the process of cooking before us, and when we get it it will
+give us indigestion."
+
+The Bodykers have a new grievance, one of most recent date. They had
+found a delightful means of evasion, which for a time worked well, but
+the bottom has been knocked out of it, and their legal knowledge has
+proved of no avail. To pay rent whenever a seizure was effected was
+voted a bore, a calamitous abandonment of principle, and a loss of
+money which might be better applied. So that when MacAdam made his
+latest seizures, say on the land of Brown and Jones, these
+out-manoeuvred tenants brought forward friends named Smith and
+Robinson who deeply swore and filed affidavits to the effect that the
+cattle so seized belonged to them, Smith and Robinson to wit, and not
+to the afore-mentioned Brown and Jones, on whose land they were found.
+Here was a pretty kettle of fish. Colonel O'Callaghan, or his agent,
+were processed for illegal distraint, and the evidence being dead
+against the landlord, that fell tyrant had on several occasions to
+disgorge his prey, whereat there was great rejoicing in Bodyke. The
+new agent, however, is a tough customer, and in his quality of Clerk
+of Petty Sessions dabbles in legal lore. He found an Act which
+provides that, after due formalities, distraint may be made on any
+cattle found on the land in respect of which rent is due, no matter to
+whom the said cattle may belong. The tenants are said to have been
+arranging an amicable interchange of grazing land, the cows of Smith
+feeding on the land of Brown, and _vice versâ_, so that the affidavit
+agreement might have some colour of decency. The ancient Act
+discovered by the ardent MacAdam has rendered null and void this
+proposed fraternal reciprocity, and the order to conceal every hoof
+and horn pending discovery of the right answer to this last atrocity
+has been punctually obeyed, the local papers slanging landlord and
+agent, but seemingly unable to find the proper countermine. No end of
+details and of incident might be given, but no substantial increase
+could be made to the information, given in this and my preceding
+letter. The tenants say that the landlord perversely refuses the
+reductions allowed in better times, and the landlord says that as a
+practical farmer he believes that those upon whom he has distrained or
+attempted to distrain are able to pay in full. He declares that he has
+not proceeded against those who from any cause are unable to meet
+their obligations, but only against the well-to-do men, who, having
+the money in hand, are deliberately withholding his just and
+reasonable due, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country
+and the weakness of the Government to benefit themselves, regardless
+of the suffering their selfishness entails on innocent people.
+
+In striking contrast to the turbulence of the Bodyke men is the
+peaceful calm of the Castleconnel people. I have had several pleasant
+interviews with Lady de Burgho, whose territory embraces some sixty
+thousand acres, and who, during a widowed life of twenty-two years,
+has borne the stress and strain of Irish estate administration, with
+its eternal and wearisome chopping and changing of law, its
+labyrinthine complications, its killing responsibilities. Lady de
+Burgho is, after all, very far from dead, exhibiting in fact a
+marvellous vitality, and discoursing of the ins and outs of the
+various harassing Land Acts, and the astute diplomacy needful to save
+something from the wreck, with a light, airy vivacity, and a rich
+native humour irresistibly charming. The recital of her troubles,
+losses, and burdens, the dodgery and trickery of legal luminaries, and
+the total extinction of rent profits is delivered with an easy grace,
+and with the colour and effervescence of sparkling Burgundy. To be
+deprived of nine-tenths of your income seems remarkably good fun; to
+be ruined, an enviable kind of thing. Lady de Burgho commenced her
+reign with one fixed principle, from which nothing has ever induced
+her to deviate. Under no conceivable circumstances would she allow
+eviction. No agent could induce her to sign a writ. "I could not sleep
+if I had turned out an Irish family," says Lady de Burgho, adding,
+with great sagacity, "and besides eviction never does any good." So
+that this amiable lady has the affections of her people, if she
+handles not their cash. And who shall estimate the heart's pure
+feelings? Saith not the wisest of men that a good report maketh the
+bones fat? Is not the goodwill of the foinest pisintry in the wuruld
+more to be desired than much fine gold? Is it not sweeter also than
+honey or the honeycomb?
+
+Certain mortgagees who wished to appropriate certain lands offered
+liberal terms to Lady de Burgho on condition that she would for three
+years absent herself from Ireland, holding no communication with her
+tenants during that period. Lady de Burgho objected. She said, "If I
+accepted your terms my people on my return would believe, and they
+would be justified in believing, that I had been for three years
+incarcerated in a lunatic asylum." Tableau! Three American gentlemen
+visiting Castleconnel told Lady de Burgho that the success of the
+present agitation in favour of Home Rule would be the first step
+towards making Ireland an American dependency, a pronouncement which
+is not without substantial foundation. The feeling of the masses is
+towards America, and away from England. To the New World, where are
+more Irish than in Ireland (so they say) the poorer classes look with
+steadfast eye. To them America is the chief end of man, the earthly
+Paradise, the promised land, the El Dorado, a heaven upon earth. Every
+able-bodied man is saving up to pay his passage, every good-looking
+girl is anxious to give herself a better chance in the States. Nearly
+all have relatives to give them a start, and glowing letters from
+fortunate emigrants are the theme of every village. The effect of
+these epistles is obvious enough. Home Rule, say the Nationalists,
+will stop emigration. That this is with them a matter of hope, or
+pious belief, is made clear by their conversation. They give no good
+reason for their faith. They are cornered with consummate ease. The
+plausibilities gorged by Gladstonian gulls do not go down in Ireland.
+They are not offered to Irishmen. "Made in Ireland for English gabies"
+should be branded upon them. The most convincing arguments against the
+bill are those adduced by Home Rulers in its favour. Here is a
+faithful statement of reasons for Home Rule, as given by Alderman
+Downing, of Limerick, and another gentleman then present whose name I
+know not:--
+
+"When you allow the Irish Legislature to frame its own laws, disorder
+and outrage will be put down with an iron hand. We have no law at
+present. Put an Irish Parliament in Dublin, and we would arrange to
+hang up moonlighters to the nearest tree. Everybody would support the
+law if imposed from Dublin. They resent it as imposed by Englishmen in
+London."
+
+"I am not in favour of handing over the government of Ireland to the
+present leaders of the Irish party. I believe that, once granted Home
+Rule, they would disappear into private life, and that we should
+replace them by better men. What reason for believing this? Oh, I
+think the people would begin to feel their responsibility. Do I think
+the idea of 'responsibility' is their leading idea? Perhaps not at
+this moment, but they will improve. You think that the people may be
+fairly expected to return the same class of men? Perhaps so. I hope
+not. I should think they would see the necessity of sending men of
+position and property. Why don't they send them now? Simply because
+they won't come forward; that class of men do not believe in Home
+Rule."
+
+I humbly submitted that this would prevent their coming forward in
+future, and that if Home Rule were admittedly bad under the present
+leaders, there was really no case to go to a jury, as there was no
+evidence before the court to show that the leaders would be dropped.
+On the contrary, there was every probability that the victorious
+promoters of the bill would be returned by acclamation. Further, that
+if Home Rule be gladly accepted as a pearl of great price, to drop the
+gainers thereof, to dismiss the men who had borne the burden and heat
+of the day, would be an act of shabbiness unworthy the proverbial
+gratitude and generosity of the Irish people.
+
+Alderman Downing would only exclude them from Parliamentary place, and
+would not exclude all even then. The bulk of them might be found some
+sort of situation where decent salaries would atone for the dropping.
+Would that be jobbery? "Ah, you ask too many questions."
+
+Let it be noted that although the greater part of the Irish
+Nationalist members are everywhere rejected beforehand by superior
+Home Rulers, as unfit for an Irish Parliament, they are apparently for
+that very reason sent to the House of Commons as the best sort to
+tease the brutal Saxon. The bulldog is not the noblest, nor the
+handsomest, nor the swiftest, nor the most faithful, nor the most
+sagacious, nor the most pleasant companion of the canine world, but he
+is a good 'un to hang on the nose of the bull.
+
+The Great Unknown said:
+
+"You must admit that English Rule has not been a success. Home Rule is
+admittedly an experiment--well, yes, I will accept the word risk--Home
+Rule is admittedly, to some extent, a risk, but let us try it. And if
+the worst comes to the worst we can go back again to the old
+arrangement."
+
+The speaker was a kindly gentleman of sixty or sixty-five years, and,
+like Alderman Downing, spoke in a reasonable, moderate tone. Doubtless
+both are excellent citizens, men of considerable position and
+influence, certainly very pleasant companions, and, to all appearance,
+well-read, well-informed men. And yet, in the presence of Unionist
+Irishmen, the above-mentioned arguments were all they ventured to
+offer. Arguments, quotha? Is the hope that the ignorant peasantry of
+Ireland will return "the better class of men," who "do not believe in
+Home Rule" an argument? Is the as-you-were assertion an argument? What
+would the Irish say if Mr. Bull suggested this movement of
+retrogression? We should have Father Hayes, the friend of Father
+Humphreys, again calling for "dynamite, for the lightnings of heaven
+and the fires of hell, to pulverise every British cur into
+top-dressing for the soil." We should have Father Humphreys himself
+writing ill-spelt letters to the press, and denouncing all liars as
+poachers on his own preserves. We should have Dillon and O'Brien and
+their crew again leading their ignorant countrymen to the treadmill,
+while the true culprits stalked the streets wearing lemon-coloured kid
+gloves purchased with the hard-earned and slowly-accumulated cents of
+Irish-American slaveys. The Protestants would be denounced as the
+blackest, cruellest, most callous slave-drivers on God's earth. And
+this reminds me of something.
+
+Doctor O'Shaughnessy, of Limerick, is the most wonderful man in
+Ireland. His diploma was duly secured in 1826, and Daniel O'Connell
+was his most intimate friend, and also his patient. The Doctor lived
+long in London, and was a regular attendant at the House of Commons up
+to 1832. Twice he fought Limerick for his son, and twice he won
+easily. The city is now represented by Mr. O'Keefe, and Mr.
+O'Shaughnessy is a Commissioner of the Board of Works in Dublin. The
+Doctor has conferred with Earl Spencer on grave and weighty matters,
+and doubtless his opinion on Irish questions is of greatest value. His
+pupil and his fellow-student, Dr. Kidd and Dr. Quain (I forget which
+is which), met at the bedside of Lord Beaconsfield, and medical men
+admit the doctor's professional eminence. His eighty-four years sit
+lightly upon him. He looks no more than fifty at most, is straight as
+a reed, active as a hare, runs upstairs like a boy of fourteen, has
+the clear blue eye and fresh rosy skin of a young man. He would give
+the Grand Old Man fifty in a hundred and beat him out of his boots. He
+might be Mr. Gladstone's son, if he were only fond of jam. The Doctor
+said several hundred good things which I would like to print, but as
+our many conferences were unofficial this would be hardly fair.
+However, I feel sure Doctor O'Shaughnessy will forgive my repeating
+one statement of his--premising that the Doctor is a devout Catholic,
+and that he knows all about land.
+
+"The Protestants are not the worst landlords. The hardest men, the
+most unyielding men the tenants have to meet are the Roman Catholic
+landlords, the new men."
+
+Here is some food for thought. These few words, properly considered,
+cover much ground. The Doctor is a Home Ruler, an ardent lover of his
+country, one of the best of the many high-minded men I have met in
+Ireland. Were such as he in the forefront of the battle, John Bull
+might hand the Irish a blank cheque. The consciousness of trust is of
+all things most binding on men of integrity. But for Mr. Gladstone to
+hand the honour of England to Horsewhipped Healy and Breeches O'Brien,
+showing his confidence in them by permitting it to be taken round the
+corner--that is a different thing. I forgot to mention a remarkable
+feature in the history of Limerick City, a parallel of which is found
+in the apocryphal castle in England for which the unique distinction
+is claimed that Queen Elizabeth never slept there. And so far as I can
+learn, Tim Healy has not yet been horsewhipped in Limerick.
+
+Bodyke (Co. Clare), May 2nd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 18.--HARD FACTS FOR ENGLISH READERS.
+
+
+Cort is a quiet wayside country town about forty miles from Limerick,
+a little oasis of trees and flowers, with a clear winding trout-stream
+running all about it. The streets are wide, the houses well-built, the
+pavements kerbed and in good condition. Trees are bigger and more
+numerous than usual, and the place has a generally bowery appearance
+such as is uncommon in Ireland, which is not famous for its timber.
+Trees are in many parts the grand desideratum, the one thing needful
+to perfect the beauty of the scenery, but Ireland as compared with
+England, France, Holland, Belgium, or Germany may almost be called a
+treeless country. Strange to say, the Home Rule Bill, which affects
+everything, threatens to deprive the country of its few remaining
+trees. A Scotsman resident thirteen years in Ireland said to me:--
+
+"The timber you see lying there is not American, but Irish. The people
+who have timber are in many cases cutting it down, because they
+foresee a state of general insecurity and depression, and they need
+all the cash they can command. But there is another reason for the
+deforesting of the country, which is--that if Home Rule becomes law,
+the landowners are disposed to believe that no allowance will be made
+for the timber which may be on the land when the land is sold to the
+tenant under some unknown Act to be passed at some future day." This
+fits into the point raised by a tenant farmer living just outside the
+town, an extraordinary character said to rise at seven o'clock in the
+morning. He said:--
+
+"They say the farmer is to get the land--but what then? Somebody must
+own the land, and whoever has it will be reckoned a bloody tyrant.
+Won't the owner be a landlord? No, say they, no more landlords at all,
+at all. But isn't that nonsense, says I? If ye split up the land into
+patches as big as yer hand and give every man a patch, wouldn't some
+men have twenty or a hundred, or maybe a thousand patches in five
+years? An' thin, thim that was lazy an' wasteful an' got out o' their
+land would be for shootin' the savin', sthrivin' man that worked his
+way up by buying out the drones. For wouldn't he be a landlord the
+moment he stopped workin' all the land himself. An' that would be sure
+to happen at wanst. Lord Gough is landlord here, an' ye'll not better
+him in Ireland. Look at the town there--all built of stone an' paved,
+wid a fine public well in the square, an' a weigh-house, an' the
+groves of lilac an' laburnums all out in flower an' dippin' in the
+wather; where ye may catch mighty fine trout out iv yer bedroom
+window, bedad ye may, or out of yer kitchin, an' draw them out iv the
+wather an' dhrop thim in' the fryin' pan off the hook with the bait in
+their mouths, an' their tails waggin', finishing their brakefasts
+thimselves while they get yours ready! Throth ye can. None iv us that
+has any sinse belaves in Home Rule. 'Tis only the ignorant that'll
+belave anything. No, we're quiet hereabouts, never shot anybody, an'
+not likely to. Yes, the Protestant Church is iligant enough, but
+there's very few Protestants hereabouts. It's the gentry an' most
+respectable folks that's Protestants. Protestants gets on because they
+kape their shops cleaner, an' has more taste, an' we'd sooner belave
+thim an' thrust thim that they'd kape their word an' not chate ye,
+than our own people. Yes, 'tis indeed quare, but it's thrue. The very
+priests won't deny it. An' another thing they wouldn't deny. The
+murtherin', sweatin' landlords that'll grind the very soul out of
+ye--who are they? Tell me now. Just the small men that have got up out
+of the muck. 'Tisn't the gintry at all. The gintry will wait a year,
+three years, five years, seven years for rint. The man that bought his
+farm or two wid borrowed money won't wait a day. 'Out ye go, an'
+bloody end to ye,' says he. Ye don't hear of thim evictions. The man
+that sint it to the paper would get bate--or worse.
+
+"An' some of the little houldhers says, 'Pat,' says they, 'what'll we
+do wid the money whin we've no taxes to pay?' 'Tis what they're tould,
+the crathurs. God help them, but they're mighty ignorant."
+
+Those who ridicule the assertions of Protestants and Catholic
+Unionists with reference to the lack of liberty may explain away what
+was told me by Mr. J.B. Barrington, brother of Sir Charles Barrington,
+a name of might in Mid-Ireland. He said, "Someone in our neighbourhood
+went about getting signatures to a petition against the Home Rule
+Bill. Among others who signed it was Captain Croker's carpenter, who
+since then has been waylaid and severely beaten. Another case
+occurring in the same district was even harder. A poor fellow has
+undergone a very severe thrashing with sticks for having signed the
+bill when, as a matter of fact, he had refused to sign it! Wasn't that
+hard lines? Both these men know their assailants, but they will not
+tell. They think it better to bear those ills they have than fly to
+others that they know not of. They are quite right, for, as it is,
+they know the end of the matter. Punish the beaters, and the relations
+of the convicted men would take up the cause, and if they could not
+come on the principal, if he had removed, or was awkward to get at,
+they would pass it on to his relations. So that a man's rebelling
+against the village ruffians may involve his dearest friends in
+trouble, may subject them to ill-usage or boycotting. A man might
+fight it out if he only had himself to consider; but you see where the
+shoe pinches."
+
+A decent man in Ennis thus expressed himself anent the Bodyke affair.
+(My friend is a Catholic Nationalist.) "The Bodyke men are not all out
+so badly off as they seem. But their acts are bad, for they can pay,
+and they will not. No, I do not call the Colonel a bad landlord. We
+know all about it in Ennis; everybody agrees, too. The farmers meet in
+this town and elsewhere. Two or three of the best talkers lead the
+meeting, and everything is done _their_ way. The more decent, sensible
+men are not always the best talkers. Look at Gladstone, have ye
+anybody to come up to him? An' look at his character--one way to-day
+an' another way to-morrow, an' the divil himself wouldn't say what the
+day afther that. But often the most decent, sensible men among these
+farmers can't express themselves, an they get put down. An' all are
+bound by the resolutions passed. None must pay rent till they get
+leave from all. What would happen a man who would pay rent on the
+Bodyke estate? He might order his coffin an' the crape for his
+berryin, an' dig his own grave to save his widow the expense. Perhaps
+ye have Gladstonian life-assurance offices in England? What praymium
+would they want for the life of a Bodyke man that paid his rint to the
+Colonel?"
+
+The "praymium" would doubtless be "steep." Boycotting is hard to bear,
+as testified by Mr. Dawson, a certain Clerk of Petty Sessions. He
+said:--"The Darcy family took a small farm from which a man had been
+evicted after having paid no rent for seven years. The land lay waste
+for five years, absolutely derelict, before the Darcys took it in
+hand. They were boycotted. Their own relations dare not speak to them
+lest they, too, should be included in the curse. A member of the Darcy
+family died.
+
+"Then came severe inconveniences. Friends had secretly conveyed
+provisions to the Darcys, and, at considerable risk to themselves, had
+afforded some slight countenance and assistance. But a dead body, that
+was a terrible affair. No coffin could be had in the whole district,
+and someone went thirty miles and got one at the county town by means
+of artful stratagem. Then came the funeral. It was to take place at
+twelve one day, but we found there would be a demonstration, and
+nobody knew what might happen. The corpse, that of a woman, might have
+been dragged from the coffin and thrown naked on the street. In the
+dead of night a young fellow went round the friends, and we buried the
+poor lady at four in the morning."
+
+The laziness of the Irish people was here exploited with advantage. A
+great French chief of police, who had made elaborate dispositions to
+meet a popular uprising, once said, "Send the police home and the
+military to their barracks. There will be no Revolution this evening
+on account of the rain." A very slight shower keeps an Irishman from
+work, and you need not rise very early to get over him. A police
+officer at Gort said to me, "The people are quiet hereabouts, but I
+couldn't make you understand their ignorance. They do just what the
+priest tells them in every mortal thing. They believe that unless they
+obey they will go to Hell and endure endless torture for ever. They
+believe that unless they vote as they are told they will be damned to
+all eternity. But oh! if you could see their laziness. They lie abed
+half the day, and spend most of the rest in minding other people's
+business. Before you had been in the town half-an-hour every soul in
+the place was discussing you. They thought you had a very suspicious
+appearance, like an agent or a detective or something. Laziness and
+ignorance, laziness and ignorance, that's what's the matter with
+Ireland."
+
+The farmers of this truly rural district distinctly state that they do
+not want Home Rule. They only want the land, and nearly all are
+furnished with Tim Healy's statement that "The farmer who bought his
+own land to-day would, when a Home Rule Parliament was won, be very
+sorry that he was in such a hurry." Just as the men of Bodyke are
+getting the rifles for which Mr. Davitt wished in order to chastise
+the Royal Irish Constabulary, by way of showing these "ruffians, the
+armed mercenaries of England, that the people of Ireland had not lost
+the spirit of their ancestors." Well may a timid Protestant of Gort
+say, "These men are deceiving England. They only want to get power,
+and then they will come out in their true colours. All is quiet here
+now, but the strength of the undercurrent is something tremendous. The
+English Home Rulers may pooh-pooh our fears, but they know nothing
+about it. And, besides, _they_ are quite safe. That makes all the
+difference. The change will not drive them from all they hold dear. I
+do not agree with the nonsense about cutting our throats in our beds.
+That speech is an English invention to cast ridicule on us. But we
+shall have to clear out of this. Life will be unendurable with an
+Irish Parliament returned by priests. For it _will_ be returned by
+priests. Surely the Gladstonian English admit that? To speak of
+loyalty to England in connection with an Irish Parliament is too
+absurd. Did not the Clan-na-Gael circular say that while its objects
+lay far beyond anything that might openly be named, the National
+Parliament must be first attained by whatever means? Then it went on
+to say that Ireland would be able to command the working plant of an
+armed revolution. Do you not know that the Irish Army of Independence
+is already being organised? What do you suppose the men who join it
+think it means? Did not Arthur O'Connor say that when England was
+involved in war, that would be the time? Did he not say that 100,000
+men were already prepared, and that at three days' notice Ireland
+could possess double that number, all willing to fight England for
+love, and without any pay? If the English Home Rulers lived in Galway
+they would remember these things as I do. _You think the Bill can
+never become law. If you could assure me of that, I would be a happy
+man this night._ I would go to my pillow more contented than I have
+been for years. _I and my family would go on our knees and thank God
+from our hearts._"
+
+Mr. Wakely, of Mount Shannon Daly, said:--"I live in one of the
+wildest parts of Galway, but all went on well with us until this Home
+Rule Bill upset the country. Now I am completely unsettled. Whether to
+plant the land or let it lie waste, I cannot tell. I might not be able
+to reap the harvest. Whether to buy stock to raise and fatten, or
+whether to keep what cash we have with a view to a sudden pack-up and
+exit, we do not know. And I think we are not the only timid folks, for
+the other day I took a horse twenty-four miles to a fair where I made
+sure of selling him easily. I had to take him back the twenty-four
+miles, having wasted my trouble and best part of two days. The
+franchise is too low, that is what ruined the country."
+
+Another desponding Galwegian found fault with the Liberal party of
+1884. He said, "They were actuated by so much philanthropy. Their
+motto was "Trust the people." We know what was their object well
+enough, They let in the flood of Irish democracy. The Radicals got
+forty, but the Nationalists gained sixty, and then part of the
+Radicals--the steady, sensible party among them--ran out a breakwater
+to prevent both countries being swamped. A break-water is a good
+thing, but there was no necessity for the flood. They cannot
+altogether repair the damage they have done. Look at the Irish members
+of twenty years ago, and look at them now. Formerly they were
+gentlemen. What are they to-day? A pack of blackguards. Their own
+supporters shrink from entrusting them with the smallest shred of
+power. Mr. Gladstone must be as mad as a March hare. The idea of a
+Dublin Parliament engineered by men whom their own supporters look
+upon as rowdies would be amusing but for the seriousness of the
+consequences. Have you been in Ennis? Did you see the great memorial
+to the Manchester murderers--'Martyrs' they call them? Their lives
+were taken away for love of their country, and their last breath was
+God save Ireland! That's the inscription, and what does it mean?
+Loyalty to England? Would such a thing be permitted on the Continent?
+Why, any sensible Government would stamp out such an innuendo as open
+rebellion. It teaches the children hatred of England, and they are fed
+with lies from their very cradle. Every misfortune--the dirt, the
+rags, the poverty of the country, are all to be attributed to English
+rule. Take away that and the people believe they will live in laziness
+combined with luxury."
+
+The lying of the Home Rulers is indeed unscrupulous. An Irish
+newspaper of to-day's date, speaking of the opening of the Chicago
+Exposition, says that "it is fitting to remember that our countrymen
+have in the United States found an asylum and an opportunity which
+they have never found at home, that there they have been allowed
+untrammelled to worship God as they thought right," clearly implying
+that in Ireland or in England they have no such liberty. A car driver
+of Limerick, one Hynes, a total abstainer, and a person of some
+intelligence, firmly believed that England prevented Ireland from
+mining for coal, which disability, with the resulting poverty, would
+disappear with the granting of Home Rule. Everywhere this patent
+obliqueness and absurd unreason. A fiery Nationalist in white heat of
+debate shook his fist at an Ulsterman, and said, "When we get the
+bill, you'll not be allowed to have all the manufactories to
+yourselves," an extraordinary outburst which requires no comment. This
+burning patriot looked around and said, with the air of a man who is
+posing his adversary, "Why should they have all the big works in one
+corner of the island?" In opposition to the melancholy carman was the
+dictum of Mr. Gallagher, the great high-priest of Kennedy's tobaccos.
+He said--
+
+"The poverty of Ireland is due to the fact that she has no coal.
+Geologists say that tens of thousands of years ago a great ice-drift
+carried away all the coal-depositing strata."
+
+"Another injustice to Ireland," interrupted a sacrilegious Unionist.
+
+"And doubtless due to the baleful machinations of the Base and Bloody
+Balfour," said another.
+
+It is easy to bear other people's troubles. He jests at scars who
+never felt a wound. That the Irish nation has untold wrongs to bear is
+evidenced by a Southern Irish paper, which excitedly narrates the
+injuries heaped on the holy head of Hibernia by the scoffing Yankee,
+the wrongful possessor of the American soil. A meeting of
+distinguished Irish emigrants, who have from time to time favoured
+the States with their notice, was recently convened in New York, not
+on this exceptional occasion to metaphorically devour the succulent
+Saxon, nor to send his enemies a dollar for bread, and ten dollars for
+lead, nor yet to urge the Gotham nurses and scullerymaids to further
+contributions in favour of patriot Parliamentarians, but to protest
+with all the fervour of the conveners' souls, with all the eloquence
+of their powerful intellects, with all the solemnity of a sacred deed,
+against the irreverent naming of the animals in the Central Park
+Zoological Gardens after Irish ladies, Irish gentlemen, Irish saints.
+Misther Daniel O'Shea, of County Kerry, stated that the great
+hippotamus had actually been named Miss Murphy! A hijeous baste from a
+dissolute counthry inhabited wid black nagurs, to be named after an
+Oirish gyurl! Mr. O'Shea uncorked the vials of his wrath, and poured
+out his anger with a bubble, the meeting palpitating with hair-raising
+horror. Some other animal was called Miss Bridget. And Bridget was the
+name iv an Oirish saint! This must be shtopped. Mr. O'Shea declared he
+would rather die than allow it to continue. No further particulars are
+given, but it is understood that the viper had been christened "Tim
+Healy," the rattlesnake "O'Brien," the laughing hyćna John Dillon, and
+so on. The Chairman wanted to know why the Yankees did not call the
+ugly brutes after Lord Salisbury and Colonel Saunderson? Nobody seemed
+to know, so eight remonstrants were appointed a committee of inquiry.
+
+Mr. O'Shea also denounced the American people as unlawfully holding a
+country which properly belonged to the Irish, an Irish saint, St.
+Brengan, having discovered the New World in the _sixteenth_ century!
+
+Enough of Ireland's wrongs; there is no end to them. As one of her
+poets sings, "The cup of her bitterness long has overflowed, And still
+it is not full."
+
+The great bulk of the intelligent people of Ireland regard Home Rule
+with dread, and this feeling grows ever deeper and stronger. The
+country is at present exploited by adventurers, paid by the enemies of
+England, themselves animated by racial and religious prejudices,
+willing to serve their paymasters and deserve their pay rather by
+damaging England than by benefiting Ireland, for whose interests they
+care not one straw. Ignorance manipulated by charlatanism and bigotry
+is, in these latter days, the determining factor in the destinies of
+the British Empire. Intelligence is dominated by terrorism, by threats
+of death, of ill-usage, of boycotting--the latter I am told an outcome
+of an old engine of the Roman Catholic Church, improved and brought up
+to date. Humphreys, of Tipperary, may know if this is true. It was
+from one of the "Father's" feculent family, in the heart of his own
+putrescent parish, that I heard of the local chemist who dare not
+supply medicine urgently needed by a boycotted person, who was
+suspected of entertaining what the learned Humphreys would spell as
+"Brittish" sympathies.
+
+Gort (Co. Galway), May 6th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 19.--INDOLENCE AND IMPROVIDENCE.
+
+
+Mr. James Dunne, of Athenry, is an acute observer and a shrewd
+political controversialist. He said: "The people about here, the poor
+folks such as the small farmers and labourers, have really no opinion
+at all. They know nothing of Home Rule, one way or the other. If they
+say anything, it is to the effect that they will obtain some advantage
+in connection with the land. Beyond that they care nothing for the
+matter. Not one has any sentiment to be gratified. They only want to
+live, if possible, a bit more easily. If they can get the land for
+nothing or even more cheaply, then Home Rule is good. They can see no
+further than their noses, and they cannot be expected to follow a long
+chain of argument. They believe just what they are told. Yes, they go
+to the priest for advice under all circumstances. They ask him to name
+the man for whom they are to vote, or rather they would ask him if he
+waited long enough. They vote as they are told; and as the Catholic
+priest believes that the Catholic religion is the most important thing
+in the world, which from his point of view is quite proper and right,
+he naturally influences his people in the direction which is most
+likely to propagate the true faith, and give to it the predominance
+which he believes to be its rightful due.
+
+"The people round here are harmless, and will continue so, unless the
+agitators get hold of them. They are ignorant, and easily led, and an
+influential speaker who knew their simplicity could make them do
+anything, no matter what. No, I couldn't say that they are
+industrious. They do not work hard. They just go along, go along,
+like. They have no enterprise at all, and you couldn't get them out of
+the ways of their fathers. They'd think it a positive sin.
+
+"Look at the present fine weather. This is a very early season. No
+living man has seen such a spring-time in Ireland. Two months of fine
+warm weather, the ground in fine working condition, everything six
+weeks before last year. Not a man that started to dig a day earlier.
+No, the old time will be adhered to just as if it was cold and wet and
+freezing. You could not stir them with an electric battery. They moon,
+moon, moon along, in the old, old, old way, waiting for somebody to
+come and do something for them.
+
+"If they had the land for nothing they would be no better off. They
+would just do that much less work. They live from hand to mouth. They
+have no ambition. The same thing that did for their fathers will do
+for them, the same dirtiness, the same inconvenience. If their father
+went three miles round a stone wall to get in at a gate they'll do it
+too. Never would they think of making another gate. They turn round
+angrily and say, 'Wasn't it good enough for my father, an' wasn't he a
+betther man than ayther me or you?' If you lived here, you would at
+first begin to show them things, but when you saw how much better
+they like their own way you'd stop it. You'd very soon get your heart
+broke. You couldn't stir them an inch in a thousand years. What will
+Home Rule do for them? Nobody knows but Gladstone and the Divil."
+
+A bystander said: "Down at Galway there was a man wid a donkey goin'
+about sellin' fish, which was carried in two panniers. Whin he had
+only enough to fill one pannier, he put a load o' stones into the
+other pannier to balance the fish an' make the panniers stick on, an'
+ride aisier.
+
+"Well, one day an Englishman that had been watchin' Barney for some
+time comes up to him an' he says, says he--
+
+"'Whin ye have only fish for one pannier why do ye fill up the other
+wid stones off the beach?' says he.
+
+"'Sure, 'tis to balance it,' says Barney, mighty surprised an' laffin
+widin himself at the Englishman's ignorance. 'Sure,' says Barney, 'ye
+wouldn't have a cock-eyed load on the baste, all swingin' on one side,
+like a pig wid one ear, would ye?' says he.
+
+"But this Englishman was one of thim stiff sort that doesn't know whin
+he's bate, an' he went on arguin'. Says he--
+
+"'But couldn't you put the half of the fish in one pannier, and the
+other half in the other pannier, instead of putting all the fish in
+one, and filling up the other with stones?' says he. 'Wouldn't that
+balance the load?' says he. 'And wouldn't that be only half the load
+for the poor baste?' says he. An' Barney sthruggled a bit till he got
+a fair grip iv it, d'ye see, but by the sivin pipers that played
+before Moses, he couldn't see the way to answer this big word of the
+Englishman; so he says, says he, 'Musha, 'twas me father's way, rest
+his sowl,' says he. 'An' would I be settin' meself up to be bettherin'
+his larnin'?' says he. 'Not one o' me would show him sich impidence
+and disrespect,' says he. 'An' I'll carry the rocks till I die, glory
+be to God,' says he.
+
+"Now what could ye do with the like iv _him_?"
+
+Mr. Armour, who lived five years near Sligo, said:--"The Connaught
+folks have no idea of preparing for to-morrow. They are almost
+entirely destitute of self-reliance. So long as they can carry on from
+one day to another they are quite content. The bit of ground they live
+on is not half cultivated. In the summer time you may see two or even
+three crops growing up together. If they had potatoes on last, they
+got them up in the most slovenly way, leaving half the crop in the
+ground. They just hoak out with a stick or a bit of board what they
+require for that day's food, picking the large ones and leaving the
+small ones in the ground. Oats or something else will be seen
+half-choked with weeds and the growth from the potatoes so left. The
+slovenliness of these people is most exasperating. Of course they are
+all Home Rulers in effect, though not in theory. By that I mean that
+they have no politics, except to produce politicians by their votes.
+They know no more of Home Rule than they know of Heidsieck's
+champagne, or Christmas strawberries, or soap and water, or any other
+unknown commodity. They are precisely where their ancestors were,
+except for the crop of potatoes, which enables them to exist in
+greater luxury and with less trouble. Their way is to plant the
+potatoes, dig them as required, and live on them either with the aid
+of a cow or with the butter-milk of a neighbour who has a cow. No
+provision for the future is attempted, because the relatives are sure
+to provide for the worn-out and sickly. That shows their
+goodheartedness, but it does away with self-dependence. There are some
+things so deeply ingrained in the Irish character that nothing and
+nobody can touch them. The very priests themselves cannot move them.
+Although these people believe that the priests could set them on fire
+from head to heel, or strike them paralytic, or refuse them entrance
+into heaven, yet the force of habit is so great, and the dread of
+public opinion is so powerful, that the people, so long as they remain
+in Ireland, will never depart a hair's-breadth from the old ways."
+
+A woman who washed and tidied her children would be a mark for every
+bitter tongue in the parish. A striking case came under my own
+observation. A woman of the place was speaking most bitterly of
+another, and she finished up with,--
+
+"She's the lady all out, niver fear. Shure, she washes and dhresses
+the childer ivery mornin', and turns out the girls wid hats on their
+heads an' shoes on their feet. Divil a less would sarve her turn! She
+has a brick flure to her house, an' she washes it--divil a lie I tell
+ye--she washes it--wid wather--an' wid soap an' wather, ivery
+Sattherday in the week! The saints betune us an' harm, but all she
+wants now is to turn Protestant altogether!"
+
+Four miles away is the village of Carnaun, and there I met Philip
+Fahy, with his son Michael, and another young fellow, all three
+returning from field work, wearily toiling along the rocky road which
+runs through the estate of Major Lobdell. The party stopped and sat
+down to smoke with me. The senior took the lead, not with a brogue but
+with an accent, translating from the Irish vernacular as he went on.
+"Long ye may live! We're glad we met ye, thanks be to God. Yer
+honner's glory is the foinest, splindidist man I seen this twinty
+year. May God protect ye! 'Tis weary work we does. That foine, big boy
+ye see foreninst ye, has eighteenpence a day, nine shillin' a week.
+'Tis not enough to support him properly. I have a son in England, the
+cliverist lad ye seen this many a day. Sich a scholar, 'twould be no
+discredit to have the Queen for his aunt, no it wouldn't. No, he's
+only just gone, an' I didn't hear from him yet. I didn't tell ye where
+he'd be, for I wouldn't know meself. But me other boys is goin', for
+they tell me things will be afther getting worse. God help us, an'
+stand betune us an harm! Did ye hear of the Home Rule Bill? What does
+it mane at all, at all? Not one of us knows, more than that lump of
+stone ye sit on. Will it give us the land for nothin'? for that's all
+we hear. We'd be obliged av ye could axplain it a thrifle, for sorra
+a one but's bad off, an' Father O'Baithershin says, Howld yer whist,
+says he, till ye see what'll happen, says he. Will we get the bit o'
+ground without rint, yer honner's glory?"
+
+Philip was dressed for agricultural work in the following style, which
+is clearly considered the correct thing in Galway. One tall "top-hat,"
+with a long fur like that of a mangy rabbit, waving to the jocund
+zephyrs of Carnaun; one cut-away coat of very thick homespun cloth,
+having five brass buttons on each breast; breeches and leggings and
+stout boots completed the outfit, which fitted like a sentry-box, and
+bore a curiously caricatured resemblance to the Court suit of a
+Cabinet Minister in full war-paint. The spades with which the
+labourers till the ground are strange to the English eye, and seem
+calculated to get through the smallest amount of work with the
+greatest amount of labour. That they were spades at all was more than
+I could make out. "What are those implements?" I asked, to which the
+answer came, "Have ye no shpades in England thin!"
+
+The business end is about two feet long and not more than three inches
+broad, with a sort of shoulder for the foot. The handles are about six
+feet long and end like a mop-stick, without any crossbar. A slight
+alteration would turn these tools into pikes, a much more likely
+operation than the beating of swords into plough-shares and spears
+into pruning-hooks. Meanwhile the length of the handle keeps the
+worker from too dangerous proximity to his work. There is a broader
+pattern of blade, but the handle is always of the same sanitary
+length. The children of the soil turn it over at a wholesome distance.
+They keep six feet of pole between the earth and their nobility. Small
+blame to them for that same! Shure the wuruld will be afther thim.
+Shure there's no sinse at all, at all, in workin' life out to kape
+life in.
+
+"Ah, no," said Misther Fahy. "That tobacky has no strinth in it. We
+get no satisfaction out iv it. We shmoked a pipe iv it to make frinds,
+but we'd not shmoke another. 'Tis like chopped hay or tay-leaves, it
+is. Will we walk back wid yer honner's glory? 'Tis only four miles, it
+is. No, we bur-rn no powdher here. But on the other side, above
+Athenry, 'tis there ye'll see the foin shootin'. Thims the boys for
+powdher an' shot! 'Tis more than nine they shot, aye, and more than
+tin it was. An' sarve thim right, if they must turn the people out,
+an' have their own way. May the Lord protect ye! May angels make yer
+bed this night! Long may ye live, an' yer sowl to glory!"
+
+I had written so far, when glancing through the window, I saw a
+familiar form, a rosy, healthy, florid gentleman parading on the lawn
+which fronts the Railway Hotel, puffing a cigarette, briskly turning
+and returning with something of the motion of a captive lion. I knew
+that pinky cheek, I knew that bright blue eye; yet here, in the wilds
+of Galway who could it be? He plays with two sportive spaniels, and
+cries "Down, Sir, down." Thy voice bewrayeth thee, member for North
+Galway! The Parnellitic Colonel Nolan, thou, _in propriâ personâ_.
+What makes he here? When the great Bill impends, why flee the festive
+scene? I'll speak a little with this learned Theban. I board him, as
+the French say. For a moment he regards me with suspicion--with a kind
+of vade-in-retro-Satanas air--but presently he goes ahead. A fair at
+Tuam, which he never misses. Has paired with somebody, Pierpoint he
+thinks is the name. His vote will therefore not be lost to his side.
+"Nothing will now be done before Whitsuntide. Both parties will be on
+their best behaviour. The Conservatives and obstruction, the Liberals
+and closure. Strategy to obtain some show of advantage at the recess
+is now the little game. Knows not what will happen _re_ Home Rule. The
+English Liberals not now so confident as they were. The Government may
+be ruined by liquor. 'Tis the fate of Liberal Governments to be ruined
+by drink. The Government of 1874 and the next Liberal Cabinet went to
+the dogs on liquor. And if the English people are called upon to give
+a verdict on a local option bill, the result is rather uncertain.
+Chances perhaps against Mr. Gladstone. The Home Rule question is now
+quite worked up. The English people are now satisfied to have Home
+Rule, but some intervening question might delay its final settlement.
+No, the agitation of the past four or five months had not changed the
+position one bit. No amount of agitation would now make any difference
+at all."
+
+From the probable wrecking of the Gladstonian Cabinet on "liquor" to
+the question of Customs, or, as Colonel Nolan preferred to call it, of
+Excise, was but an easy step. By a simple _adagio_ movement I
+modulated into the Customs question, mentioning the opinion given to
+me by Mr. John Jameson himself. The Colonel did not deny, nor admit,
+that the Irish people were excellent smugglers, but thought the fears
+of the Unionists exaggerated. He was well aware that smuggling might
+be carried on--say, on the coast of Connemara and elsewhere, where
+were roads and bays and natural harbours galore, with a wild and
+lonely shore far from the centres of Government. Probably at first
+some money might be lost that way; some little chinks would doubtless
+be found; there would be some little leakage. But suppose an initial
+loss of Ł100,000 or Ł200,000, it was not likely that such a state of
+things would be allowed to continue. As to the argument that the rural
+police would not then assist the 1,300 coastguards, who with the
+police have been sufficient, there was little or no solidity in this
+assumption. The Irish Parliament would order the police to assist, and
+if they did not execute their orders, or if they allowed themselves to
+be bribed, and the Irish Parliament did not prosecute them for
+accepting bribes, then the English Government would step in and put
+matters right. This is just a typical Home Rule argument, the
+confidence trick all over. The Colonel thought that after a certain
+amount of shaking down, everything would work sweetly enough. He said
+nothing about the Union of Hearts, nor have I yet heard the phrase
+from an Irishman.
+
+A keen observer resident at the Athenry Hotel says:--"Of those who
+come here the proportion against Home Rule is not less than twenty to
+one. Now mark my figures, because they are based on careful notes
+extending over the last six months. When you have all the money in the
+country, and all the best brains in the country, against the bill,
+what good could the bill do if it became law? And while I can see, and
+all these people can see, no end of risk, disturbance, upset, loss,
+ruin, and everything that is bad, we cannot see anything at all to
+compensate for the risk. Nobody can put his finger on anything and
+say, 'There, that's the advantage we'll get from the bill.' 'Tis all
+fancy, pure fancy. Ireland a nation, and a Roman Catholic nation, is
+the cry. We may get that, but we'll be bankrupt next day. 'Tis like
+putting a poor man in a grand house without food, furniture, or money,
+and without credit to raise anything on the building. There now, ye
+might say, ye have a splendid place that's all your own. But wouldn't
+the poor man have to leave it, or die of starvation? Of course I wish
+to respect my clergy, but I think they should not interfere with
+politics."
+
+Colonel Nolan said to me: "The priests wield an immense, an
+incalculable power. All are on the same path, all hammer away at the
+one point. It is the persistency, the organisation, that tells. In
+some cases they have been known to preach for a year and a half at a
+stretch on political subjects. What is going to stand against that?"
+
+With these golden words I close my letter. The priest holds the
+sceptre of the British Empire. Circumstances have placed in his hands
+an astonishing opportunity. Nearly every priest in Ireland is using
+his supernatural credit with one solitary aim. We know their
+disloyalty, we know they are no friends of England--we know their
+influence, their organisation, their perseverance, their
+unscrupulousness, their absolute supremacy in Ireland--and it is high
+time that England asked herself, in the words of Colonel Nolan--
+
+    "What is going to stand against that?"
+
+Athenry (Co. Galway), May 6th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 20.--RELIGION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE IRISH QUESTION.
+
+
+Tuam has two cathedrals but no barber. You may be shriven but you
+cannot be shaved. You may be whitewashed but you cannot be lathered.
+"One shaves another; we're neighbourly here," said a railway porter.
+They cut each other's hair by the light of nature, in the open street,
+with a chorus of bystanders. The Tuamites live in a country of
+antiquities, but they have no photographer. Nor could I find a
+photograph for sale. The people are sweetly unsophisticated. A
+bare-footed old lady sat on the step of the Victoria Hotel, sucking a
+black dhudeen, sending out smoke like a factory chimney, the picture
+of innocent enjoyment. The streets were full of pigs from the rural
+parts, and great was the bargaining and chaffering in Irish, a
+language which seemed to be composed of rolling r's and booming
+gutturals. A sustained conversation sounds like the jolting of a
+country cart over a rocky road, a sudden exclamation like the whirr of
+a covey of partridges, an oath like the downfall of a truck-load of
+bricks. I arrived in time for the great pig fair, and Tuam was very
+busy. It is a poor town, of which the staple trade is religion. The
+country around is green and beautiful, with brilliant patches of gorse
+in full bloom, every bush a solid mass of brightest yellow, dazzling
+you in the sunshine. Many of the streets are wretchedly built, and the
+Galway Road shows how easily the Catholic poor are satisfied. Not only
+are the cabins in this district aboriginal in build, but they are also
+indescribably filthy, and the condition of the inmates, like that of
+the people inhabiting the poorer parts of Limerick, is no whit higher
+than that obtaining in the wigwams of the native Americans. The hooded
+women, black-haired and bare-footed, bronzed and tanned by constant
+exposure, are wonderfully like the squaws brought from the Far West by
+Buffalo Bill. The men look more civilised, and the pig-jobbers, with
+their tall hats, dress coats, and knotty shillelaghs, were the pink of
+propriety. Now and then a burst of wild excitement would attract the
+stranger, who would hurry up to see the coming homicide, but there was
+no manslaughter that I could see. A scene of frantic gesticulation
+near the Town Hall promised well, but contrary to expectation, there
+was no murder done. Two wild-eyed men, apparently breathing slaughter,
+suddenly desisted, reining in their fury and walking off amicably
+together. An Irish-speaking policeman explained that one having sold
+the other a pig the buyer was asking for twopence off, and that they
+now departed to drink the amount between them. People who had done
+their business went away in queer carts made to carry turf--little
+things with sides like garden palings four or five feet high. Three or
+four men would squat on one, closely packed, looking through the bars
+like fowls in a hen-coop. The donkeys who drew these chariots had all
+their work cut out, and most of their backs cut up. The drivers laid
+on with stout ash-plants, sparing no exertion to create the donkey's
+enthusiasm. Prices ruled low. "'Tis not afther sellin' thim I am,"
+said a peasant who had got rid of his pigs, "'tis bestowin' thim I
+was, the craythurs. The counthry is ruinated intirely, an' so it is.
+By the holy poker of Methesulum, the prices we got this day for
+lowness bangs Banagher, an' Banagher bangs the divil."
+
+The Tuamites spare a little time for politics and boycotting. The
+public spirit and contempt for British law are all that could be
+desired by Irish patriotism. Mr. Strachan has recently bought some
+land. The previous owner, Mr. Dominick Leonard, brother of Dr. Leonard
+of Athenry, and of Judge Leonard of London, had raised money on the
+property, and failed to pay interest or principal. An English
+insurance company determined to realize, and the affair went into the
+Land Court, Mr. Strachan buying part of the estate for Ł2,765. It was
+easy enough to buy, and even to pay, but to get possession was quite
+another thing. Precise information is difficult to get, for while some
+decline to say a word, others are mutually contradictory, and a State
+Commission would hardly sift truth from the confusing mass of details,
+denials, assertions, and counter-assertions. This much is clear
+enough. A tenant named Ruane was required to leave a house, with
+ground, which he had held on the estate bought by Mr. Strachan. He had
+paid no rent for a long time. Of course he refused to leave, and, a
+decree having been obtained, he was duly evicted. But, as Lady de
+Burgho said, evictions do no good. When the officers of the law went
+home to tea, Mr. Ruane went home also, breaking the locks, forcing the
+doors, reinstating himself and his furniture, planting his Lares and
+Penates in their old situations, hanging up his caubeen on the
+ancestral nail, and crossing his patriotic shin-bones on the familiar
+hearth. Pulled up for trespass, he declared that if sent to prison
+fifty times he would still return to the darling spot, and defied the
+British army and navy--horse, foot, and artillery--ironclads, marines,
+and 100-ton guns, to keep him out. For three acts of trespass he got
+three weeks imprisonment. The moment he was released Mr. Ruane walked
+back home, and took possession once again. There he is now, laughing
+at the Empire on which the sun never sets. When a certain bishop read
+"Paradise Lost" to a sporting lord, the impatient auditor's attention
+was arrested by some bold speech of Satan, whereupon he exclaimed
+"Dang me, if I don't back that chap. I like his pluck, and I hope
+he'll win." Something like this might be said of Ruane.
+
+And Ruane will stick to his land. A public meeting held on Sunday week
+determined to support him, and to show forth its mind by planting the
+ground for him. Mr. Strachan seems to have seen the futility of
+looking to the law, on the security of which he invested his money.
+Too late he finds that his savings are not safe, and he endeavours to
+make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. He has offered Ruane
+five acres of land and a house, and Ruane would have accepted with
+thanks had he been allowed. But he went to a meeting in some outlying
+village, and received his orders from the Land League. For, be it
+observed, that the people of these parts speak of the Land League as
+existing in full force. Ruane declined the handsome offer of the
+kind-hearted Strachan. Ruane will hold the house and land from which
+he has been evicted, _because_ he had been evicted, and that the
+people may see that they have the mastery. Ruane would prefer the
+proffered land, but private interests must give way to the public
+weal. England must be smashed, treated with contumely; her laws, her
+officers, her edicts treated with contempt, laughed at by every naked
+gutter-snipe, rendered null and void. That this can be done with
+perfect impunity is the teaching of priests, Fenians, Nationalists,
+Federationists--call them what you will--all alike flagrantly disloyal
+to the English Crown. Not worth while to differentiate them. As the
+sailor said of crocodiles and alligators, "There's no difference at
+all. They're all tarnation varmint together."
+
+Mr. Strachan is boycotted, and goes about with a guard of three
+policemen. What will happen from one day to another nobody can tell.
+Since I last mentioned Mr. Blood, of Ennis, that most estimable
+gentleman has been again fired on, this time at a range of 400 yards,
+and when guarded by the four policemen who accompany him everywhere.
+Three shots were fired, and the police found an empty rifle cartridge
+at the firing point. A Protestant in Tuam said to me:--
+
+"Home Rule would mean that every Protestant would have to fly the
+country. Why should there not be a return to the persecutions of years
+ago? When first I came to the place the Protestants were hooted as
+they went to church, and I can remember seeing this very Strachan
+going to worship on Sunday morning, his black go-to-meeting coat so
+covered with the spittle of the mob that you would not know him. His
+wife would come down with a Bible, and the children would run along
+shouting 'Here comes mother Strachan, with the devil in her fist.'
+Why, the young men got cows' horns and fixed them up with strings, so
+that they could tie them on their foreheads. Then with these horns on
+they would walk before and behind the Protestants as they went to
+church or left it, to show that the devil was accompanying them. They
+always figure the devil as being horned. One of the little barefooted
+boys who ran after these Protestants is now a holy priest in Tuam. And
+what the people were then, so they will be now, once they get the
+upper hand. The educated Catholics are excellent people, none better
+anywhere, none more tolerant. Nothing to fear from them. But how many
+are there? Look at the masses of ignorant people around us. The
+density of their ignorance is something that the people of England
+cannot understand. They have no examples of it. The most stupid and
+uninformed English you can find have some ray of enlightenment. These
+people are steeped in ignorance and superstition. Their religion is
+nothing but fetichism. Their politics? well, they are blind tools of
+the priests: what else can be said? And the priests have but one
+object. In all times, in all countries, the Roman Catholic Church has
+aimed at absolute dominion. The religious question is at the bottom of
+it all."
+
+No matter where an educated Irishman begins, that is where he always
+ends. Catholics and Protestants alike come round to the same point at
+last, though with evident reluctance. The Protestant Unionists
+especially avoid all mention of religion as long as possible. They
+know the credal argument excites suspicion. They attack Home Rule from
+every other point of view, and sometimes you think you have
+encountered a person of different opinion. Wait till he knows you a
+little better, has more confidence in your fairness, stands in less
+fear of a possible snub. Sooner or later, sure as the night follows
+the day, he is bound to say--
+
+"The religious question is at the bottom of it all."
+
+The people of Ireland do not want an Irish Parliament, and the failure
+of the bill would not trouble them in the least. They do not care a
+brass farthing for the bill one way or the other. The great heart of
+the people is untouched. The masses know nothing of it, and will not
+feel its loss. They are in the hands of priests and agitators, these
+poor unlettered peasants, and their blind voting, their inarticulate
+voice, translated into menace and mock patriotism. Everybody admits
+that the people would be happy and content if only left alone.
+Half-a-dozen ruffians with rifles can boss a whole country side, and
+the people must do as they are told. They do not believe in the
+secrecy of the ballot. They believe that the priests by their
+supernatural powers are able to know how everybody voted, and I am
+assured on highly respectable authority that the secrecy of the ballot
+in Ireland is, in some parts, a questionable point. At the same time,
+there is everywhere a strong opinion that another election will give
+very different results in Ireland. And everywhere there is a growing
+feeling that the Bill will not become law. This explains the slight
+rise in the value of Irish securities.
+
+Just outside Tuam I came upon a neatly built, deep-thatched villa,
+with a flower garden in front, a carefully cultivated kitchen garden
+running along the road, trim hedges, smart white palings, an orchard
+of fine young trees, a general air of neatness, industry, prosperity,
+which, under the circumstances, was positively staggering. I had
+passed along a mile of cabins in every stage of ruin, from the
+solitary chimney still standing to the more recent ruin with two
+gables, from the inhabited pig-sty to the hut whereon grew crops of
+long grass. I had noted the old lady clad in sackcloth and ashes, who,
+having invested the combined riches of the neighbourhood in six
+oranges and a bottle of pop, was sitting on the ground, alternately
+contemplating the three-legged stool which held the locked-up capital
+and her own sooty toes, immersed in melancholy reflections anent the
+present depression in commercial circles. The Paradisaic cottage was
+startling after this. I stopped a bare-legged boy, and found that the
+place belonged to a Black Protestant, and, what was worse, a
+Presbyterian, and, what was superlatively bad, a Scots Presbyterian.
+Presently I met a tweed-clad form, red-faced and huge of shoulder,
+full of strange accents and bearded like the pard. Berwickshire gave
+him birth, but he has "done time" in Ireland.
+
+"I'm transported this forty-three years. I thought I'd end my days
+here, but if this bill passes we'll go back to Scotland. We'll have
+Catholic governors, and they'll do what they like with us. Ye'll have
+a tangled web to weave, over the Channel there. Ye'll have the whole
+island in rebellion in five-and-twenty minutes after ye give them
+power. Anybody that thinks otherwise is either very ignorant of the
+state of things or else he's a born fule. No, I wouldn't say the folks
+are all out that lazy, not in this part of Galway. They will work weel
+enough for a Scots steward, or for an Englishman. But no Irish steward
+can manage them. Anybody will tell you that. No-one in any part of the
+country will say any different. Now, that's a queer thing. An Irish
+steward has no control over them. They don't care for him. And he runs
+more risk of shooting than an English or Scots steward.
+
+"There was an Irish bailiff where I was steward, and he saw how I
+managed the men, and thought he'd do it the same way. So once when he
+and a lot of diggers went in for the praties and buttermilk, the
+praties were not ready, and he gives the fellow who was responsible a
+bit of a kick behind with the side of his foot, like.
+
+"The very next night he got six slugs in his head and face and one of
+his front teeth knocked out. That taught him to leave kicking to
+foreigners. Once two men were speaking of me. I overheard one say,
+'Ah, now, Micky, an' isn't it a pity that Palmer's a Black Protestant,
+an' that his sowl will blaze in hell for ever, like a tur-rf soddock
+ye'd pick up in the bog?'"
+
+"Settle the land question and you settle Home Rule. The bad times made
+Parnell's success. He was backed by the low prices of produce, and the
+general depression of agricultural interests. The rent has been
+reduced, but not enough to compensate the drop in the prices of
+produce. Why, cattle have been fetching one-half what they fetched a
+short time ago. Potatoes are twopence-halfpenny a stone! Did you ever
+hear of such a thing? Yes, it enables the people to live very cheaply,
+but how about the growers? If every man grew his own potatoes and
+lived on them, well and good, but he must have no rent to pay. That
+price would not pay for labour and manure. Oats are worth sixpence to
+ninepence a stone,--a ridiculous price; and we have not yet touched
+the bottom.
+
+"The land question should be settled. No, it is not satisfactory.
+People have to wait seven years for a settlement, and meanwhile they
+could be kicked out of their holdings at one day's notice. The people
+who bought under Ashbourne's Act are happy, prosperous, and contented.
+The people who are beside them are the contrary. Home Rulers, bosh!
+Farmers know as much about Home Rule as a pig knows about the Sabbath
+Day. The land, the land, the land! Let the Tories take this up and
+dish the Liberals. Easiest thing alive. How? Compulsory sale,
+compulsory purchase. Leave nothing to either party. Then you'll hear
+no more of Home Rule. Let the Unionists hold their ground a bit, till
+it dies out, or until the rival factious destroy each other. Loyalty?
+Why those Nationalist members have themselves told you over and over
+again that they are rebels. Don't you believe them? Some few may be
+inspired with the idea that the thing is impracticable, but they will
+all preach separation when the right time comes. 'Pay no taxes to
+England,' they'll cry. The people can follow that. Tell them that any
+course of action means non-payment of anything, and they're on it like
+a shot. Why, the Paying of Tribute to England is already discussed in
+every whiskey shop in Galway, and every man is prepared to line the
+ditches with guns and pikes rather than pay one copper. When you can't
+give Strachan the farm for which he paid last February, when you can't
+keep a small farmer who won't pay rent from occupying his farm and
+getting his crops as usual, for he _will_ do so, how are you going to
+raise the famous Tribute Money?"
+
+Near the Town Hall was a great crowd of people listening to a couple
+of minstrels who chanted alternate lines of a modernised version of
+the _Shan van vocht_. "Let me make the songs of a people, and I care
+not who makes its laws." Mr. Gladstone is appreciated now. The heart
+of the Connaughtman throbs responsive to his pet appellation. This is
+part of the song--
+
+    Oi'm goin' across the say, says the Grand Old Man,
+    Oi'll be back some other day, says the Grand Old Man;
+              When Oireland gets fair play
+              We'll make Balfour rue the day,--
+    Remimber what I say, says the Grand Old Man.
+    Whin will ye come back? says the Grand Old Man,
+    Whin will ye come back? says the Grand Old Man,
+              Whin Balfour gets the sack
+              Wid Salisbury on his back,
+    Or unto hell does pack, says the Grand Old Man.
+    Will ye deny the Lague? says the Grand Old Man,
+    No, we'll continue to the Lague, says the Grand Old Man.
+              John Dillon says at every station,
+              'Twill be his conversation
+    Till Oireland is a nation, says the Grand Old Man.
+
+There are three more verses of this immortal strain. The _Shan van
+vocht_ was the great song of the '98 rebellion, and possibly the
+G.O.M.'s happy adaptability to the music may put the finishing touch
+to his world-wide renown. Other songs referred to the arrest of Father
+Keller, of Youghal. "They gathered in their thousands their grief for
+to revale, An' mourn for their holy praste all in Kilmainham Jail."
+These ballads are anonymous, but the talented author of "Dirty little
+England" stands revealed by internal evidence. The voices which
+chanted these melodies were discordant, but the people around listened
+with reverential awe, from time to time making excited comments in
+Irish. Altogether Tuam is a depressing kind of place, and but for the
+enterprise of a few Protestants, the place would be a phantasmagoria
+of pigs, priests, peasants, poverty, and "peelers." Perhaps Galway
+would have more civilization, if less piety. You cannot move about an
+Irish country town after nightfall without barking your shins on a
+Roman Catholic Cathedral. This in time becomes somewhat monotonous.
+
+Tuam (Co. Galway), May 9th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 21.--MR. BALFOUR'S FISHERIES.
+
+
+A clean, well-built town, with a big river, the Corrib, running
+through the middle of it, splashing romantically down from the salmon
+weir, not far from the Protestant Church of Saint Nicholas, a
+magnificent cathedral-like structure over six hundred years old. There
+is a big square with trees and handsome buildings, several good
+hotels, a tramway, and, _mirabile dictu!_ a veritable barber's shop.
+The Connaught folks, as a whole, seem to have fully realised the old
+saying that shaving by a barber is a barbarous custom, but there is no
+rule without an exception, and accordingly Mr. McCoy, of Eyre Square,
+razors and scissors her Majesty's lieges, whether gentle or simple,
+rebel or loyal, Unionist or Separatist, Catholic or Protestant. The
+good Figaro himself is an out-and-out Separatist. He swallows complete
+Independence, and makes no bones about it. He believes in Ireland a
+Nation, insists on perfect autonomy, and, unlike the bulk of his
+fellow Nationalists, has the courage of his opinions. His objection to
+English interference with Irish affairs is openly expressed, and with
+an emphasis which leaves no doubt of his sincerity. According to Mr.
+McCoy, the woes of Ireland are each and all directly attributable to
+English rule. The depopulation of the country, the lack of enterprise,
+of industry, of the common necessaries of life, of everything to be
+desired by the sons of men--all these disagreeables are due to the
+selfishness, the greed, the brutality of Englishmen, who are not only
+devoid of the higher virtues, but also entirely destitute of common
+fairness, common honesty, common humanity. Mr. McCoy holds that
+England exploits Ireland for her own purposes, is a merciless sucker
+of Hibernia's life-blood, a sweater, a slave-driver, a more than
+Egyptian taskmaster. Remove the hated English garrison, abolish
+English influence, let Ireland guide her own destinies, and all will
+at once be well--trade will revive, poverty will disappear, emigration
+will be checked, a teeming population will inhabit the land, and the
+Emerald Isle will once more become great, glorious, and free, Furst
+flower o' the airth, Furst gem o' the say. No longer will the gallant
+men of Connaught bow their meek heads to American shears, no longer
+present their well-developed jaws to Yankee razors; but, instead of
+this, flocking in their thousands on saints' days and market days to
+their respective county towns, and especially to Galway, will form _en
+queue_ at the door of Mr. McCoy, to save the country by fostering
+native industries. No longer will it avail the Chinaman of whom he
+told me to sail from New York to Ireland, because the latter is the
+only country wherein Irishmen do not monopolise all the good things,
+do not boss the show--have, in fact, no voice at all in its
+management. "But," said my friend, "we'll get no Home Rule, we'll get
+no Parlimint, we'll get nothin' at all at all till Irishmen rise up
+in every part o' the wuruld an thrash it out o' ye. What business have
+the English here at all domineering over us? Didn't one o' their great
+spakers get up in Parlimint an' say we must be kept paupers? Didn't he
+say that 'the small loaf was the finest recruiting sergeant in the
+wuruld?' There ye have the spirit o' the English. We want the counthry
+to ourselves, an' to manage it our way, not yours. An' that thievin'
+owld Gladstone's the biggest scut o' thim all. No, I'm not grateful to
+Gladstone, not a bit iv it. Divil a ha'porth we have to thank him for.
+Sure, he was rakin Parnell out iv his grave, the mane-spirited scut,
+that cringed and grinned whin Parnell was alive. Sure, 'twas Gladstone
+broke up the party wid his morality. 'Ah,' says he, 'I couldn't
+associate wid such a person, alanna!' An' he wouldn't let it be a
+Parlimint at all--it must be a leg-is-la-ture, by the hokey, it must,
+no less. Let him go choke wid his leg-is-la-ture, the durty,
+mane-spirited owld scut."
+
+Mr. McCoy declines to regard Mr. Gladstone as a benefactor of Ireland,
+but in this he is not alone. His sentiments are shared by every
+Irishman I have met, no matter what his politics. The Unionist party
+are the more merciful, sparing expletives, calling no ill names. They
+admire his ability, his wonderful vitality, versatility, ingenuity of
+trickery. They sincerely believe that he is only crazy, and think it a
+great pity. They speak of the wreck of his rich intellect, and say in
+effect _corruptio optimi pessima est_. There is another monkish
+proverb which may strike them as they watch him in debate,
+particularly when he seems to be cornered; it runs, _Non habet
+anguillam, Per caudam qui tenet illam_, which may be extemporaneously
+rendered, He has not surely caught the eel, Who only holds him by the
+tail.
+
+Every Nationalist I have met entertains similar opinions, but few
+express them so unguardedly. Mr. McCoy must be honoured for his
+candour and superior honesty. If his brethren were all as frankly
+outspoken as he England would be saved much trouble, much waste of
+precious time. The secret aspirations of the Irish Nationalist
+leaders, if openly avowed, would dispose of the Home Rule agitation at
+once and for ever. No risk of loss, no possible disadvantage, daunted
+Mr. McCoy. He accepted the statement of a rabid Separatist, quoted in
+a previous letter, that the Irish would prefer to go to hell their own
+way. That was his feeling exactly. Not that there was any danger.
+Great was his confidence, implicit, sublime, ineffably Irish. His was
+the faith that removes mountains. Not like a grain of mustard seed,
+but like the rock of Cashel. _Floreat_ McCoy!
+
+Mr. Athy, of Kinvarra, has very little to say. He thinks the bill
+would make Ireland a hell upon earth for all Protestants living in
+Catholic communities, and that a settlement of the land question would
+settle the hash of the agitators. Mr. Kendal, of Tallyho, an
+Englishman twenty-five years resident in Ireland, agrees in the latter
+opinion. I forgot to question him _re_ toleration. He thinks the Home
+Rule Bill simply insane, absurd, not worth serious discussion by
+sensible men. "No intelligent man who knows the country would dream of
+such madness. The simplicity of the English people must be incredible.
+Pity they cannot come over and examine for themselves."
+
+Mr. Beddoes, traffic manager of the Limerick and Waterford Railway,
+came to Ireland an enthusiastic Gladstonian. He had worked with might
+and main to send Mr. Price to Parliament, and was largely instrumental
+in returning him. He is now a staunch Unionist, admits the error of
+his ways, and rejoices that a personal acquaintance with the subject
+at once led him into the true fold. I had this confession of faith
+from Mr. Beddoes himself, a keen, successful man of eminently
+Conservative appearance, a scholar, a traveller, and a great favourite
+with his men.
+
+"How long were you in Ireland before you changed your mind?" I asked.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Beddoes, "to tell the truth, I began to have my
+doubts during the first week."
+
+A prosperous Presbyterian of Galway said:--"To say that the Irish
+people, the masses, want an Irish Parliament is the height of
+absurdity; and to argue that their aspirations are expressed by their
+votes is a gross perversion of the truth. The ignorance of the people
+explains everything. They voted as the priests told them to vote,
+without the smallest conception of what they were voting for, without
+the smallest idea of what Home Rule really means. They are quite
+incapable of understanding a complicated measure of any kind, and they
+naturally accept the guidance of their spiritual advisers, whom they
+are accustomed to regard as men of immense erudition, besides being
+gifted with power to bind and loose, and having the keys of heaven at
+command. You know how they canvass their penitents in the
+confessional, and how from the altar they have taught the people to
+lie, telling them to vote for one man and to shout down the streets
+for another. The Irish priests are wonderfully moral men in other
+respects, and cases of immorality in its ordinary sense are so rare as
+to be practically unknown. I could forgive their politics, and even
+their confessional influence, if they were not such awful liars. Their
+want of truthfulness reacts on the people, and if you send a man to do
+a job, he will return and get his money when he has only half done it.
+'Oh, yes,' he'll say, as natural as possible, 'I've done it well, very
+well.' And they are not ashamed when they are proved to be liars. They
+think nothing of it. And the way they cheat each other! A few days ago
+I met a man who pulled out a bundle of one-pound notes, and said, 'I'm
+afther selling thirteen cows, an' I'm afther buying thirteen more. I
+sowld me cows to Barney So-and-So, afther givin' him six noggins of
+poteen, an' I got out of him twenty per cint. more than the price that
+was goin', thanks be to God!' They are so pious--in words."
+
+"What they want is emancipation from the priests and from the
+superstitions of the dark ages. They believe in the fairies still, and
+attribute all kinds of powers to them. Look at the _Tuam News_ of
+yesterday evening. Perhaps the English people would hesitate before
+conferring self-government on the poor folks who read that paper, if
+they could only see the rag for a week or two."
+
+I secured the _Tuam News_ for Friday, May 12, 1893, and found the
+sheet instructive, suggestive, original. There is a big advertisement
+in Irish, an ancient Irish poem with translation, and a letter from
+Mr. Henry Smyth, of Harborne, Birmingham, addressed to the National
+Literary Society of Loughrea, under whose auspices Miss Gonne the
+other day delivered the rebel lecture quoted in the Killaloe letter.
+Our fellow-citizen speaks of "the spirit of revival that is abroad
+amongst you, of your new society rising phoenix-like from the ashes of
+the old, not uninspired, we may suppose, by the project of your being
+in the near future masters in your own house, the arbiters of your own
+destiny, for you will be governed by the men of your own choice." Side
+by side with this heart-felt utterance let us print another letter
+appearing in the same issue of the same hebdomadal illuminator:--
+
+                  TO THE EDITOR OF THE TUAM NEWS.
+
+    Sir,--Permit me a little space in the next issue of the _Tuam
+    News_, relative to my father being killed by the fairies which
+    appeared in the _Tuam News_ of the 8th of April last. I beg to
+    say that he was not killed by the fairies, but I say he was
+    killed by some person or persons unknown as yet. Hoping very
+    soon that the perpetrators of this dastardly outrage will be
+    soon brought to light, I am, Mr. Editor, yours obediently,
+
+                                                 DAVID REDINGTON.
+Kilcreevanty, May 8th, '93.
+
+What would be thought of an English constituency which required such a
+contradiction? The people who believe in the fairies form the bulk of
+the Irish electorate. Their votes have sent the Nationalist members to
+Parliament; their voice it is which directs the action of Gladstone,
+Morley, and Tail; their influence ordains the course of legislation;
+in their hands are the destinies of England and Englishmen. The people
+themselves are innocent enough. If they hate England it is because
+they have been so taught by priests and agitators for their own ends.
+The only remedy is enlightenment, but the process must be slow. The
+accursed influences are ever at work, on the platform, in the press,
+at the altar, and I see no countervailing agency. The people are 'cute
+enough, and would be clever, if once their bonds were broken. They are
+not fettered by English rule. They are bound down by Ignorance, rank
+Ignorance, in an Egyptian darkness that may be felt. They are poor in
+this world's goods, although seemingly healthier and stronger than the
+English average. Much of their poverty is their own fault. Much more
+is due to the teachings of agitators. The Land League has mined whole
+communities. Poverty and Ignorance made the Irish masses an easy prey.
+Their ancient prejudices are kept alive, their ancient grievances
+industriously disinterred, their imagination pleased with an
+illimitable vista of prosperity artfully unrolled before their
+untutored gaze. We have the result before us. The Gladstonian party in
+England are responding to the dictates of a handful of hirelings and
+sacerdotalists, and not to the aspirations of a people. Credulity is
+the offspring of Ignorance, and accordingly we see that the Irish
+people believe in Tim Healy and the priests, the Grand Old Man and the
+fairies. They must be saved from themselves.
+
+The harbour of Galway is very picturesque. A massive ivy-covered arch
+marks the boundary line of the ancient walls, some of which are still
+extant. The raggedness and filthiness of the fisher-wives and children
+must be seen to be understood. A few sturdy fishermen sat gloomily
+beside two great piles of fish, thrown out of the boats in heaps.
+Large fish, like cod, and yet not cod; bigger than hake, but not
+unlike the Cornish fish. To ask a question at a country station or in
+the street is in Connaught rather embarrassing, as all the people
+within earshot immediately crowd around to hear what is going on. Not
+impudent, but sweetly unsophisticated are the Galway folks, openly
+regarding the stranger with inquiring eye, not unfriendly, but merely
+curious. Having no business of their own, they take the deepest
+interest in that of other people. And they make a fuss. They are too
+polite. They load you with attentions. No trouble is too great. Give
+them the smallest chance and they put themselves about until you wish
+you had not spoken. However, I wanted to know about the fish, so I
+strolled up to two men who were lying at full length on the quay, and
+said--
+
+"What do you call those fish?"
+
+Both men sprang hastily to their feet, and said--
+
+"Black pollock, Sorr."
+
+"Where do you catch them?"
+
+At this juncture two or three dozen urchins galloped up, most of them,
+save for a thick skin of dirt, clad in what artists call the nude.
+They surrounded us, and listened with avidity.
+
+"Outside the Aran Islands."
+
+Here several women joined the group, and more were seen hastening to
+the scene of excitement from every point of the compass.
+
+"How far away is that?"
+
+"Thirty miles, Sorr."
+
+"What are they worth?"
+
+"A shilling a dozen."
+
+"That is, a penny a pound?"
+
+"No, but a shilling for a dozen fish, and there's thirteen to the
+dozen."
+
+"And how heavy is the average fish?"
+
+He picked up one by the jaws, and weighing him on his hand, said--
+
+"That chap would be nigh-hand fourteen pounds. Some's more, some's
+less."
+
+It was even so. The agent of the Congested Districts Board, Mr.
+Michael Walsh, of Dock Street, confirmed this startling statement.
+Thirteen huge codlike fish for a shilling! More than a hundredweight
+and a half of fish for twelve pence sterling! And, as Father Mahony
+remarks, still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the
+cruel English yoke, still turns his back on the teeming treasures of
+the deep. The brutal Balfour supplied twenty-five boats to the poor
+peasants of the western seaboard, and these, all working in
+conjunction under direction, have proved both a boon and a blessing.
+"Yesterday I sent sixty boxes of mackerel to Messrs. Smith, of
+Birmingham, and to-day I think I shall send them a hundred," said Mr.
+Walsh. "These Balfour boats have been a wonderful success. You'll hear
+the very ignorant still cursing him, but not the better-informed, nor
+the people he has benefited. I think him a great man, a very great
+man, indeed. I am no politician. I only look at the effect he produced
+and the blessing he was to the people. On Wednesday last the Duras
+steamer brought in 400 boxes of fish, which had been caught in one
+day. We thought that pretty good, but Thursday's consignment was
+simply astonishing, 1,100 boxes coming in. We sent them all to
+England. Mackerel have fetched grand prices this year. Early in the
+season we sold them to Birmingham at tenpence apiece wholesale, with
+carriage and other expenses on the top of that. Better price than the
+pollock? Well, that fish is not very good just now. Sometimes it
+fetches six shillings a dozen fish, nearly sixpence each. No, not much
+for twelve or fourteen pounds of good fish. Half-a-crown a dozen is
+more usual. There's no demand. Yes, they're cheap to-day. A dozen
+pounds of fish for a penny would be reckoned 'a cheap loaf' in
+Birmingham."
+
+A shopkeeper near the harbour complained of the unbusiness-like ways
+of the Galway townsmen:--"They have no notion of business management.
+Take the Galway Board of Guardians. They resolved that any contractor
+furnishing milk below a certain standard should have his contract
+broken if he were caught swindling the authorities three times in six
+months. What would they think of such a resolution in England? Well,
+one fellow was caught three times or more. His milk was found to
+contain forty-four per cent. of water. Instead of kicking him out at
+once there was a great debate on the subject. It was not denied that
+the facts were as I have stated them. His friends simply said, 'Ah,
+now, let the Boy go on wid the conthract; shure, isn't he the dacent
+Boy altogether? An' what for would ye break the conthract whin he put
+in a dhrop of clane wather, that wouldn't hurt anybody. Shure, 'tis
+very wholesome it is intirely.' As Curran said, 'we are ruined with
+to-day saying we'll do some thing, and then turning round and saying
+to-morrow that we won't do it.' Another Guardian named Connor stuck up
+for the right thing, and another named Davoren gave the contractor's
+friends a good tongue-thrashing. The milkman was sacked by fifteen
+votes to nine. The right thing was done, but my point is that a lot
+of time was wasted in trying to bolster up such a case, and nine men
+actually voted for the defaulter, whose action was so grossly
+fraudulent, and who had been caught at least three times in six
+months.
+
+"The bag factory has just been closed. The Home Rule Bill is at the
+bottom of this mischief. It was the only factory we had in Galway, and
+what the people here are to do now God only knows. It gave employment
+to the working classes of the town, who will now have to go further
+afield. Some are off to America, some to England, some to Scotland.
+Curious thing I've noticed. A Scotsman lands here with twopence, next
+day has fourpence, in five years a house and farm of his own, in
+twenty-five years an estate, in thirty years is being shot at as a
+landowner, in forty years has an agent to be deputy cock-shot for him.
+But Irishmen who go to Scotland nearly always return next year
+swearing that the country is poor as the Divil. Now, how is that?
+
+"The bag works was just short of money and management. Irishmen are
+not financiers. They are always getting into holes, and waiting for
+somebody to get them out. They have no self-reliance. You may hold
+them up by the scruff of the neck for years and years, and the moment
+you drop them they hate you like poison. Many shooting cases would
+show this if impartially looked into. Pity the English do not come
+over here more than they do. The people get along famously with
+individual Englishmen, and sometimes they wonder where all the
+murdering villains are of whom they hear from their spiritual and
+political advisers. A priest said in my hearing, 'Only the best men
+come over here. They are picked out to impose on you.' And the poor
+folks believed him. We want to know each other better. The English are
+just as ignorant as the Irish, in a way. They know no more of the
+Irish than the Irish know of them. The poor folks of Connaught firmly
+believe that they would be well off and able to save money but for the
+English that ruin the country. And here this Jute Bag Company is
+bursted up because it had not capital to carry on with. Belfast men or
+Englishmen would have made it a big success. It stopped because it
+could not raise enough money to buy a ship-load of jute, and was
+obliged to buy from hand to mouth from retailers.
+
+"Take the wool trade. Everywhere over Ireland you will see Wool, Wool
+in big letters on placards for the farmers--notices of one sort or
+another. We are the centre of a wool district. Not a single wool
+factory, although the town is in every way fitted for excelling in the
+woollen trade. We have a grand river, and the people understand wool.
+They card and spin, and make home-made shawls and coat-pieces at their
+own homes, just for themselves, and there they stop. They are waiting
+for Home Rule, they say. Pass the bill, and factories will jump out of
+the ground like mushrooms. Instead of taking advantage of the means at
+their disposal, they are looking forward to a speculative something
+which they cannot define. The English are the cause of any trouble
+they may have, and an Irish Parliament will totally change the aspect
+of things. Everybody is going to be well off, and with little or no
+work. The farmers are going to get the land for nothing, or next to
+nothing, and all heretics will be sent out of the country, or kept
+down and in their proper place."
+
+Thus spake a well-to-do Protestant, born in Galway some sixty years
+ago, a half-breed Irish and Scotchman. I have now heard so many
+exasperating variations of this same tune, that I should be disposed,
+had I the power, to take a deep and desperate revenge by granting the
+grumblers Home Rule on the spot. It would doubtless serve them right,
+but England has also herself to consider.
+
+Galway Town, May 13th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 22.--THE LAND LEAGUE'S REIGN AT LOUGHREA.
+
+
+This is the most depressing town I have seen as yet. Except on market
+and fair days, literally nothing is done. The streets are nearly
+deserted, the houses are tumbling down, gable-ends without side-walls
+or roofs are seen everywhere, nettles are growing in the old chimney
+corners, and the splendid ruins of the ancient abbey are the most
+cheerful feature of the place. A few melancholy men stand about, the
+picture of despondent wretchedness, a few sad-eyed girls wander about
+with the everlasting hood, hiding their heads and faces, a few
+miserable old women beg from all and sundry, and the usual swarm of
+barefooted children are, of course, to the fore. The shopkeepers
+display their wares, waiting wearily for market day, and dismally
+hoping against hope for better times. Everybody is in the doleful
+dumps, everybody says the place is going down, everybody says that
+things grow worse, that the trade of the place grows smaller by
+degrees and gradually less, that enterprise is totally extinguished,
+that there is no employment for the people, and no prospect of any.
+Those whose heads are just above water are puzzled to know how those
+worse off than themselves contrive to exist at all, and look towards
+the future with gloomiest foreboding. Like the man who quoted
+Christmas strawberries at twelve dollars a pound, they ask how the
+poor are going to live. The young men of the place seem to have quite
+lost heart, and no longer muster spirit enough to murder anybody.
+Loughrea is disloyal as the sea is salt. The man in the street is full
+of grievances. His poverty and ignorance make him the mark of lying
+agitators, who arouse in his simple soul implacable resentment for
+imaginary wrongs. A decent civil working-man named Hanan thus
+expressed himself:--
+
+"The town was a fine business place until a few years ago, whin the
+Land League ruined it. Ah, thim was terrible times. We had murthers in
+the town an' all round the town. Perhaps the people that got shot
+desarved it, they say here that they did; but, all the same, the
+place was ruined by the goin's on. It's no joke to kill nine or ten
+people in and about a quiet little place like this. An' ever since
+thin the place is goin' down, down, down, an' no one knows what will
+be the ind iv it. 'Tis all the fault of the English Governmint. The
+counthry is full of gowld mines, an' silver mines, an' copper mines,
+an' we're not allowed to work thim. Divil a lie I spake. The
+Government wouldn't allow us to bore for coal. Sure, we're towld by
+thim that knows all about it, men that's grate scholars an' can spake
+out iligant. Why wouldn't we be allowed to sink a coal mine in our own
+counthry? Why wouldn't we be allowed to get the gowld that's all
+through the mountains? 'Tis the English that wants iverything for
+thimsilves, an' makes us all starvin' paupers intirely."
+
+This serves to indicate the kind of falsehoods palmed off upon these
+poor people in order to make them agitators or criminals. Hanan went
+on--
+
+"Look at the Galway Bag Factory. I'm towld that's shutting up now.
+What'll the people do at all, at all, that was employed in it? An' the
+English Parlimint ordhers it to be closed because it turns out bags
+chaper than they can make thim in England, an' betther, and the
+English maker couldn't compate. Ye know betther? I wouldn't
+conthradict yer honour's glory, ye mane well; but I have it from them
+that knows. Look at the Galway marble quarries. There's two sorts o'
+marble in one quarry, an' tis grand stone it is, an' the quarries
+would give no ind iv imploymint to the poor men that's willin' to
+work. God help thim, but they're not allowed to cut a lump of stone in
+their own counthry. What stops them? Sure 'tis the English Government,
+an' what would it be else? A gintleman isn't allowed to cut a stone on
+his own land. All must come from England. Ye make us buy it off ye,
+an' us wid millions of pounds' worth of stone. Ah, now, don't tell me
+'tis all rubbish. Sure, I have it sthraight from mimbers of Parlimint.
+Didn't the English Governmint send out soldiers an' policemen, wid
+guns an' swords, an' stop the men that wint to cut the stone in the
+marble quarries I was afther mintionin' to yer honour? Yes, 'twas the
+Land League that ruined this place, but 'twas the Governmint that made
+the Land League by dhriving the people into it. No, I wouldn't trust
+Gladstone or any other Englishman. They'll take care of thimselves,
+the English. We'll get no more than they can help. What we got out o'
+Gladstone we bate out o' him. We get nothing but what we conquered.
+Small thanks we owe, an' small thanks we'll give."
+
+A small farmer said, "The rints isn't low enough. The judicial rints
+is twice too much, an' the price of stock what it is. We must have a
+sliding scale, an' pay rint according to the price of produce. We must
+have the land for half what we pay now. I wouldn't say anythin' agin'
+the English. I have two brothers there an' they come over here
+sometimes, an' from what they tell me I believe the English manes
+well. An' the English law isn't bad at all. 'Tis the administhration
+of the law that's bad. We have the law, but 'tis no use to us because
+the landlords administhers it. Divil a bit o' compinsation can we get.
+An' if we want a pump, or a fence, or a bit o' repairs, we may wait
+for seven years, till our hearts break wid worryin' afther it. Thin
+we've our business to mind, an' we've not the time nor the money to go
+to law, even whin the law is with us an we have a clear case. The
+landlord has his agint, that has nothin' else to do but to circumvint
+us, so that the land laws don't do us the good that ye think over in
+England. Ye have grand laws, says you, an' 'tis thrue for you; but who
+works the laws? says I. That's where the trouble comes in. Who works
+the laws? says I.
+
+"Thin ye say, ye can buy your farms all out, says you. But the
+landlords won't sell, says I. Look at the Monivea disthrict. French is
+a good landlord enough, but he won't sell. The tinants want to buy,
+but if ye go to Monivea Castle ye'll have your labour for your pains.
+The agint is the landlord's brother, an' a dacent, good man he is. I
+have a relative over there, an' sorra a word agin aither o' thim will
+he spake. But when he wint to buy his farm, not an inch would he get."
+
+This statement was so diametrically opposed to that of Mr. John Cook,
+of Londonderry, who said that the farmers had ceased to buy, owing to
+their belief that the land would shortly become their own on much
+better terms than they could at present obtain, that I tramped to
+Monivea, a distance of six miles from Athenry, for the purpose of
+ascertaining, if possible, how far my Loughrea friend's assertion was
+borne out by facts. Monivea is a charming village, built round a great
+green patch of turf, whereon the children play in regiments. Imagine
+an oblong field three hundred yards long by one hundred wide, bounded
+at one end by high trees, at the other by a great manor house in
+ruins, the sides closed in by neat white cottages and a pretty
+Protestant Church, and you have Monivea, the sweetest village I have
+seen in Ireland. Here I interviewed four men, one of whom had just
+returned by the Campania from America, to visit his friends after an
+absence of many years. This gentleman was a strong Unionist, and
+ridiculed the idea of Home Rule as the most absurd and useless measure
+ever brought forward with the object of benefiting his countrymen.
+"What will ye do wid it when ye've got it?" he said; "sure it can
+never do ye any good at all. How will it put a penny in yer pockets,
+an' what would ye get by it that ye can't get widout it?" Two farmers
+thought they would get the land for a much lower rent. They said that
+although the landowner, Mr. French, was an excellent, kind, and
+liberal man, and that no fault at all could be found with his brother,
+the agent, yet still the land was far too dear, and that a large
+portion of it was worth nothing at all. "I pay eight and sixpence an
+acre for land that grows nothing but furze, that a few sheep can
+nibble round, an', begorra, 'tis not worth half-a-crown. Most iv it is
+worth just nothin' at all, an' yet I have to scrape together eight
+and sixpence an acre," said he. "'Tis not possible to get a livin' out
+iv it."
+
+"Thin why don't ye lave it?" said the man from Missouri.
+
+"Why thin, how could I lave the bit o' ground me father had? Av ye
+offered me a hundhred acres o' land for nothin' elsewhere, I vow to
+God I would rather stay on the bit o' rock that grows heath and gorse,
+if I could only get a crust out iv it, far sooner," said the grumbler.
+
+"An' d'ye think Home Rule will enable ye to do betther? Ye'll believe
+anythin' in Monivea. Ye are the same as iver ye wor. It's no use
+raisonin' wid yez at all. Sure, the counthry won't be able to do
+widout loans, an' who'll lind ye money wid an Irish Parlimint?"
+
+"Why would we want money whin there's gowld to be had for the diggin',
+av we got lave to dig it?" said the man of Monivea.
+
+The villagers believe that England prevents their mining for coal,
+gold, silver, copper; that the British Government tyrannically puts
+down all enterprise; that Home Rule will open mines, build railways,
+factories, institute great public works; that their friends will flock
+back from America; that all the money now spent out of the country
+will be disbursed in Ireland for Irish manufactures; that the land
+must and will become their own for nothing, or next to nothing; and in
+short, that simultaneously with the first sitting of an Irish
+Parliament an era of unprecedented prosperity will immediately set in.
+The two farmers confirmed what I have been told of the reluctance of
+the landlords to part with an acre of the land, and said that men had
+returned from America with money to buy farms, and after having
+wandered in vain over Ireland were fain to go back to the States,
+being unable to purchase even at a fancy price. They have been told
+this by persons in whom they had implicit trust, and I am sure they
+believed it. A fairly educated man, who had travelled, and from whom I
+expected better things, has since assured me that the stories about
+compulsory closing of mines and quarries had been dinned into him from
+infancy, and that he was of opinion that these assertions were well
+founded, and that they could not be successfully contradicted.
+Everywhere the same story of English selfishness and oppression. He
+cited a case in point. "Twenty years ago there was a silver mine in
+Kinvarra. It gave a lot of employment to the people of those parts,
+and was a grand thing for the country at large. The Government stepped
+in and closed it. I'm towld by them I can believe that 'twas done to
+keep us poor, so that they could manage us, because we'd not be able
+to resist oppression and tyranny, we'd be that pauperised. England
+does everything to keep us down. They have the police and the soldiers
+everywhere to watch us that we'd get no money at all. So when they see
+us starting a factory, or a fishery, or opening a mine or a quarry,
+the word comes down to stop it, and if we'd say No, this is our own
+country, and we'll do what we like in it, they'd shoot us down, and we
+couldn't help ourselves. I'm not sayin' that I want Home Rule or
+anything fanciful just for mere sentiment. We only want our own, and
+Home Rule will give us our own."
+
+The Home Rule party, the Nationalist patriots who know full well the
+falsity of these and such-like beliefs, are responsible for this
+invincible ignorance. Hatred and distrust of England are the staple of
+their teachings, which the credulous peasantry imbibe like mother's
+milk. The peripatetic patriots who invade the rural communities seem
+to be easy, extemporaneous liars, having a natural gift for
+tergiversation, an undeniable gift for mendacity, an inexhaustible
+fertility of invention. Such liars, like poets, are born, not made,
+though doubtless their natural gifts have been improved and developed
+by constant practice. Like Parolles, they "lie with such volubility
+that you would think Truth were a fool." The seed has been
+industriously sown, and John Bull is reaping the harvest. Is there no
+means of enlightenment available? Is there no antidote to this poison?
+I am disposed to believe that if the country were stumped by men of
+known position and integrity much good would be done. Leaflets bearing
+good names would have considerable effect. The result might not be
+seen at once, but the thing would work, and the people have less and
+less confidence in their leaders. The most unlettered peasant is a
+keen judge of character, and, given time, would modify his views. The
+truth about the mines, given in clear and simple language, would have
+a great effect. Education is fighting for the Union. Time is all the
+Loyalists require. The National Schools must, in the long run, be
+fatal to political priestcraft and traitorous agitation.
+
+To return to Loughrea. I walked a short distance out of the town to
+see the place where Mr. Blake, Lord Clanricarde's agent, was so foully
+murdered. A little way past the great Carmelite Convent I encountered
+an old man, who showed me the fatal spot. A pleasant country road with
+fair green meadows on each side, a house or two not far away, the
+fields all fenced with the stone walls characteristic of the County
+Galway. "'Twas here, Sorr, that the guns came over the wall. Misther
+Blake was dhrivin' to church, at about eleven o'clock o' a foin
+summer's mornin'. His wife was wid him, an' Timothy Ruane was runnin'
+the horse--a dacent boy was Tim, would do a hand's turn for anybody.
+The childer all swore by Tim, be raison he was the boy to give them
+half-pince for sweets and the like o' that. So they dhrove along, and
+whin they came tin yards from this, says Tim, sittin' in front wid the
+reins, says he, 'Misther Blake, I see some men at the back iv the
+ditch,' says he. 'Drive on, Tim,' says Misther Blake, 'sure that's
+nothin' to do with aither you or me.' An' the next instant both of
+thim wor in Eternity! Blake and poor Tim wor kilt outright on the
+spot, an' nayther of them spoke a word nor made a move, but jist
+dhropped stone dead, God rest their sowls. An' the wife, that's
+Misthress Blake, a good, kind-hearted lady she was, was shot in the
+hip, an' crippled, but she wasn't kilt, d'ye see. Blake was a hard
+man, they said, an' must have the rint. An' poor Tim was kilt the way
+he wouldn't tell o' the boys that did it. 'Twas slugs they used, an'
+not bullets, but they fired at two or three yards, an' so close that
+the shot hasn't time to spread, an' 'tis as good as a cannon ball. Who
+were they? All boys belongin' to the place. Mrs. Blake dhropped, an'
+they thought she was dead, I believe. Some thinks she was shot by
+accident, an' that they did not mane to kill a wake woman at all. But
+whin they shot Tim, to kape his mouth shut, why wouldn't they shoot
+the woman?"
+
+Seven men were arrested, and everybody in the place was believed to
+know the murderers. The police had no doubt at all that they had the
+right men. All were acquitted. No evidence was offered. No witness
+cared to meet the fate of Blake. Silence, in this case, was golden,
+and no mistake about it.
+
+Walking from the railway station along the main street, in the very
+heart of the town, you see on your left the modest steeple of the
+Protestant church, some fifty yards down Church Street. The town is
+built on two parallel streets, and Church Street is the principal
+connecting artery, about a hundred yards long. Exactly opposite the
+church the houses on the right recede some five or six feet from the
+rank; and here poor Sergeant Linton met his death. He was an Antrim
+man, a Black Presbyterian, and a total abstainer. His integrity was so
+well known that he was exempted from attendance at the police
+roll-call. He was death on secret societies, and was thought to know
+too much. In the soft twilight of a summer's eve he left the main
+street and sauntered down Church Street. When he reached the
+indentation above-mentioned a man shot him with a revolver, and fled
+into the main street. The unfortunate officer gave chase, pursuing the
+assassin along the principal thoroughfare, his life-blood ebbing fast,
+until, on reaching the front of Nevin's Hotel, he fell dead. Arrests
+were made, and, as before, the criminal was undoubtedly secured. Again
+no evidence. The murderer was liberated, but he wisely left the
+country, and will hardly return. A policeman said: "There was no doubt
+about the case. The criminal was there. Everybody spotted the man,
+even those who did not see him shoot. But nobody spoke, and if they
+had spoken he would have got off just the same. The people of this
+happy country have brought the art of defeating the law to its highest
+perfection. The most ignorant peasants know all its weak spots, and
+they work them well, very well indeed, from their own point of view.
+Suppose ten of Linton's comrades had seen the shot fired, and that
+they had immediately caught the assassin, with the revolver in his
+hands. The jury would not have convicted him. Yes, I know that the
+judge in certain cases can set aside the verdict of the jury. If you
+did that in Ireland it would cost some lives. Wouldn't there be a
+shindy! And then there's strong judges and weak judges. Judges don't
+like being shot more than other people. And Irish judges are made of
+flesh and blood. Look at O'Halloran's case. I was in the Court when it
+was tried. A moonlighting case. The police caught a man on the spot,
+with a rifle having a double load. The thing was clear as the sun at
+noonday. Acquitted. The jury said, 'Not guilty'; and the man went
+quietly home. The administration of justice with a weak judge, or with
+a strong judge who feels a weak Government behind him, is a farce in
+Ireland.
+
+"What will happen if we do not get the Bill? I think there will be
+some disturbance--the ruffians are always with us--although the people
+do not want Home Rule. I mean, they don't care about it. The bulk of
+the people would not give sixpence for Home Rule. They have been told
+it will pay them well, and they go in for that. Not one of them would
+have Home Rule if it cost him a penny, unless he believed he'd get
+twopence for his outlay. It's the land, and nothing else. The party
+that puts the land question on a comfortable footing will rule Ireland
+for ever. That's the opinion of every man in the force, in Loughrea or
+elsewhere. We have a curiosity here--a priest who goes against Home
+Rule. A very great man he was, head of a college or something, not one
+of the common ruck, and he's dead against it, and says so openly. The
+_Tuam News_ used to pitch into him, but he didn't care, so they got
+tired of it. No good rowing people up when they laugh at you."
+
+An old woman of the type too common in Ireland came up as the officer
+left me, and said:--
+
+"Musha, now, but 'tis the foin, handsome man ye are, an' ye've a
+gintleman's face on ye, bedad ye have, an,'" here she showed a
+halfpenny in her withered claw, "this is all I got since I kem out,
+and me that's twistin' wid the rummatacks like the divil on a hot
+griddle; the holy Mother o' God knows its thrue, an' me ould man,
+that's seventy or eighty or more--the divil a one o' him knows his own
+age--he's that sick an' bad, an' that wake intirely, that he couldn't
+lift a herrin' wid a pair o' hot tongs; 'tis an ulster he has, that
+does be ruinin' him, the docthor says; bad luck to it for an ulster
+wid a powltice, an' he's growlin' that he has no tobacky, God help
+him. (Here I gave her something.) Almighty God open ye the gates in
+heaven, the Holy Mother o' God pour blessin's upon ye. 'Tis Englishmen
+I like, bedad it is; the grandest, foinest, greatest counthry in the
+wuruld, begorra it is--an' why not?"
+
+This outburst somehow reminded me of a certain gentleman I met at the
+Railway Hotel, Athenry. He said, "I'm a Home Ruler out and out. The
+counthry's widin a stone's throw o' Hell, an' we may as well be in it
+althegither."
+
+"Now, Mr. Kelly," said the charming Miss O'Reilly, "you are most
+inconsistent; you sometimes say you are a Conservative----"
+
+"Aye, aye," assented Mr. Kelly, "but that's only when I'm sober!"
+
+The Loughreans are quiet now, but the secret societies which dealt so
+lightly with human life are still at work, and the best-informed
+people believe that the murderous emissaries of the Land League, whose
+terrorism ruined the town, are only kept down by a powerful and
+vigilant police. I have only described three of the murders which took
+place in the town and neighbourhood during a comparatively short
+period. Add Mr. Burke and driver Wallace; both shot dead near
+Craughwell. J. Connor, of Carrickeele, who had accepted a situation as
+bog-ranger, _vice_ Keogh, discharged. Shot. Three men arrested. No
+evidence. Patrick Dempsey, who had taken a small farm from which
+Martin Birmingham had been evicted. Shot dead in the presence of his
+two small children, with whom he was walking to church. No evidence.
+No convictions, but many more crimes, both great and small. So many
+murders that outrages do not count for much.
+
+It is to the men who are directly responsible for all these horrors
+that Mr. Gladstone proposes to entrust the government of Ireland.
+
+Loughrea, May 16th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 23.--THE REIGN OF INDOLENCE.
+
+
+I have just returned from Innishmore, the largest of the Aran islands,
+the population of which have been lifted from a condition of chronic
+starvation and enabled to earn their own livelihood by the splendid
+organisation of Mr. Balfour for the relief of the congested districts.
+Postal and other exigences having compelled a hasty return to the
+mainland, I defer a full account of this most interesting visit until
+my next letter, when I shall also be in possession of fuller and more
+accurate information than is attainable on the island itself.
+
+Meanwhile, let us examine the state of Irish feeling by the sad sea
+waves of Galway Bay. Salthill is a plucky little bathing place; that
+is, plucky for Ireland. It is easily accessible from Galway town, and
+looks over the bay, but it is more like a long natural harbour without
+ships. There is a mile or so of promenade with stone seats at
+intervals, a shingle dotted with big rocks, a modicum of
+slate-coloured sand, like that of Schevening, in Holland, and blue
+hills opposite, like those of Carlingford Lough. The promenade is
+kerbed by a massive sea wall of limestone, and here and there flights
+of stone steps lead to the water's edge. Facing the sea are handsome
+villas, with flower gardens, tidy gravelled walks, shrubberies, snowy
+window blinds and other appurtenances of a desperately Protestant
+appearance. No large hotels, no villas with "Apartments" on a card in
+the fanlight, no boatmen plying for hire, no boats even, either ashore
+or afloat; no bathing-machines no anything the brutal Saxon mostly
+needs, except fresh air and blazing sunshine. The Galway end of this
+fashionable resort has a few shady houses, aggressively Anglicised
+with names like Wave View House and Elm Tree View, the first looking
+at a whitewashed wall, the second at a telegraph post. But although
+some of these houses announce "Furnished Lodgings," no English
+tourists would "take them on." If you want to bathe you walk into the
+sea as you stand, or hand your toga virilis to the bystanders, if any.
+The Connaught folks have no false modesty.
+
+A white-haired gentleman descends from a wagonette and promenades for
+a while. Then he sits down beside me. The conversation turns on Home
+Rule. My friend is impatient, has been spending a few days in Belfast.
+The ignorance of the poor people is astonishing. A Roman Catholic of
+the Northern city told him that the first act of the Irish Parliament
+would be to level Cave Hill, and on the site thereof to build cottages
+for the poor. The hill was full of diamonds, which Queen Victoria
+would not allow the poor Irish folks to get. The country would be full
+of money. Didn't Mr. Gladstone say we'd have too much?--a clear
+allusion to the "chronic plethora." The people would have the upper
+hand, as they ought to have, and the first thing would be to evict the
+evictors. The only question was, would they clear out peaceably, or
+would it be necessary to call in the aid of the Irish Army of
+Independence?
+
+"This poor man evidently believed that every respectable person,
+everybody possessing means and property, was an enemy to the
+commonwealth. An ardent Home Ruler asked me if the majority had a
+right to rule. He thought that was a triumphant, an unanswerable
+question. I replied that during a long and busy life I had always
+observed how, in successful enterprises, the majority did not rule.
+The intelligent minority, the persons who had shown their wisdom,
+their industry, their sagacity, their integrity, that they were
+competent and reliable, those, I said, were the people who were
+entrusted with the management of great affairs, and not the
+many-headed mob. The management of Irish affairs promises to be a task
+of tremendous difficulty, and those to whom you propose to entrust
+this huge and complicated machinery stand convicted of inability to
+manage with even tolerable success such comparatively simple affairs
+as the party journal, or the rent collection of new Tipperary. Both
+these enterprises turned out dead failures owing to the total
+incapacity of the Irish Parliamentary party. And we are asked to
+entrust the future of the country to these men, whose only
+qualifications are a faculty for glib talk and an unreasonable hatred
+of everything English.
+
+"Mr. Gladstone has shown to demonstration that statesmen are no longer
+to direct the course of legislation; are no longer to lead the people
+onward in the paths of progressive improvement. The unthinking,
+uneducated masses are in future to signify their will, and statesmen
+are to be the automata to carry out their behests, whatever they may
+be. The unwashed, unshorn incapables who have nothing, because they
+lack the brains and industry to acquire property, are nowadays told
+that they, and they alone, shall decide the fate of empires, shall
+decide the ownership of property, shall manipulate the fortunes of
+those who have raised themselves from the dirt by ability,
+self-denial, and unremitting hard work. Look at the comparative
+returns of the illiterate electorate. In Scotland 1 in 160, in England
+1 in 170, in Ireland 1 in 5. In one quarter of Donegal, a Catholic
+one, more illiterates than in all Scotland. Not that there is so much
+difference as these figures would seem to show. But if men who can
+write declare themselves illiterate, so that the priests and village
+ruffians may be satisfied as to how they individually voted, is not
+this still more deplorable? The conduct of the English Gladstonians
+passes my comprehension. They do not examine for themselves. They say
+Mr. Gladstone says so-and-so, and for them this is sufficient. Do they
+say their prayers to the Grand Old Man?"
+
+Another Salthill malcontent said:--"An English visitor sneeringly
+asked me how it was that the Irish could not trust one another. I
+said, 'We cannot trust these men, and we can give you what ought to be
+a satisfactory reason for our distrust. They have been condemned as
+criminals by a competent tribunal, presided over by three English
+judges, one of them a Roman Catholic. They have been found guilty of
+criminal conspiracy, of sympathy with crime, and of having furnished
+the means for its committal, and that after the fairest trial ever
+held in the world. By a law passed in 1787 by Grattan's Parliament
+they would have suffered the punishment of death for this same
+criminal conspiracy. And, apart from Home Rule, leaving the present
+agitation altogether out of the question, the respectable classes of
+Ireland entirely object to be represented by such men, either at
+Westminster or College Green. Their conduct has done more to ruin
+Ireland than any other calamity which the country has endured for long
+ages. They have displayed an ingenuity of torture, and a refinement of
+cruelty, worthy of the Inquisition. Look at the case of
+District-inspector Murphy, of Woodford, in this county. Not by any
+means the worst of the tens of thousands of cases all over the
+country, but impressive to me because it came under my own
+observation. At the trial of Wilfrid Blunt, Mr. Murphy deposed upon
+oath that so severely was he boycotted for the mere performance of his
+duty, that his children were crying for bread, and that he was unable
+to give them any. Policemen had to bring milk from miles away. In
+other cases the pupils of these patriots, the preachers of the Land
+League, poured human filth into the water supply of their victims, who
+were in many cases ladies of gentle birth and children of tender
+years. Go up to Cong, and walk out to the place where Lord Mountmorres
+was murdered, near Clonbur. His whole income was Ł150 or Ł200, a poor
+allowance for a peer, one of the noble house of De Montmorency. He was
+shot in broad daylight, a dozen houses within call, and an open
+uncovered country, save for low stone walls, all around. The people
+danced in derision on the spot where he fell, and threw soil stained
+with his life blood in the air. He wanted his due, and, goodness
+knows, he was poor enough to satisfy oven an Irish agitator. His name
+was down for the next vacancy among the resident magistrates. The
+people who were guilty of inciting to those outrages are the most
+prominent of the Nationalist party. Is this the class of men you wish
+to set over us as governors?"
+
+An artist named Hamilton, a Guernsey man, said, "The English people do
+not understand what stonethrowing means in Ireland. They read of rows,
+and so long as no shooting is done, they do not think it serious. The
+men of Connaught are wonderful shots with big stones, and you would be
+surprised at the force and precision with which they hurl great lumps
+of rock weighing three or four pounds. Poor Corbett, a man in Lord
+Ardilaun's employ, was killed outright by one of these missiles, and
+only the other day I was reading of the Connaught Rangers in Egypt,
+the old 88th, how they were short of ammunition at the battle of
+Aboukir, and how they tore down a wall and actually stopped the
+French, who were advancing with the bayonet."
+
+A Galway merchant said:--"Balfour is the man for Ireland. A
+Nationalist member told me he was the cleverest man in the House. He
+said, 'Chamberlain goes in for hard hitting, and he is very effective,
+but nobody ever answered the Irish members so readily and smartly as
+Balfour. We thought twice before we framed our questions, and although
+we of course disapprove of him, we are bound to admire him immensely.'
+And as a business man I think Balfour was fully up to the mark. He it
+was who subsidised the Midland and Western Railway to build the light
+line now being made between Galway and Clifden. No company would have
+undertaken such a concern. As a mere business transaction it could not
+pay. But look at the good that is being done. The people were starving
+for want of employment, and no unskilled labour is imported to the
+district, so that the Connemara folks get the benefit of the work, and
+also a permanent advantage by the opening up of the Galway fisheries,
+which are practically inexhaustible. We have the Atlantic to go at.
+And the fish out of the deep, strong, running water are twice as big
+as those just off the coast, on herring-banks and shoals. The
+fishermen know this, and they call these places the mackerel hospitals
+and infirmaries. These fishermen always knew it, but they had no boats
+to go out to the deep seas, no nets, no tackle. They have them now,
+and they got them from Balfour. They get nothing but Home Rule from
+Morley and Gladstone, and they find it keeps them free from
+indigestion, although it puts their livers out of order. Amusing
+chaps, these fishermen. I was in a little country place on the coast,
+where the judicial and magisterial proceedings are of a very primitive
+character, and where most of the people speak Irish as their
+vernacular. One old chap declined to give evidence in English, and
+asked for an interpreter. The magistrate, who knew the old wag, said,
+'Michael Cahill, you speak English very well,' to which the old man
+replied, ''Tis not for the likes o' me to conthradict yer honner, but
+divil resave the word iv it I ondhersthand at all, at all.' There was
+a great roar from the Court, and the interpreter was trotted forward.
+Another witness was said to have been drunk, but he claimed to be a
+temperance man. 'What do you drink,' said the magistrate. 'Wather, yer
+honner,' said the total abstainer. 'Jist pure wather from the spring
+there beyant,' and then he looked round the Court, and slyly added,
+'Wid jist as much whiskey as will take off the earthy taste, yer
+honner.' He was like the temperance lecturer who preached round
+Galway, and was afterwards seen crushing sugar in a stiff glass of the
+crathur at Oughterard. When he was caught redhanded, as it were, he
+said, 'To be sure I'm a timprance man, but, bedad, ye can't say that
+I'm a bigoted one'!
+
+"We want Morley to give us a light railway from Clifden to Westport,
+and then we'd have the whole coast supplied. But he's a tight-fisted
+one as regards practical work. We've no chance with him, except in
+matters of sentiment. He wants to give Home Rule, but we can't eat
+that. And my impression is that we are fast drifting into the position
+of the man who has nothing, and from whom shall be taken the little
+that he hath. As to arguments against Home Rule, I do not think it a
+case for argument. That the thing is bad is self-evident; and
+self-evident propositions, whether in Euclid or elsewhere, are always
+the most difficult to prove. Ask me to prove that two added to two
+make four, ask me how many beans make five, and I gracefully retire.
+Ask me to show that Home Rule will be bad for Ireland, and I will make
+but a slight departure from this formula. I say, on the supporters of
+Home Rule rests the _onus probandi_; they are the people who should
+show cause, let them prove their case in its favour. Here I am, quite
+satisfied with the laws as they now are. Show me, say I, how I shall
+benefit by the proposed change. That knocks them speechless. In
+England they may make a pretence of proving their case, but in this
+country they are dumb in the presence of Unionists. They cannot argue
+with enlightened people. They have not a leg to stand upon, and they
+know it.
+
+"Consider the fulminations of Archbishop Walsh with regard to that
+Dublin Freemason Bazaar in aid of orphan children. As you must have
+heard, the Sacraments were refused to any Catholic attending this
+purely charitable movement. The Church said in effect--Any one who
+aids the orphans of freemasons by going to this bazaar, or by
+patronising the function, whether directly or indirectly, will be
+damned everlastingly. And the Catholics kept away, frightened by this
+threat. What would you expect of a people who believe such rubbish? Do
+you think that a people powerfully influenced, supremely influenced,
+by the word of a priest are fit to govern themselves? Can you depend
+on the loyalty of the Catholic priesthood? You surely know better than
+that. Suppose you gave Ireland Home Rule, and the Church turned rusty?
+With matters in the hands of an Irish Parliament, who would have the
+pull in weight of influence, John Bull or the priests? You are
+walking into a snare with your eyes open. Soon you will be punching
+your own head and calling yourself a fool. And you will be quite
+right. England is giving herself away at the bidding of a crowd of
+fellows who in Ireland are not received into decent society, and few
+of whom could get 'tick' for a week's board or a week's washing. Not
+that the latter would be much hardship. Clean linen is a novelty to
+the bulk of them. And seventy-one out of eighty of these upstarts must
+do the bidding of the priests.
+
+"Poor old Bull! The fine fellow he was. Respected by everybody. Strong
+but good-humoured, never hurting a soul. Slapping his breeches pocket
+now and then, and looking round the world with an eye that seemed to
+say, 'I could buy and sell the lot of ye; look what a fine fellow I
+am!' And he was. And he knew it, too. His only fault. Ready to lend a
+deserving friend a trifle, and apt to poke his nose into what didn't
+concern him, especially when a small country was being put upon. Then
+John would come up and say, 'Let him alone, will yer.' A
+laughing-stock in his old age. But yesterday he might have stood
+before the world: now none so poor to do him reverence,--Shakespeare!
+That's what's coming. Poor old Bull! In his dotage making a rod to
+whip himself. Well, well."
+
+There are Presbyterians at Salthill. Wherever they are they always
+wear good coats, have good houses, well-clad children. To be
+comfortably off seems part of their creed. One of them said, "There
+never was a more faithful worshipper of the Grand Old Man than
+myself,--up to a certain time, I mean. I dropped him before he went
+over to Parnell. I gave him up on account of his inconsistency. What
+staggered me was a trick he tried to play the Queen's College
+arrangements in Ireland. It was a supplemental charter really changing
+the whole constitution of the thing, and he tried to carry his point
+by a dodge. I did not care much about the matter one way or the other,
+but I thought his underhanded trickery unworthy a statesman, or any
+other man. I tried not to believe it; that is, I would rather not have
+believed it. I had a sort of feeling that it couldn't be. But it was
+so. Then his pamphlet about Vaticanism, in which he said no Roman
+Catholic could be loyal, after which he appointed the Marquess of
+Ripon, a Catholic convert, or pervert, to the Governor-Generalship of
+India, the most important office in the gift of the Crown. Again, I
+had no objection to the action in itself, but I considered it from Mr.
+Gladstone's point of view, and then it dawned on me that he would say
+anything. You never know what he'll do next. What he says is no guide
+at all nowadays to what he'll do. He was my hero, but a change has
+come over him, and now he cannot be trusted. He ought to be looked
+after in some public institution where the keepers wouldn't contradict
+him. He was a great man before his mind gave way."
+
+A bustling Belfaster of fatiguing vitality told me this little story
+which my friends the Catholic clergy may disprove if they can. He
+said:--"Mr. McMaster, of the firm of Dunbar, McMaster and Co., of
+Gilford, County Down, conceived the idea of aiding his fellow-countrymen
+and women who were starving in the congested districts. This was some
+time ago, but it is a good illustration of the difficulty you have in
+helping people who will not help themselves. He drew up a scheme, well
+thought-out and workable, such as a thorough business man might be
+expected to concoct, and sent down his agent to the districts of
+Gweedore in Donegal and Maam in Galway, with instructions to engage as
+many families as possible to work in the mills of the firm, noted all
+over the world for thread, yarn, and linen-weaving. An enormous affair,
+employing a whole township. The agent was provided with a document
+emanating from the priest of the district into which they were invited
+to migrate, setting forth that no proselytism was intended, and that
+the migrants would be under the care of Catholic clergy. As they had
+neither money nor furniture worth moving, it was agreed to pay the cost
+of transit, and to provide clean, sweet cottages, ready furnished, and
+with every reasonable convenience. The furniture was to be paid for by
+instalments, but the cost of removal was to be a gift from Mr.
+McMaster, who was desirous of aiding the people without pauperising
+them. They were to work the ordinary factory hours, as enacted by
+statute, and to be paid the ordinary wages. But they were required to
+work regularly. No saints' days, no lounging about on the "pattherns"
+(patron saints' days), no in-and-out running, but steady, regular
+attendance. People who knew the Keltic Irish laughed at Mr. McMaster,
+but he had seen their poverty, their filth, their mud cabins, their
+semi-starvation, and he thought he knew. He offered them work, and
+everything they seemed to want, out of pure humanity.
+
+"How many people moved to Gilford out of the two counties?"
+
+"Peradventure there might be a hundred found, peradventure there might
+be fifty, thirty, twenty, ten."
+
+"Guess again. Give it up? Not a single solitary soul accepted Mr.
+McMaster's offer. These are the people who are waiting for Home Rule.
+Much good may it do them."
+
+A little Galway man became irate. "'Tis our birthright to hate
+England. That's why we want Home Rule that we may tache thim their
+place. I'd fight England, an' I'd do more." Here he looked sternly at
+the Ulsterman. "I'd do more, I say, I'd fight thim that'd shtand up
+for her. D'ye see me now?"
+
+The Belfast man proved an awkward customer. He said, "You're too busy
+to fight anybody just now, you Nationalists. Wait till you've settled
+your differences, wait till you've cut each other's throats, wait till
+you've fought over the plunder, like the Kilkenny cats, till there's
+nothing left of you but the tail. Then we'll send down an army of owld
+women with besoms to sweep ye into the Atlantic. 'Twill be the first
+bath your Army of Independence ever got. 'Twill cool their courage and
+clean their hides at the same time."
+
+The small Separatist was about to make an angry reply, when I
+interposed with an inquiry as to his estimate of Mr. Gladstone.
+
+"Ah," said the little man, with a pucker of his little nose, and a
+grand gesture of contempt, "sure he's not worth as much powdher as
+would blow him to hell."
+
+His sentiment lacks novelty, but I quote him for the picturesqueness
+of his style.
+
+Salthill, May 18th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 24.--THE ARAN ISLANDS.
+
+
+The Aran Islanders seem to have passed most of their time in a state
+of chronic starvation. The land seems to grow little but rock, and the
+burning of seaweed, the kelp trade, does not seem to have helped them
+much. True, the Atlantic was all before them, where to choose, but
+what Father Mahony would call the teeming treasures of the deep were
+practically left untouched. If we accept the plain meaning of the good
+priest's speech, we must believe that the Aran Islanders and Irish
+fishermen generally preferred to starve rather than to catch fish,
+unless an Irish Parliament were fixed on College Green. They had no
+objection to accept charitable aid, no matter from what quarter it
+came, and the Araners required assistance every other year. They were
+not unwilling to catch fish, but they had nothing to catch them with;
+and, strange as it may seem, these islanders, who could scarcely move
+five yards in any direction without falling into the sea, these
+amphibious Irishmen, did not know the art of catching fish! They
+tinkered and slopped around the shoals in the vicinity of the island,
+but they were never able to catch enough fish to keep themselves from
+starvation, much less to supply the Dublin and London markets. Their
+boats were the most primitive affairs imaginable, and showed the Irish
+spirit of conservatism to perfection. These coraghs are practically
+the same boat as the Welsh coracle, but much larger. Those I examined
+were from ten to fifteen feet long and three feet wide. Oak ribs, over
+which are nailed laths of white deal, two inches wide and half an inch
+thick. Cover this slight skeleton with tarred canvas, and the ship is
+nearly complete. It only needs two pairs of wooden thole-pins, and two
+pairs of oars, long, light, and thin, coming nearly to a point at the
+water-end, having a perforated block which works on the thole-pins
+before-mentioned. You want no keel, no helm, no mast. Stay! You need a
+board or two for seats for the oarsmen. With these frail cockleshells
+the Araners adventure themselves twelve miles on the Atlantic, and
+mostly come home again. These makeshift canoes are almost useless for
+catching fish. Having no helm, it is hard to keep them straight;
+having no keel, it is needful to sit still, or at any rate to maintain
+a perfect balance, or over you go. A gust of wind spins the canoe
+round like a top. These primeval boats are made on the island, thrown
+together out of fifteen-pennyworth of wood, a few yards of canvas, and
+a pitch-pot. They have some virtues. They are cheap, and they will not
+sink. The coraghs always come back, even if bottom up. And when they
+reach the shore the two occupants (if any) invert the ship, stick a
+head in the stem and another in the stern, and carry her home to tea.
+This process is apt to puzzle the uninformed visitor, who sees a
+strange and fearful animal, like a huge black-beetle, crawling up the
+cliffs. He begins to think of "antres huge and deserts vast, and
+anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders."
+He hesitates about landing, but if he be on the Duras, Captain Neal
+Delargy, who equally scoffs at big beetles and Home Rule, will
+explain, and will accompany him to the tavern on the cliff side, where
+they charge ordinary prices for beer and give you bread-and-cheese for
+nothing. And yet the Araners profess to be civilised.
+
+In pursuance of his policy of helping the people to help themselves,
+Mr. Balfour determined to educate the Araners, and to give them
+sufficient help in the matter of boats and tackle to make their
+education of some avail. It was useless to give them boats and nets,
+for they knew not how to use them, and it is certain that any boat
+club on the Birmingham Reservoir, or any tripper who has gone mackerel
+fishing in Douglas Bay, could have given these fishermen much valuable
+information and instruction. Having once determined to attempt on a
+tolerably large scale the establishment of a fresh mackerel and fresh
+herring trade with England, Mr. Balfour set about the gigantic and
+discouraging task of endeavouring nothing less than the creation of
+the local industry. But how were the people to be taught the
+management of large boats, and the kind of nets that were used? After
+much inquiry, it was decided to subsidise trained crews from other
+parts of Ireland to show the local fishermen what earnings might be
+theirs, and at the same time to impart needful instruction to the
+Connemara and Aran people. It was also arranged to make loans for the
+purchase of boats and tackle to such persons as might prove likely to
+benefit by them. Accordingly arrangements were made with the crews of
+seven Arklow boats to proceed to the Aran Islands, and in order to
+indemnify them for the risk of working on an untried fishing ground,
+each crew received a bounty of Ł40 from the Congested Districts Board.
+But there was no use in catching fish unless it could be quickly put
+on the market, and again the necessary plant proved a matter involving
+considerable expenditure. A derelict Norwegian ship, which two or
+three years ago had been discovered at sea and towed into Queenstown
+Harbour, was purchased from the salvors, and anchored in Killeany Bay,
+outside the harbour of Kilronane, the capital city of the biggest
+Aran, as an ice-hulk. The Board then entered into an agreement with
+Mr. W.W. Harvey, of Cork, to market the mackerel at a fixed rate of
+commission, it being also arranged that he should pay the fishermen
+the English market price less by a deduction of 7s. a box to cover
+the cost of ice-packing, carriage, and English salesman's commission.
+The ice-hulk and boxes were provided by the Board, but Mr. Harvey was
+to purchase the ice and defray all the cost of labour except the
+salary of a manager.
+
+In addition to the seven Arklow crews two boats were fitted out by
+Miss Mansfield for training crews from the parish of Carna, in
+Connemara; and Miss Skerritt also placed two English-built boats at
+the Board's disposal for the training of crews from the pretty
+watering place of Clifden, also in Connemara. An Aran hooker,
+belonging to Innishmore, joined the little fishing fleet, bringing up
+the number to exactly a dozen boats. The Rev. W.S. Green, a Protestant
+parson, who is said to have first discovered these fishing grounds,
+and who threw himself into the work with wonderful enthusiasm,
+superintended the experiment in the steamer Fingal, which was
+specially chartered for the purpose. Mr. Green as a skilled Fisheries
+Inspector, knew what he was about, and he was empowered to lend nets,
+where advisable, to the Aran beginners. Away they went to sea, to
+start with a fortnight's heart-breaking luck. The water in those
+regions was cold, and the fish were amusing themselves elsewhere. The
+ice-hulk with its two hundred tons of Norwegian ice was waiting, and
+its staff of packers might cool their ardour in the hold. The mackerel
+would not come to be packed, and the dozen boats, with their master
+and apprentice crews, cruised up and down on the deep blue sea, with
+the blue sky overhead, and hope, like Bob Acres' valour, gradually
+oozing out of their finger-ends. The Arklow men began to talk of going
+home again. Altogether it was a blue look-out.
+
+At last the luck turned. On April 6th, 1892, six thousand mackerel
+were despatched to the English market. The weather during much of the
+season was stormy and unfavourable, but on May 18th, seventy-three
+thousand three hundred and fifty mackerel were sent to Galway, thirty
+miles away by sea, and were forwarded thence by two special trains.
+The Midland and Western Railway, under the management of Mr. Joseph
+Tatlow, has been prompt, plucky, and obliging, and runs the fish to
+Dublin as fast as they arrive in Galway. During the season of ten
+weeks the experienced Arklow crews made on an average Ł316 per boat,
+and the greenhorns who were learning the business earned about Ł70 per
+boat, although they could not fish at all at the beginning of the
+season. The total number of mackerel packed on the ice-hulk amounted
+to the respectable total of two hundred and ninety-nine thousand four
+hundred and eighty. The "teeming treasures of the deep" were not left
+untouched on this occasion, though, doubtless, "still the Irish
+peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke."
+
+Mr. Balfour's benefactions have not been confined to the Aran Islands.
+Every available fishing place from top to bottom of the whole west
+coast has been similarly aided, and the value of their produce has
+increased from next to nothing to something like fifty thousand
+pounds per month. This on the authority of Father P.J. McPhilpin,
+parish priest of Kilronane, Innishmore, who said:--
+
+"We never had a Chief Secretary who so quickly grasped the position,
+who so rapidly saw what was the right thing to do, and who did it so
+thoroughly and so promptly. Strange to say the Liberals are always the
+most illiberal. When we get anything for Ireland it somehow always
+seems to come from the Tories."
+
+Having been carried from Galway to the ice-hulk in Killeany Bay, and
+having been duly put ashore in a boat, one of the first persons I saw
+was Father Thomas Flatley, coadjutor of Father McPhilpin, an earnest
+Home Ruler, like his superior, and like him a great admirer of Mr.
+Balfour. Father Flatley wore a yachting cap, or I might have sheered
+off under all sail--the biretta inspires me with affright--but his
+nautical rig reassured me, and yawing a little from my course, I put
+up my helm and boarded him. Too late I saw the black flag--I mean the
+white choker--but there was nothing of the pirate about Father Tom. He
+was kindly, courteous, earnest, humorous, hospitable, and full of
+Latin quotations. Before our acquaintance was two minutes old he
+invited me to dinner. Then I ran aground on an Arklow boatman, James
+Doyle by name, a smart tweed-suited sailor, bright and gay. The Post
+Office was near, and the letters were being given out. Three
+deliveries a week, weather permitting. The parish priest was there,
+grave, refined, slightly ascetic, with the azure blue eyes so common
+in Connaught, never seen in England, although frequently met with in
+Norway and North Germany. The waiting-women were barefoot, but all the
+men were shod. The Araners have a speciality in shoes--pampooties, to
+wit. These are made of raw hide, hair outwards, the toe-piece drawn
+in, and the whole tied on with string or sinew. The cottages are
+better built than many on the mainland. Otherwise the winter gales
+would blow them into the Atlantic main. The thatch is pegged down
+firmly, and then tied on with a close network of ropes. The people are
+clean, smart, and good-looking. Miss Margaret Flanagan, who escorted
+me in my search after pampooties, would pass for a pretty girl
+anywhere, and the Aran Irish flowed from her lips like a rivulet of
+cream. She spoke English too. An accomplished young lady, Miss
+Margaret Kilmartin, aged nineteen, said her father had been wrongfully
+imprisoned for two and a half years for shooting a bailiff. The
+national sports are therefore not altogether unknown in the Arans.
+Miss Kilmartin was _en route_ for America, per Teutonic, first to New
+York, and then a thousand miles by rail, alone, and without a bonnet.
+She had never been off the island. This little run would be her first
+flutter from the paternal nest.
+
+The Araners know little of politics, save that the Balfour Government
+lifted them out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set their
+feet upon a rock and established their goings. The Balfour boats are
+there, the Balfour nets are full of fish, the Balfour boys are
+learning a useful occupation, and earning money meanwhile. If there is
+anything in the Aran cupboards, the Araners know who enabled them to
+put it there. If the young ladies have new shoes, new shawls, new
+brooches; if the Aran belles make money by mending nets; if the men
+sometimes see beef; if they compass the thick twist; if they manage
+without the everlasting hat going round, they have Mr. Balfour to
+thank, and they know it. They own it, not grudgingly or of necessity,
+but cheerfully. One battered old wreck raised his hat at every mention
+of the name. I saw no Morley boats. I saw no Gladstone nets. I saw no
+Home Rule fish. The Araners do not care for the Grand Old Mendacium.
+Perhaps they lack patriotism. It may be that they do not share what
+Mr. Gladstone calls the Aspirations of a people. So far as I could
+judge, their principal aspiration is to get something to eat. A
+pampootied native who has often visited the main-land, and is
+evidently looked upon as a mountain of sagacity and superior wisdom,
+said to me--
+
+"Not a bit they care but to look afther the wife and childher an' pray
+to God for good takes o' fish. An' small blame to thim. Before Balfour
+the people were starvin', an' ivery other year Father Davis that's
+dead this six months would go round beggin' an' prayin' for a thrifle
+to kape life in thim. The hardships and the misery the poor folks had,
+God alone knows. An' would ye say to thim, 'tis Home Rule ye want?
+
+"There was a young fellow fishin' here from Dublin. He went out in the
+hookers an' injoyed himself all to pieces, a dacent sthrip of a boy,
+but wid no more brains than a scalpeen (pickled mackerel). He got me
+to be interpreter to an owld man that would spake wid him over on
+Innishmair, an' the owld chap wos tellin' his throubles. So afther a
+bit, the young fellow says, says he,
+
+"''Tis Home Rule ye want,' says he.
+
+"'No,' says the owld chap, shakin' his head, 'tis my dinner I want,'
+says he.
+
+"An' that young fellow was mad whin I thranslated it. But 'twas thrue,
+ivery word iv it. 'Ah! the ignorance, the ignorance,' says he. But
+then he was spakin' on a full stomach, an' 'tis ill arguin' betwixt a
+full man and a fastin'.
+
+"I wouldn't say but they'd take more notice afther a while. But
+they're not used to bein' prosperous, an' they don't know themselves
+at all. Ye can't cultivate politics on low feed. 'Tis the high livin'
+that makes the Parliamint men that can talk for twenty-four hours at a
+sthretch. An' these chaps is gettin' their backs up. In twelve months'
+time they'll be gettin' consated. 'Tis Balfour that's feedin' thim
+into condition. Vote against him? Av coorse they will, ivery man o'
+thim. Sure they'll be towld to vote for a man, an' they'll do it. How
+would they ondhersthand at all? Av 'twas Misther Balfour himself that
+wanted their vote he'd get it fast enough. But 'tisn't. An' they'll
+vote agin' him without knowin' what they're doin'."
+
+Father McPhilpin said, "It is very hard to get them to move. The
+Irish people are the most conservative in the world. They will not
+stir for telling, and they will not stir when you take them by the
+collar and haul them along. They are wedded to the customs of their
+ancestors; and yet, when once they see the advantage to be obtained by
+any given change, no people are so quick to follow it up. The
+difficulty is to start them. The Araners had actually less knowledge
+of the sea, of boats, nets, and fishing, than people coming here from
+an inland place. Surprising, but quite true."
+
+Speaking on the general question of Home Rule, I asked Father
+McPhilpin if the people of Ireland would be loyal.
+
+"Loyal to what?" said the Father, replying quickly.
+
+"Loyal to England, to the Crown, to Queen Victoria."
+
+"The Irish people have always been loyal--much more loyal than the
+English people. You have only to look at English history. How far
+shall I go back, Father Tom?" said my genial host to the coadjutor,
+who just then entered the room. "Shall we go back to Henry II.? Where
+shall we begin, Father Tom?"
+
+"Well," said Father Tom, "I'd not be for going back quite so far. I
+think if we began with Charles I.----"
+
+"Very good. Now, were not the Irish loyal when the English people
+disloyally favoured their Oliver Cromwell and their William the
+Third?"
+
+I proceeded with the imbibition of Father McPhilpin's excellent tea.
+The answer was obvious, but Father Tom clearly believed that his
+senior had me on the hip, and good-naturedly came in with a Latin
+quotation or two. Both clerics were deeply interested in the condition
+of the poor in their charge, and indeed all over Ireland, and their
+profound belief that a Home Rule Bill would benefit the poorer
+classes, by changing the conditions affecting the tenure or ownership
+of land, was apparently their chief reason for advocating a College
+Green Parliament. Father McPhilpin holds some honorary official
+position in connection with the Aran fisheries, and from him I derived
+most of my information. Another authority assured me that the Araners
+were not grateful to England nor to Mr. Balfour, and spoke of the
+viper that somebody warmed in his bosom with disagreeable results.
+But, as Father Tom would say, _Omnis comparatio claudicat_, and all my
+experience points to a proper appreciation of the great ex-Secretary's
+desire to do the country good. The people know how thoroughly he
+examined the subject; how he spent weeks in the Congested Districts;
+how he saw the parish priests, the head men of the districts, the
+cotters themselves. Every Irishman, whatever his politics, will
+readily agree that Mr. Balfour knows more about Ireland than any
+Englishman living, and most of them credit him with more knowledge of
+the subject than any Irishman. My thorough-going friend, Mr. McCoy, of
+Galway, hater of England, avowed Separatist, longing to wallow in the
+brutal Saxon's gore, thinks Mr. Balfour the best friend that Ireland
+ever had. "I'd agree with you there," said Mr. McCoy. "I don't agree
+with charity, but I agree with putting people in a way to do things
+for themselves, which is what Mr. Balfour has done."
+
+Back on the ice-hulk by favour of Thomas Joyce, of Kilronane, skipper
+and owner of a fishing smack. Mr. William Fitzgerald showed the
+factory, the great hold with the ice, the windmill which pumps the
+hulk, the mountains of boxes for fish, the mackerel in process of
+packing, sixty in a box, most of them very large fish. An unhappy
+halibut, which had come to an untimely end, stood on his tail in a
+narrow basket, his mouth wide open, looking like a Home Rule orator
+descanting on the woes of Ireland. He was slapped into a box and
+instantly nailed down, which summary process suggested an obvious
+wish.
+
+Mr. Fitzgerald said: "The fisheries have been a great success, and
+have done much good. The spring fishery paid well on account of the
+great price we got for the mackerel. It is not customary to catch fish
+so early, but when you can do it it pays splendidly. Just now the
+price is not up to the mark, but we hope for better times. The Arklow
+men are not subsidised this year. They didn't need it. The ground
+proved productive, and they were glad to come on their own hook. If
+they had required a second subsidy they would not have got it."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I'm no politician," said Mr. Fitzgerald. "The Araners are so strong
+and hardy that they would surprise you. They will stand all day on the
+ice, with nothing on but those pampooties, and you would think they'd
+need iron soles, instead of a bit of skin. They work hard, and come
+regularly and give no trouble. No, I could not find any fault with
+them. They mostly speak Irish among themselves. It's Greek to me, but
+I can make out that they think a great deal of Mr. Balfour."
+
+A week on the hulk would be refreshing, for on one side there is no
+land nearer than America. However, I have to go, for the Duras is
+getting uneasy, so I leave the hulk, the mackerel, the big sea trout
+which are caught with the mackerel, and steam back to Galway. A
+splendid fellow in the cabin discloses his views. "We must have
+complete independence. We shall start with 120,000 men for the Army of
+Independence. That will be only a nucleus. We shall attract all the
+brave, chivalrous, adventurous spirits of America. England has India
+to draw from. Trot your niggers over, we'll make short work of them.
+We draw from America, Australia, every part of the world. We draw from
+24,000,000 of Irishmen all willing to fight for nothing, and even to
+pay money to be allowed to fight against England. An Irish Republic,
+under the protection of America. That's the idea. It's the natural
+thing. Work the two countries together and England may slide. We'll
+have an Independent Irish Republic in four years; perhaps in three
+years. Rubbish about pledges of loyalty. The people must be loyal to
+themselves, not to England. Our members will do what the people want,
+or they will be replaced by men who will. We have the sentiments of
+the people, backed by the influence of religion, all tending to
+complete independence. Who's going to prevent it? We'll have a
+Declaration of Independence on Saint Patrick's Day, 1897, at latest.
+Who'll stop it? Mr. Gladstone? Why long before that time we'll convert
+him, and ten to one he'll draw up the document. What'll you bet that
+he doesn't come over to Dublin and read it in THE HOUSE?"
+
+Galway, May 20th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 25.--THE PRIESTS AND OUTRAGE. THEY NEVER CONDEMNED IT.
+
+
+The people of Moycullen with whom I have spent a day are hardly
+patriotic. So far as I can gather, they have always paid their rents
+and worked hard for their living. They know nothing of Home Rule, and
+they do not murder their friends and neighbours. They send forth a
+strong contingent of men to work on Mr. Balfour's railway between
+Galway and Clifden, and find the weekly wages there earned very
+convenient. They vote as they are told, and do not trouble themselves
+with matters which are too high for them. If a candidate proposes to
+make the land much cheaper, or even to spare the necessity of paying
+any rent at all, the Moyculleners give him their voice. Like every
+Catholic villager in Ireland they look to Father Pat, Tom, Dick, or
+Harry for advice, and the good priest gives them the right tip. He
+points out that Micky O'Codlin promises to support such legislation as
+shall place the land in the hands of the tillers of the soil, while
+the Protestant Short declares that the thing is not honest, and cannot
+be done. The result is precisely what might be expected. The
+Nationalist members are returned, and Mr. Gladstone, with his most
+grandiose manner, and with the abject magnanimity he always shows when
+thoroughly beaten, comes forward and declares he can no longer resist
+the aspirations of a people. The Separatist sheep tumble over each
+other in their nervous anxiety to keep close on the heels of the
+bell-wether, and the Empire is threatened with disintegration to suit
+the convenience of a party of priests. An eminent Roman Catholic
+lawyer of Dublin, a Home Ruler, said to me:--
+
+"I vote for Home Rule because the sooner the thing is settled the
+better, and it will never be settled until we get Home Rule in some
+form or other. The country is weary of the agitation of the last
+twenty years, and I am of opinion that Home Rule would do much to
+restore the freedom of Ireland. For Ireland is in a state of
+slavery--not to England, but to the priesthood. I believe in the
+fundamental doctrines of the faith, but I don't believe everything the
+priests choose to tell me. I am ready to admit that they have more
+spiritual gifts and graces than anybody else, but I will not believe
+that they know more about politics, and I will not submit to their
+dictation. They control the course of affairs both sacred and secular.
+At the present moment they are running the British Empire. You cannot
+get away from the fact that they return the Irish majority, and you
+will admit that the Irish majority is now the ruling power. Let me
+illustrate my point.
+
+"You in England think we have the franchise in Ireland. Nothing of the
+kind. There may be a hundred thousand in the North who vote as they
+think proper, but an overwhelming majority of the South are absolutely
+in the hands of the clergy, who in many cases lead or drive them in
+hundreds to the poll."
+
+Here an English civil engineer said:--"When I was engaged on a line at
+Mayo I actually saw the priest walking in front of some hundreds of
+voters brought into the town from the rural districts. I was driving
+along in a car, and my driver shouted 'Parnell for ever!' He was
+struck on the head and face, his cheek cut open, and himself knocked
+off the car. How the priestly party do hate the Parnellites! I wonder
+what would happen if the Nationalists got into power."
+
+"They would exterminate each other, if possible," said the Dublin man.
+"We should have an awful ferment, a chaos, an immediate bankruptcy.
+But let us have it. Let us make the experiment, and thus for ever
+settle the question. To return to the priests. The people of Ireland
+have not the franchise, which is monopolised by a few thousand priests
+and bishops. The Nationalist members, the dauntless seventy-one, are
+as much the nominees of the Catholic clergy as the old pocket-borough
+members were nominees of the local landlords. And the same thing will
+hold good in future. People tell you it will not be so, but that's all
+humbug. It may be different in five-and-twenty years, when the people
+are educated, when the National Schools have done their work, but half
+that time is enough to ruin England. Thanks to agitators, Ireland
+cannot be any worse off than she is."
+
+Some time ago there was a Convention in Dublin, a Home Rule
+Convention. There were five hundred delegates, sent up by the votes of
+the people. Four hundred and nine were priests, who had returned
+themselves. Can the English Gladstonians get away from the
+suggestiveness of this fact? Is it sufficiently symptomatic? Can they
+not diagnose the progress of the disease?
+
+One of the Galway Town Commissioners, also a Roman Catholic, declared
+that the Irish people, once the kindliest, most honest, most
+conscientious amongst the nations of the earth, had for years been
+taught a doctrine of malevolence. "They were naturally benevolent, but
+their nature has been changed, and I regret to say that in a large
+measure the priests are responsible for the change. Where once mutual
+help and perfect honesty reigned, you now find selfishness and mutual
+distrust. The priests have made the altar a hustings, and even worse
+than electioneering has been done on that sacred spot. From the altar
+have been denounced old friends and neighbours who had dared to have
+an opinion of their own, had dared to show an independent spirit, and
+to hold on what they thought the true course in spite of the
+blackguard population of the district. Take the case of O'Mara, of
+Parsonstown. He was the principal merchant of the place, a very kindly
+man, of decided politics, a Catholic Conservative, like myself. He
+sold provisions to what the local priest called the 'helmeted minions
+of our Saxon taskmasters.' In other words, he sold bread to the
+constabulary at a time when outrage and murder were being put down
+with a strong hand. The priest threatened him with boycotting, his
+friends urged him to give way, and let the police get their 'prog'
+from a distance, but O'Mara, who was an easy-going man, and who had
+never obtruded his politics on anyone, showed an unexpected obstinacy,
+and said he would do as he chose, spite of all the priests on earth.
+They denounced him from the altar, but, although they tried hard, they
+failed to ruin him. In other cases, clerical influence has dragged men
+from positions of competency and caused them to end their days in the
+workhouse. Then, again, the priests never denounced outrage. They
+might have stopped the fiendish deeds of the murderous blackguards
+whose evil propensities were fostered and utilised by the Land League,
+but they said no word of disapproval. On the contrary they tacitly
+favoured, or seemed to favour, the most awful assassinations. When the
+Phoenix Park murders took place, a Galway priest whom I will not
+name said that he had been requested to ask for the prayers of the
+faithful in favour of Mr. Burke, one of the murdered men, who belonged
+to an old Galway family. And what was the remark made by that follower
+of Jesus Christ? He said, 'I have mentioned the request. You can pray
+for his soul--_if you like_.' What he meant was plain enough."
+
+"Let me tell you of something even worse," said the Dublin lawyer. "In
+a certain Catholic church which I regularly attend, and on a Sunday
+when were present two or three eminent Judges, with a considerable
+number of the Dublin aristocracy, a certain dignitary, whom I also
+will not name before our Sassenach friend, actually coupled the names
+of honest people who had died in their beds with the names of Curley
+and the other assassins who were hanged for the Phoenix Park murders.
+We were invited to pray for their souls _en bloc_! And this, mind you,
+not at the time of the execution, but a year afterwards, on the
+anniversary of the day, and when the thing might well have been
+allowed to drop. Did you ever hear of anything more outrageous than
+the conduct of this priest, who took upon himself to mention these
+brutal murderers in the same breath with the blessed departed, whose
+friends and relations were kneeling around? The fact that this cleric
+could so act shows the immunity of the Irish priesthood, and their
+confidence in their influence over the people. Don't forget that this
+was in the capital of Ireland, and that the congregation was
+aristocratic. How great must be priestly influence over the unlettered
+peasantry. You see my point? What would the English say to such an
+exhibition? What would the relatives of decent people in England do
+if they had been submitted to such an insult by a Protestant parson?"
+
+I disclaimed any right to speak for the brutal Saxon with any degree
+of authority, but ventured to say that to the best of my knowledge and
+belief the supposititious reverend gentleman, when next he took his
+walks abroad, might possibly become acquainted with a novel but
+vigorous method of propulsion, or even might undergo the process so
+familiar to Tim Healy, not altogether unconnected with a horsewhip.
+
+The Galway Town Commissioner said:--"We respectable Catholics are in a
+very awkward position. We have to live among our countrymen who are of
+a different way of thinking, and unhappily we cannot express our
+honest opinions without embarassing consequences. In England, where
+people of opposite politics meet on terms of most sincere friendship,
+you do not understand our difficulties. We are denounced as
+unpatriotic, as enemies to our native land, and as aiders and abettors
+of the hated English rule. Now we know very well--my friend from
+Dublin, who understands law, will bear me out--we know very well that
+the English laws are good, excellent, liberal. We know that the
+English people are anxious to do what is fair and right, and that they
+have long been doing their best to make us comfortable. But we must
+keep this knowledge to ourselves, for such of us who are in business
+would run great risk of loss, besides social ostracism, if we ventured
+to boldly express our views. Moreover, we do not care to put ourselves
+in open conflict with the clergy, upon whom we have been taught to
+look from earliest childhood with reverence and awe. It is almost, if
+not quite, a matter of heredity. I declare that, in spite of what I
+might call my intellectual convictions, I am to some extent overawed
+by any illiterate farmer's son, who has been ordained a priest. I feel
+it in my blood. I must have imbibed it with my mother's milk. No use
+for Conservative Catholics to kick against it. We are too few, and we
+are bound hand and foot."
+
+So did the Galway man deliver himself. I was reminded of Mr. O'Ryan,
+of Larne, a devoted Catholic, who said, "I protest from my innermost
+heart against Home Rule. I protest not only for myself, but also on
+behalf of my co-religionists that dare not speak, because if they did
+speak their lives might not be worth an hour's purchase, not being
+situated, as I am, in the midst of a loyal, and law-abiding
+population. I believe that all that Ireland requires is a just
+settlement of the land question, and a fair, reasonable measure of
+local self-government. For several generations past England has been
+doing all the good she could for Ireland, and none have more reason
+than the Roman Catholics of Ireland to be thankful for that good. The
+loyal Roman Catholics of Ireland are convinced that Home Rule would be
+the ruin of Ireland in particular and of the British Empire in
+general, which would find itself deprived in a few hours of a
+Constitution the workmanship of centuries, and the admiration of the
+whole nineteenth-century civilisation."
+
+This is tolerably outspoken for an Irish Roman Catholic, but Mr.
+O'Ryan lives in Ulster, where people do not shoot their neighbours for
+difference of political opinion. He said more: "We loyal Catholics
+could never submit to Mr. Gladstone's ticket-of-leave men placed in
+power over us in this country, and rather than submit to them we are
+prepared for the worst, and ready, if need be, to die with the words,
+'No surrender,' on our lips."
+
+Archbishop Walsh cursed the Dublin Bazaar for the Irish Masonic
+Orphanage until he was black in the face, but neither he nor any other
+Catholic Bishop denounced the perpetrators of outrage, of mutilation,
+of foul assassinations. When Inspector Martin was butchered on the
+steps of the presbytery at Gweedore; when Joseph Huddy and John Huddy
+were murdered and their bodies put in sacks and thrown into Lough
+Mask; when Mrs. Croughan, of Mullingar, was murdered because she had
+been seen speaking to the police, four shots being fired into her
+body; when Luke Dillon, a poor peasant, was shot dead as he walked
+home from work; when Patrick Halloran, a poor herdsman, was shot dead
+at his own fireside; when Michael Moloney was murdered for paying his
+rent; when John Lennane, an old man who had accepted work from a
+boycotted farmer, was shot dead in the midst of his family; when
+Thomas Abram met precisely the same fate under similar circumstances;
+when Constable Kavanagh was murdered; when John Dillon had his brains
+beaten out and his ears torn away; when Patrick Freely was murdered
+for paying his rent; when John Curtin was shot dead by moonlighters,
+to whom he refused to give up his guns; when John Forhan, a feeble old
+man of nearly seventy years, was murdered for having induced labourers
+to work on a boycotted farm; when James Ruane, a labourer who worked
+for a boycotted farmer, was murdered by three shots; when James Quinn
+was wounded by a bullet, and while disabled, killed by having his
+throat cut; when Peter McCarthy was murdered because it was thought he
+meant to pay rent; when James Fitzmaurice, aged seventy, was shot dead
+in the presence of his daughter Norah, because he had taken a farm
+which his brother had left, the latter declining to pay rent, although
+the landlord offered a reduction of 66 per cent.; when Margaret
+Macmahon, widow, and her little children were three times fired at
+because the poor woman had earned a few pence by supplying turf to the
+police; when Patrick Quirke, aged seventy-five, was murdered for
+taking a farm which somebody else wanted; when the wife of John
+Collins was indecently assaulted while her husband was being brutally
+beaten for caretaking; when John Curtin (another John Curtin), a
+school-master, was shot, and his wife received forty-two slugs in her
+face, neck, and breast for something they had not done, the school
+also being fired into, and all children attending it boycotted; when
+John Connor's wife was shot in the head by moonlighters who wished to
+vex the husband; when Cornelius Murphy was shot dead while sitting at
+his "ain fireside" chatting with his wife and children; when Daniel
+O'Brien, aged seventy-five, talking with his wife, aged seventy, was
+murdered by a shot; when Patrick Quigley had the roof of his skull
+blown away for taking some grazing; when David Barry was shot in the
+main street of Castleisland; when Patrick Taugney was murdered in the
+presence of his wife and daughters; when Edmund Allen was shot dead
+because of a right-of-way dispute--he was a Protestant; when young
+Cashman, aged twenty, was beaten to death for speaking to a policeman;
+when poor Spillane was murdered for acting as a caretaker; when
+Patrick Curtin, John Rahen, and a farmer named Tonery were murdered;
+when James Spence, aged sixty-five, was beaten to death; when Blake,
+Ruane, Linton, Burke, Wallace, Dempsey, Timothy Sullivan, John Moylan,
+James Sheridan, and Constable Cox were shot dead; when James Miller,
+Michael Ball, Peter Greany, and Bridget McCullagh were murdered--the
+last a poor widow, who was beaten to death with a spade; when Ryan
+Foley was brutally murdered; when Michael Baylan was murdered; when
+Viscount Mountmorres was murdered, and the dead body left on the road,
+the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse the
+shelter of a barn; when a car-driver named John Downey was killed by a
+bullet intended for Mr. Hutchins, J.P.; when young Wheeler, of Oolagh,
+whence I dated a letter, was shot dead, to punish his father, who was
+an agent--when all these murders took place, every one of them, and as
+many more, the work of the Land League, which also was responsible for
+more outrages, filthy indecencies, and gross brutalities than the
+entire _Gazette_ would hold, and which would in many cases be unfit
+for publication--then were the clergy SILENT. No denunciations from
+the altar; no influence exerted in the parish. In many cases a direct
+encouragement to persevere in the good path. When John Curtin's
+daughters attended church after their father's murder they were
+attacked by a hostile crowd. The police were compelled to charge the
+infuriated mob. Otherwise the pious Papists would in all probability
+have consummated the good work by murdering the remainder of the
+family, after having, in the presence of daughters who nobly fought
+the murderers, assassinated the father.
+
+What did the good priest, Father O'Connor, say to all this; how
+express his deep sense of this abject cowardice, this atrocious
+savagery, this unheard-of-sacrilege?
+
+He "took no notice of the occurrence"--good, easy man. But I am
+forgetting something. Mr. Curtin was killed by a gang of moonlighters,
+who knocked him up, and, presenting loaded rifles at the children,
+asked for the father's arms. Before the terrified boys and girls could
+comply the father appeared and shot a moonlighter dead in his tracks.
+The rest fled precipitately, but unhappily Curtin gave chase and was
+killed. Good Father O'Connor attended the funeral of the moonlighter,
+who did not belong to his parish, and refused to attend that of Mr.
+Curtin, who did!
+
+The Catholic Bishops of Ireland stood by and looked on all this
+without a word of censure. Silence gives consent. Had they fulminated
+against outrage and secret wholesale murder of poor working men, for
+nearly all those I have cited were of this class; had they used their
+immense influence to stem the murderous instincts of ruffians who in
+many cases took advantage of the prevailing disregard for human life
+to wreak their private revenge on their neighbours, satisfied that no
+man dare testify, and that the clergy would aid them to frustrate the
+law--had the Bishops done this, even the dull and sluggish brain of
+the brutal Saxon could have understood their action. They uttered no
+single word of condemnation. An eminent Catholic, a clever
+professional man, who reveres the faith in which he was bred, but
+holds its priesthood in lowest contempt, said to me:--"You cannot find
+a word of condemnation uttered by any Bishop during the whole period
+when brutal murders were of daily occurrence. I give you your best. I
+would stake anything on my statement. I have challenged people over
+and over again, but nobody has ever been able to produce a syllable of
+censure, of warning, of reprobation. The Bishops were strangely
+unanimous in their silence."
+
+But when the Irish Masons try to provide for the orphans of their
+brethren the Archbishop's back is up at once; for Masons have secrets
+which they may not tell even to priests; and therefore Dr. Walsh
+declares that whosoever gives sixpence to this cause of charity, or
+associates with its promoters, shall be cast into hell, there to abide
+in torture everlastingly--unless previously whitewashed by himself in
+person. And as I have clearly shown, the influence of Archbishop Walsh
+and his kind is at this moment supremely powerful in matters affecting
+the prestige and integrity of England and her people. Wherefore I do
+not wonder at the saying of an earnest Irishman of famous name, a
+baronet of long descent, whom I saw yesterday--
+
+"When I see how the thing is being worked, and when, as a Catholic, I
+recognise the progress and character of the Church policy, and when I
+see England walking so stupidly into the trap, I don't know what to
+do--whether to swear, or to go out and be sick."
+
+Moycullen (Connemara), May 23rd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 26.--THE CONNEMARA RAILWAY.
+
+
+Mr. Balfour's railway from Galway to Clifden will be exactly fifty
+miles long, and will run through Crooniffe, Moycullen, Ross,
+Oughterard, and the wildest and most desolate parts of Connemara. The
+line has been in contemplation for thirty years at least, but the
+strong suit of its Irish projectors was talking, not doing, and the
+project might have remained under discussion until the crack of doom
+but for Mr. Balfour's energy and administrative power. The Irish
+patriots had no money, or they would not invest any. The Galway
+authorities would not authorise a county rate. Anybody who chose might
+make the line, but the local "powers that be" refused to spend a
+single penny on an enterprise which would for years provide employment
+for the starving people of Connemara, and would afterwards prove of
+incalculable benefit to the whole West of Ireland by opening up an
+attractive, an immense, an almost inaccessible tourist district,
+besides affording facilities of transit for agricultural stock and
+general market produce, and powerfully aiding the rapidly-developing
+fish trade of the western sea-board. Not a bit of it. The Western
+Irish are always standing about waiting for something. They talked
+about the line for a generation or two, but they cut no sod of turf.
+They harangued meetings convened to hear the prospective blessings of
+the line, but they declined to put any money on their opinions. The
+starving peasants of Connemara might have turned cannibals and eaten
+each other before Irishmen had commenced the railway. The people of
+the congested districts were unable to live on the sympathy of their
+fellow-countrymen, and nothing else was offered to them. The
+Connemarans have an occasional weakness for food. They like a square
+feed now and again. Their instincts are somewhat material. They think
+that Pity without Relief is like Mustard without Beef. They like
+Sentiment--with something substantial at the back of it. Their
+patriot-brethren, those warm-hearted, dashing, off-hand,
+devil-may-care heroes of whom we read in Charles Lever, sometimes
+visited the district, to rouse the people against the brutal Saxon,
+but they did no more than this. Sometimes, I say, not often, did the
+patriots patrol Connemara. There were two reasons for this. First, the
+Irish patriots do not speak their native language; and the Connemarans
+are not at home with English. Secondly, and principally, the
+Connemarans had nothing to give away. They cannot pay for first-class
+patriotism like that of Davitt, Dillon, O'Brien, and Tim Healy, who
+latterly have never performed out of London.
+
+And so the Galway folks went on with their railway discussions, and
+the poor Connemarans went on with their starving. Suddenly Mr. Balfour
+took the thing up, and the turf began to fly. The Midland and Western
+Railway Company, in consideration of a grant of Ł264,000, agreed to
+make the line, and to afterwards run it, whether it paid or not. The
+contractors were not allowed to import unskilled labour. The
+Connemarans were to make the line whether they knew the work or not.
+They had never seen navvy labour. They knew nothing outside the
+management of small farms. They had never done regular work. Their
+usual form is to plant their bit of ground and then to sit down till
+the crops come up, on which they live till next season. A failure of
+crops means starvation. This was their normal condition. They enjoyed
+what Mr. Gladstone would call a "chronic plethora" of hunger. The
+liverish tourist who adventured himself into these barbarous regions
+in hopeless quest of appetite for his breakfast, would see the
+Connemarans in hopeless quest of breakfast for their appetites. The
+region is healthy enough. As Justice Shallow would say, "Beggars all,
+beggars all. Marry, good air."
+
+The first thing you see is a twenty-thousand-pound bridge across the
+Corrib, not very far from the salmon weir, where are more fish than
+you can count splashing up the salmon stairs, which are arranged to
+save the salmon the effort of a long jump. Then the line running along
+the Corrib Valley on a high embankment, past the ruins of what was
+first a convent, then a whiskey distillery, now a timekeeper's office.
+An entire field is being dug up and carted away, the soil being
+excavated to a depth of eight or ten feet, over an area of several
+acres required for sidings and railway buildings. A strolling Galway
+man of Home Rule tendencies imparts information. He is eminently
+discontented, and thinks the way in which the work is conducted
+another injustice to Ireland. "The people are working and getting
+wages, but what wages! Thirteen and sixpence a week! Would English
+navvies work for that? You are getting the labour at starvation
+prices, and even then you bully the men. They work in gangs, each with
+a ganger swearing at them in the most offensive and outrageous way.
+See that gang over there. You can hear the ganger shouting and
+swearing even at this distance. The poor men are treated like dogs,
+and even then they can hardly keep body and soul together. They have
+to come miles and miles to the work, and some live so far away that
+they can only return home once a week. So they have to camp out in
+hovels. You are going down the line? Then you will be shocked at the
+slave-driving you'll see. It reminds me of Legree in 'Uncle Tom's
+Cabin.' I am surprised that the men do not drop dead over the work.
+Not a moment's rest or relaxation. Work, work, work from morning to
+night, for next to nothing. It ought not to be allowed in a civilised
+country. And on the top of all this slavery we are expected to be very
+much obliged for the opportunity of working at all. You chuck us a
+crust just as you would chuck a bone to a dog, and then you want us to
+go down on our knees and pour blessings on Balfour's head. We're tired
+of such stuff; but, thank God, we shall soon have things in our own
+hands. All these men are small farmers, or small farmers' sons. They
+can't get a living out of the land, and they are obliged to come to
+this. Bullied and driven from week's end to week's end, they are the
+very picture of starvation. A shame and disgrace to the English
+Government."
+
+I may as well say at once that all this proved to be untrue. No doubt
+the Galway Home Rulers invent and circulate these falsehoods to
+discount the effect of the good work of a Conservative Government, and
+it is, therefore, well that the facts should be placed on record. I
+pushed on to a cutting where fifty men were busily engaged in loading
+earth into trucks, having first dug it from a great bank of gravelly
+soil. An Irish ganger walked to and fro along the top, keeping his eye
+on the men, and occasionally shouting in an excited tone. But he was
+not swearing at, or otherwise abusing, the men, who were as fine a
+company of peasants as you could see anywhere, well-built, well-grown,
+and muscular. Not a trace of starvation, but, on the contrary, a
+well-fed, well-nourished look. The ganger, Sullivan, seemed
+good-tempered enough, only shouting to let off his superfluous
+vitality. He used no bad language. "Cheer up, my lads," he cried. "In
+wid the dirt. Look alive, look alive, look alive. Whirroo! Shove it
+up, my lads, shove it up. Away ye go. Look out for that fall of earth.
+There she goes. Whirroo!" English navvies would have preferred
+silence, would have requested him to hold his condemned jaw, would
+have spent some breath in applying an explosive mining term to his
+eyes, but these Irish labourers seemed to understand their superior
+officer, and to cheerfully accept the situation. Mr. Sullivan was
+civil and good-humoured. "These are a picked lot. Splendid set of
+fellows, and good workers. No, they do not walk for miles before they
+reach their work. The engine runs along the line to pick them up in
+the morning, and to drop them again in the evening. They have
+half-an-hour for dinner, and half-an-hour for tea. They get about
+fifteen shillings a week. Boys get less, but thirteen shillings and
+sixpence is the very bottom. Rubbish about low wages. Nine bob a week
+is the regular farmer's wage, and these men would have been glad to
+work for six bob. All have some land, every man of them. They have
+just come back from planting it. We have been very short of men. They
+went away at the beginning of April, and they were away for a
+fortnight or three weeks. Small blame to them. Half or three-quarters
+of them went to look after their bits of ground. But, barrin' that,
+they turn up very regularly. They get fifteen shillings a week, where
+they got nothing. And every man knows the convenience the line will be
+to him to get his bit of stuff to Galway market, and also that it will
+bring money into a country where there was none. They are as contented
+as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. We have not heard a
+grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. These Home
+Rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle.
+Since the work came from the Tories it must be bad. There must be a
+curse on it. Now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (Excuse me, Sir.)
+Whirroo, my boys. Look out! In wid it, thin! Whirroo!"
+
+A big tank for engine water was being filled by an old man in shirt
+and trousers, his naked chest shining a hundred yards away. Luke
+Whelan was his name; a vigorous pumper, he. "'Tis hard work it is, ye
+may say it. I have another tank or two to fill, an' keep filled, but I
+have long rests, and time for a grain o' baccy, glory be to God!
+Thirteen-an'-sixpence it is, but I lost my place at Palmer's flour
+mills, the work gave out, an' but for this I'd have nothin' at all.
+Was in the Fifth Fusiliers, but lost me sight (partly) in Injee. Was
+in the army long enough to get a pension of ninepence a day. Me rint
+is two pounds a year, and I've only the owld woman to kape. Ah, but
+Balfour was a blessin' to us altogether! They talk about Home Rule,
+but what good will that do us? Can we ate it, can we dhrink it, can we
+shmoke it? The small farmers thinks they'll have the land for nothin',
+but what about the labourers? Everything that's done is done for the
+farmers, an' the workin' men gets nothin' at all. In England 'tis the
+workin' men gets all the consideration; but in this counthry 'tis the
+farmers, an' the workin' men that have no land may hang themselves.
+When the big farms is all done away who'll employ the labourers? The
+gintry that spint money an' made things a bit better is all driven out
+of the counthry by the Land League. Ye see all around ye the chimneys
+of places that once was bits of manufactories. All tumblin' down, all
+tumblin' down. Nobody dares invest money for fear he'd be robbed of
+his property, the same as the landlords was robbed, an' will be
+robbed, till the end of the chapther. 'Tis nothin' but robbery ye hear
+of, an' gettin' other people's property for nothin'. The Home Rule
+Bill would dhrive all the workin' men out of the counthry to England
+and America. They must have employment, an' they must go where it is
+to be had. Engineers have been threatenin' this line for forty years,
+first one route an' then another, but divil a spade was put in it.
+England found us the money to build the line, an' the labourers get
+work. Where will we get work whin nobody would lend us money to build
+lines? An Irish Parlimint wouldn't build a line in a thousand years.
+For nobody would thrust thim wid the cash. Yes, wid ninepence a day
+and thirteen shillings and sixpence a week, I'm comfortable enough.
+But begorra, the pump leaks, an' I have to pump a quarther more than I
+should. Av the pump worked right 'tis little grumblin' ye'd hear from
+Luke Whelan."
+
+Mr. George William Wood, contractors' agent, said:--"The men work as
+well as they can, but they do not get over the ground like English
+navvies. They are very regular, very quiet, very sober, and never give
+the least trouble. Of course, they had to be taught, and they did not
+like the big navvy shovels. They were used to the six-foot spades with
+no cross-bar. Yes, you might think it harder work with such tools, but
+then the Irish labourer dislikes to bend his back. The long handle
+lets him keep his back straight, there's the difference. However, we
+insist on the big, short shovels, and they have taken to them all
+right. These men are not so strong as they seem, and they are not
+worth nearly so much as English navvies. They may be willing, but they
+have not the same stamina. The English navvy eats about two pounds of
+beef for his dinner and washes it down with about two quarts of ale.
+These men never see meat from one year's end to another. They live on
+potatoes, and bits of dry bread and water. At three in the afternoon
+they are not worth much, clean pumped out--might almost as well go
+home. No, they don't live in hovels. Those who go home but once a
+week are housed in good wooden sheds, or corrugated iron buildings,
+with good beds and bedclothes. There are about forty of them in a hut,
+with a hut-keeper to look after them and to keep order. For this
+excellent lodging they are charged sixpence a week, and all their prog
+is supplied at wholesale prices. We buy largely in Dublin, bring it
+down, of course, carriage free, and both the men and their wives and
+families are supplied to any amount. They effect a saving of at least
+twenty per cent., but probably much more, as village stores are
+terribly dear. The whole district has found out this advantage, and
+they flock to the hut-store from all parts. So Balfour is a boon to
+the country at large."
+
+Next day I went down sixteen miles of line to a spot about a mile from
+Oughterard. It was pay-day, and I clung to the engine along with the
+engineer, Mr. Wood, and a pay-clerk, armed with several yards of
+pay-sheet, and a couple of black tin cash-boxes. A wild and stony
+country, a range of high mountains on the left, wide, flat plains on
+the right, through which the Corrib serpentined, with big rocks rising
+from the channel brilliantly white. "They whitewash the rocks, so that
+they can be seen by the boats and the Cong steamer. Englishmen would
+blow them up and have done with them, but Irishmen prefer to whitewash
+them and sail round them. More exciting I suppose, matter of taste."
+This from the engineer, a Saxon of the usual type. On through bogs,
+past nameless lakes, and a chaos of limestone rocks and huge granite
+boulders, lakes, bogs, rocks, in endless succession, with the long
+mountain reek beside us, and a still higher range in the purple
+distance. Now and then a green patch sternly walled in, a few cows
+grazing, a lonely donkey, a few long-tailed black sheep, or a couple
+of goats. Here and there acres of white blossom, looking like a
+snowfall. This was the bog bean, growing on a stem a foot high, a
+silvery tuft of silky bloom hanging downward, two inches long and the
+bigness of a finger. Sometimes we dashed past walled enclosures so
+full of stone that they looked like abandoned graveyards, and the only
+use of the fences, so far as I could see, was to keep thoughtless
+cattle out. Very little tillage. Just a few ridges of potatoes, but
+the people who had planted them seemed to have vanished for ever. At
+long intervals a diminutive white cot, but nothing else to break the
+succession of lake, rock, and bog. Moycullen, six miles from Galway,
+is to have a station; another will be built at Ross, ten miles, a
+third at Oughterard, sixteen and a half miles. Not a stone laid as
+yet. At Ross a great excavation. The men had just laid bare a huge
+boulder of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and Mr. Wood, observing
+my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot.
+"No granite _in situ_ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain
+limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the
+tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." Ten miles from Galway a
+cutting was being regularly quarried for building purposes, and most
+of the sixteen or seventeen miles of line I saw was fenced with a
+Galway wall of uncemented stone four feet six inches high and
+eighteen inches thick. "The men build stone walls with great skill,"
+said Mr. Wood, "but half the number of English navvies would do more
+excavating."
+
+The pay-clerk stopped the engine at every gang, and the men came
+forward for their money. All had the same well-nourished sturdy look,
+and all seemed well satisfied with their wages. They conversed in
+Irish, but they mostly understood English, even if they could not
+speak it themselves. Whole villages were there seemingly of the same
+name, and strange were the distinctive appellations. There was John
+Toole and John Toole Pat, John Pat Toole and Pat Toole John.
+Permutation was the order of the day. There was Tom Joyce Pat and Pat
+Tom Joyce, Tom Joyce Sally and Tom Joyce boy. Besides this change
+ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had Pat Tom Joyce Red
+and Pat Tom Joyce Black, Red Pat Tom Joyce and Black Tom Joyce Pat.
+This is called Joyce's country, before Balfour's time depopulating to
+desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-Joyceing in fact. Nearly
+seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in
+1894 the great civiliser will steam from Galway to Clifden,
+inaugurating (let us hope) a new era of prosperity.
+
+In Oughterard I met an American tourist who said, "I should think Home
+Rule would about settle Old England. The Irish people show a most
+unfriendly spirit, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no
+such word as gratitude in the Irish language. There is some change in
+this district, and the people seem willing to work, but wherever the
+agitators have been everything is going to the bad. Nothing but
+distrust and suspicion. No Irishman would invest in Irish securities.
+They prefer South Americans! That startled me. I am told that Tim
+Healy is worth Ł30,000, all got out of Home Rule, and my informant
+says that Tim would not risk a penny in his own country. Tim is a
+blackguardly kind of politician, but he is mighty cute, and shirks
+Irish securities. Where are the business managers of the Irish nation
+coming from? That's what I want to know."
+
+I told him of the Galway Harbour Commissioners, who, having been
+forgiven a Government debt of nearly Ł10,000, conceived the idea of
+building a new, grand, splindid, iligant, deep dock, which should
+increase the trade of the place by allowing ships of great draught to
+unload in the harbour. Let me repeat the story for the readers of the
+_Gazette_.
+
+The Harbour Board consulted an eminent engineer, who said the right
+thing would cost Ł80,000. They sent him to the right about, and called
+in another man. "Now," said they, "we can only raise Ł30,000 by loans
+from the Board of Works. Will not that suffice? We give you 5 per
+cent. on the outlay, &c., &c., &c." The new man said Ł30,000 was
+ample, took the job, and the work was commenced. Ultimately they
+borrowed Ł40,000, which they spent, along with the Ł10,000 in hand.
+Then it was found that big ships could not get to the dock at all! No
+use in a deep dock unless you can swim up to it. To get the big
+vessels in you required to hoist them out of the water, carry them a
+few hundred yards, and drop them into the dock. As the Galway men
+still groan beneath the cruel English yoke, this operation was found
+impracticable. During some blasting operations a big rock was tumbled
+out of the dock in process of manufacture, dropping in front of
+another dock in full working order. The stone was just in the way of
+the vessels, but as there was no Parliament in College Green, the
+Harbour Board had not the heart to fish it up. So it crashed through
+the bottom of a Henderson collier, the owner of which sued the Harbour
+Board for damages, and was awarded a thousand pounds. The money never
+was paid, and never will be. The fortunate winner of the suit will
+sell his claim for Ł5 in English gold. He was thought to have done
+well in winning, and my informant, a typical Irishman, admired the
+complainant's successful attack on the Harbour Board. "But what good
+come of it at last," I ventured to put in. "Nay, that I cannot tell,"
+said he, "But 'twas a glorious victory."
+
+The Galway Harbour Board spent Ł50,000 or so on a deep dock which they
+have not got, and the harbour is in pawn to the Board of Works, which
+collects the tolls, and otherwise endeavours to indemnify itself. The
+Harbour Board meets as usual, but it has no powers, no money, no
+credit, no anything. This is a fair specimen of the business
+management which characterises the breed of Irishmen who favour Home
+Rule. The party paper, once a fine property, has in their hands sunk
+below zero, and they built New Tipperary on land to which they had no
+title; so that the money was completely thrown away. Almost every
+Board of Guardians in the country is insolvent, except in those cases
+where the Government has kicked out the Poor Law Guardians elected by
+the Parish, and restored solvency by sending down paid men to run the
+concern for a couple of years. This has been done in several
+instances, and in every case the paid men, drawing salaries of several
+hundred a year, have in two years paid off debts, leaving all in good
+working order, with a balance in the bank. The inference is obvious.
+Would the Belfast folks have made such a fiasco of a dock? Would
+Englishmen have exposed themselves to the ridicule of a story which is
+curiously remindful of Robinson Crusoe and his big canoe? Would the
+Galway folks ever have built the railway they wanted so badly; or sans
+England and Mr. Balfour, would not the Connemara men have proceeded to
+starve until the end of time? A keen old railway man who had
+thravelled, and who had done railway work in California, said to me,
+"Whin we get an Oirish Parlimint the labourers may jist put on their
+hats and go over to England. Thank God, we'll know something besides
+farm work now, the whole of us. We can get railroad work in England.
+There'll be none in Oireland, for every mother's son that has money
+will cut the country. I could take ye fourteen Oirish miles from
+Galway, along a road that was spotted wid great jintlemen's houses,
+an' ivery one of thim's in ruins. The owners that used to live in
+them, and be a blessin' to the counthry, is all ruined by the land
+agitation. All are gone, an' their foin, splindid houses tumblin'
+down, an' the people worse off than iver. If the Bill becomes law the
+young men will all be off to England and America. There'll be no work,
+no money in the counthry. Did ye hear what the cyar-dhriver said to
+Mr. Morley?"
+
+I confessed that the incident escaped my recollection.
+
+"Why the cyar-man was a dacent boy, an Mister Morley axed him how was
+thrade, an' av he was busy."
+
+"No," says the dhriver, "things is quite, very quite," says he.
+
+"Ye'll be busy when ye get Home Rule," says Mister Morley.
+
+"But that'll only last a week," says the cyar-man.
+
+"An' why so?" says the Irish Secretary, bein' curious an' lookin'
+round at the dhriver.
+
+"Och," says Pat; "'twill only take a week to dhrive thim to the
+boats."
+
+"Who d'ye mane, wid yer dhrivin' to the boats?" says owld Morley.
+
+"All the dacent folks that has any money to pay for dhrivin'," says
+Pat, "for bedad they'll be lavin' the counthry."
+
+"That was a thriminjus rap for owld Morley, but 'twas thrue, an' the
+Divil himself couldn't deny it."
+
+"An' can ye tell me why the farmers should have all the land an' not
+the labourers? An' could ye say why them murdherin' Land Leaguers in
+Parliament wasn't hung up, the rampagious ruffians?"
+
+I could throw no light on these points. My friend had much to say
+about the Land League M.P.'s, and a score of times asked me why they
+had not been hanged.
+
+A hard question to answer, when you come to think of it. Does anybody
+know?
+
+Oughterard (Connemara), May 23rd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 27.--CULTIVATING IRISH INDUSTRY.
+
+
+The city of kings. Pronounced Athen-rye, with a bang on the last
+syllable. A squalid town, standing amid splendid ruins of a bygone
+time. "Look what English rule has brought us to," said a village
+politician, waving his hand from the ivy-covered gateway by which you
+enter the town to the mean-looking houses around. "That's what we
+could build when we were left to ourselves, an' this is what we can do
+afther sivin hundhred years of the Saxon." The ruins in question are
+the remains of fortifications erected after the Norman Conquest of
+Ireland by the Normans, a great entrance gate, and a strong, oblong
+keep. The ruins of the Dominican Friary, founded in 1241 by Meyler, of
+Birmingham, have a thrilling interest of their own, which has its
+pendant in the story of a Mayence verger, who holds British visitors
+to the cathedral of that city in breathless rapture as he tells how it
+is said that a Mayence bishop of eight hundred years ago was said to
+be of English extraction, or like the Stratford mulberry tree, which
+is said to be a cutting of a tree said to have grown on the spot where
+a tree is said to have stood which is said to have been planted by
+Shakespeare. Galway abounds in ruined fortalices, tumble-down abbeys,
+ivied towers and castles, none of which were built by the Irish race.
+The round towers which dot the country here and there, with a few
+ruined churches, are all that the native Irish can claim in the way of
+architecture.
+
+The people here are full of interest. The fair at Athenry is something
+to remember. A very good time it was, cattle selling higher than of
+yore. The men were queerly, quaintly dressed, speaking Irish, getting
+extremely drunk on vilest whiskey, leaving the town in twos and
+threes, tumbling in groups by the roadside, reeking heaps of imbruted
+humanity. The women were numerous, tall, decent, and modest. All wore
+the shawl as a hood, the shawls of strange pattern unknown in England.
+All tucked up the dress nearly to the waist, showing the invariable
+red kirtle. All, or nearly all, were shod with serviceable shoes, such
+as would astonish the Parisian makers of bottines. But these shoes
+were only for show. The ladies walked painfully about in the
+unaccustomed leather. They seemed to have innumerable corns, to
+wrestle with bunions huge and dire, to suffer from unknown pedal
+infirmities. Outside the town the ladies put on their shoes. Outside
+the town, after the fair, they took them off again, sitting on the
+roadside, stripping their shapely feet, bundling the obnoxious,
+crippling abominations into Isabella-colour handkerchiefs, which they
+tucked under their arms as they bounded away like deer. It was
+pleasant to watch their joy, their freedom, their long springy step as
+their feet once more struck their native heath. They do not spare
+their shoes by reason of economy, but because they walk better without
+them. Donned for propriety, doffed for convenience. The young lady who
+is "on the market" is expected to wear leather on high days and
+holidays, and she submits--another martyr to fashion. Yet even as the
+hart panteth for the water-brooks, so longeth her sole after her
+native turf.
+
+It was at Athenry that I first obtained a precise legal definition of
+the term Congested District, to the effect that wherever the land
+valuation amounts to less than 30s. per head of the population the
+district is held to be congested, and may receive assistance under the
+Act of 1891. The chief item of the Board's income is the sum of
+Ł41,250 a year, being interest at 2-3/4 per cent. per annum on the sum
+of Ł1,500,000 referred to in the Act as the Church Surplus Grant. The
+Board may, under certain conditions, use the principal, if needful.
+Two other smaller sums are also available, and the unexpended balance
+of the Irish Distress Fund has been applied to the completion of the
+Bealdangan Causeway in Connemara. This was Mr. Balfour's suggestion.
+There is a widespread idea that only the sea-board is touched, and
+that only fishermen have reaped the benefit of the Act. This is
+entirely erroneous. The Board works unceasingly at the development of
+agriculture, the planting of trees, the breeding of live stock and
+poultry, the sale of seed potatoes and seed oats, the amalgamation of
+small holdings, migration, emigration, weaving and spinning, and any
+other suitable industries, as well as in aid of fishing and fishermen.
+Besides the innumerable direct and indirect methods by which
+agriculture and industries are assisted in production, the Board has
+laboured successfully in the establishment of such means of
+communication, by railway, steamship, or otherwise, as will enable
+goods to be imported and exported at rates sufficiently low to make
+trade possible and profitable to producers and consumers in remote
+congested districts. Another popular error arises from regarding the
+work of the Board as merely a means of relief during periods of
+exceptional distress. Mr. Balfour would be the first to deprecate this
+notion. His scheme was constructed with a view to bringing about a
+gradual and lasting improvement in the poor districts of Ireland, by
+putting the people in a way to help themselves, and not by doling out
+large sums in charity. The works, which are wrongly called "relief
+works," are in every instance a well-considered effort to permanently
+and materially improve the trade and resources of a given area in
+connection with agriculture and miscellaneous industries. Such was the
+invariable principle of every action of the Board while under Mr.
+Balfour's administration. The people have been taught better methods,
+and helped to carry out the instruction they had received. The Royal
+Dublin Society has in some instances employed an instructor, whose
+duty it has been to teach the people the best system of cultivating
+portions or plots of their holdings, and to encourage them by gifts of
+seed and by giving prizes to those who were most successful in
+carrying out the instructions of their teacher. It is conceded that by
+proper management, by the adoption of modern methods of farming such
+as are well within the grasp of the smallest landowner, the produce of
+Irish farms might be increased from one-third to one-half. Consider
+the effect of this unassailable proposition on the eternal question of
+rent. The question can hardly be over-estimated. Compare the solidity,
+the practicability, the substantial usefulness of this kind of help,
+with the weak pandering to sentiment displayed by the present
+government. The Board admits that no matter how vigorously and
+constantly agricultural improvements are inculcated, the tenants of
+Ireland are tardy in their adoption. The small farmers dislike change,
+and at the present moment they are rapidly slipping back into their
+old grooves. They believe that the old system will pay when they have
+no rent-days to meet. The Balfour Administration encouraged honesty,
+industry, self-reliance. The Morley Government puts a premium on
+idleness, unthrift, retrogression, and dishonesty. It is easier to
+half-till the land, paying small rents or none at all, than to get the
+utmost out of the land with the object of paying the landlord his
+due.
+
+The Board is carrying on the afforestation of Ireland, which in many
+parts is almost without trees. When the potato crop failed in 1890 Mr.
+Balfour commenced to plant trees on the western sea-board. In 1891 a
+sum of Ł1,970 was spent in draining, fencing, and roadmaking, and in
+planting 90 acres of 960 acquired by the Tory Government for the
+purpose. In 1892 a further sum of Ł1,427 was spent in carrying on the
+work. It is said that a previous Liberal Government had rejected the
+scheme on the ground that trees would not grow in a situation exposed
+to the salt gales of the Atlantic, but Mr. Balfour's trees have
+thriven remarkably well. He tried all sorts, convinced that something
+should be done, and that an ounce of experiment was worth a pound of
+theory. Sycamore, ash, elm, beech, birch, poplar, alder, larch, Scotch
+fir, spruce, silver fir, sea buckthorn, elder, and willow--he gave
+them all a chance, some as main plantations, some as shelter belts.
+All proved successful except the silver fir. Besides this, three
+hundred and fifty holdings have been planted with shelter belts, and
+about six hundred and fifty more were being planted when Mr. Balfour
+loosed the reins.
+
+An eminent Irishman, a great authority on this subject, assures me
+that he could dictate similar facts for a week without stopping to
+search his memory. Mr. Gladstone proposes to place the poor people of
+Ireland under a Government utterly inexperienced in the administration
+of great matters, utterly unreliable where the handling of money is
+concerned, utterly ignorant of business methods and business routine.
+The fate of the destitute poor and the fortunes of the well-to-do
+classes are to be at the mercy of men whose business ventures have
+been absurdly unsuccessful, who believe that to aid the poor you must
+rob the rich, and that the No-rent Manifesto, the Plan of Campaign,
+and the Land League, with its story of outrage and murder, were the
+perfection of modern statesmanship. The Balfour system teaches men to
+help themselves. The Morley system teaches men to help themselves to
+their neighbour's goods.
+
+My friend gave a few more instances of useful assistance rendered by
+what the poor folks call the Blessed Board. Special arrangements have
+been made to enable the farmers to improve the breed of horses. The
+Queen presented an Arabian horse named Tirassan to the County Donegal.
+Bulls of superior breed have been sold to decent, honest farmers at
+one-third of their cost, and this small figure was payable in two
+yearly instalments. About two hundred black-faced Scotch rams and
+Cheviot rams have been located in Donegal and Galway free of charge,
+and young boars of the pure Yorkshire breed are sold to certain
+selected farmers at a nominal charge on certain conditions calculated
+to prove useful to the neighbourhood. The breeding and rearing of
+poultry has received a world of attention, and the poor folks who make
+a little money by the sale of eggs have been supplied with the best
+information and substantial assistance.
+
+In a former letter I described the Aran sea-fisheries, and before that
+I adverted to the fact that the Shetland fishermen came to the Irish
+Coast, caught ling, and brought it back salted to sell to Irish
+fishermen. The Board has engaged an experienced fish-curer from Norway
+to show Irishmen how the thing is done, and English and Scotch
+fish-curers have been sent to several stations to give instruction in
+mackerel and herring-curing. Fifteen fish-curing stations are now in
+full swing, and the poor Irish fishermen, instead of buying salt ling
+at 2d. a pound, are now selling it at Ł18 to Ł20 per ton. A big
+steamer has been chartered to carry the salt, the fish, and for other
+useful purposes.
+
+Contrast this work and these results with the work of the Irish
+agitators and with that of Messrs. Gladstone, Morley, and Co.
+Sentiment and starvation versus salt fish and satiety. A red-faced
+Yorkshireman who knows all about fish-curing, said:--"When first I
+came here I'm blest if the men wasn't transparent. You could see
+through 'em like lookin' through the rungs of a ladder. Now the
+beggars are growin' double chins. Now they're a-gettin' cheeky.
+They're like a hoss as has had a feed of corn. They was meek an' mild
+enough when I come over. Now they're a-gettin' perky, an' a-talkin'
+politics. They usen't to see no agitators. They never had no meetin's;
+why? there was no chance of a collection. Sometimes I gets down on 'em
+proper. 'Tother day I says, 'You chaps, wi' yer Home Rule, I says,
+reminds me of a character in the Bible, I says.' Bein' Catholics, they
+don't read the Bible for theirselves. The priests read it for 'em. But
+one of 'em cocks up his nose, an' he says, 'We're like a character in
+the Bible, are we? Well,' he says, 'who was he?'
+
+"'You're like the wild ass that sniffed up the wind instead of goin'
+in for sommat more substantial,' I says. That's what I told 'em. They
+did look down their noses, I tell you. An' they fell to talkin' i'
+Irish. They couldn't answer me, do what they would."
+
+Before leaving the Connemara district I paid a second visit to
+Oughterard in order that I might see the progress made by Irishmen in
+the art of railway making. A gang or two were engaged in the
+comparatively skilled work of rail-laying, and the way they got over
+the ground was truly surprising. Two trucks stood on the line already
+laid, one bearing sleepers, the other loaded with steel rails. Four or
+five couples of men shouldered sleepers and laid them on the track at
+spots marked by a club-footed Irishman, who swore at everything with a
+vigour which spoke well for his wind. Several men lifted a thirty feet
+length of rail, weighing nearly six hundred-weight, and laid it on the
+sleepers, when it was instantly bolted and secured. The same having
+been done on the other side, the trucks were pushed along the
+newly-laid ten yards, and the process was repeated, the Irish ganger
+above-mentioned swearing till the surrounding bogs seemed to quake. An
+unhappy Connemaran having dropped his end of the sleeper a few inches
+from the right spot, was cursed through the entire dictionary, the
+ganger winding up a solemn declaration that he had not seen anything
+so Blankly and Double-Blankly and forty times Blankly idiotic since
+"the owld goat died." An English ganger hard by never spoke at all,
+but no doubt his men felt lonely. A labourer who had hurt his foot,
+and was awaiting a friendly truck to take him home, said of the
+swearer:--
+
+"He manes no harm, an' the Boys doesn't care a rap for his swearin'.
+These men want no elbowin' on, for they are paid by the piece, so that
+the harder they work the more they get. All Irish gangers swear like
+that. An' Irish farm bailiffs is jist the same. Onless they're cussin'
+an' rippin' an' tearin' they don't think they're doin' the work for
+which they're paid, an' they don't think their masthers would be
+contint wid thim. Av an Irish landlord that kept a bailiff didn't hear
+him swearin' three miles away, he'd discharge him for not workin'.
+English gangers an' bailiffs says very little, an' ye wouldn't think
+they wor doin' anythin'. 'Tis quare at first, but ye get used to it in
+time."
+
+Travelling in any country is always instructive, no matter how much
+about that country you previously knew. My lame friend may have
+unconsciously suggested an explanation of the speeches and conduct of
+the Irish Nationalist Parliamentary contingent. Unless they kept up
+the cursin' an' swearin', an' rippin' an' tearin', so that they can be
+heard across the Atlantic, their American paymasters might not be
+contint wid thim, and might withhold the sinews of war. Once it is
+understood that the Irish patriots must revile all and sundry to earn
+their pay, the situation is to some extent explained. Few of them are
+likely to fail in this supreme requirement. Six pounds a week for
+abusing the brutal Saxon is far better than the pound or thirty
+shillings of their pre-political days. They have no inducement to earn
+an honest living.
+
+The story of the Galway Bag Factory may serve as a pendant to the
+story of Mr. McMaster's effort to benefit the Catholic peasantry of
+the counties of Galway and Donegal. The concern had stopped for lack
+of funds, and Father Peter Dooley went round the town endeavouring to
+induce people to take shares in the concern, in order that the poor
+folks of the district might have employment. The mills were reopened,
+and at first, just at first, the people attended work with tolerable
+regularity. They then fell off, coming for half a day, coming not at
+all. The management actually instituted prizes for regularity of
+attendance. The people, who professed to be dying for employment, had
+to be bribed to come to work. Even this was ineffectual, and as a
+certain number of people were required to work a loom, the absence of
+one or two made the loom and the other workpeople idle, and as, in
+order to pay expenses, every loom required to be constantly worked,
+this skulking was not only annoying, but also a ruinous loss. Mr.
+Miller, the manager, was compelled to get people over from Scotland,
+after having long placarded the walls of Galway with notices of
+vacancies which no Galway girls attempted to fill up. Father Peter
+remonstrated, and pointed out that as he had been instrumental in
+reopening the factory, he thought Mr. Miller should oblige him by
+engaging Galway girls. The manager showed him the placards, and said
+that if Father Peter would bring the people he would find them
+employment. Father Peter Dooley went into the highways and hedges, but
+not a soul could he bring in, although Mr. Miller seems to have been
+so desperately beset that he would have jumped at the blind, the
+maimed, the halt, and the lame. The good Father was beaten, but then
+he had a reason--an excellent reason. When things go wrong in Ireland,
+it is always some other fellow's fault, just as when the French are
+beaten in battle they always scream _Nous sommes trahis_! Bad
+characters had been admitted to the looms. Manager was surprised. Let
+Father Peter point them out, and away they go--if Father Peter did not
+hesitate to cast them again on the streets of Galway. Two girls were
+dismissed. Some of the old workpeople returned to work intermittently,
+as before. Father Peter wanted the two girls reinstated. The manager
+declined to see-saw in this way, and sacrilegious Scotsman as he was,
+dared to say that nothing went well when bossed by priests! From that
+moment that manager was blighted. His sight grew dim, his hearing
+became dull, his liver got out of order, his corns grew more numerous
+and more painful, and a bald spot was seen on his crown. The people
+worked as before, by fits and starts, but more fitty and starty than
+ever. The factory was closed, and the manager died. They buried him
+about a week ago, a sort of human jackdaw of Rheims without the curse
+taken off. Protestants say the Galway workpeople wore him down, broke
+his spirit and broke his heart, but Catholics know better. The only
+wonder was that instead of being instantly consumed by fire from
+heaven, Miller was permitted to waste away by slow degrees. But that
+was Father Dooley's good nature.
+
+The Galwegians say that a Belfast firm has taken the mill, and that
+therefore its future success is assured. The cutest citizens say that
+this entirely depends on the manager's theory as to workpeople. If he
+brings them with him, well and good. The work will be done although
+the workpeople may be boycotted. And then the Irish will have another
+grievance. They will be able to point to the fact that of a large
+number of workpeople only a small proportion of Catholics are
+employed. This is the trick of Nationalists when speaking of the
+intolerance of Belfast. The officials of that city, and indeed, of
+every city in Ireland, are mostly Protestants, not because of this,
+but because they are better men. The Belfast merchants and the Belfast
+Corporation have a keen eye to the main chance, as is abundantly
+proved by their success, and in business matters they will have the
+best men, whether Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Turks, or Infidels.
+Whatever the cause, it is certain that Protestantism turns out a far
+larger proportion of able men, and in Ulster, at any rate, you rarely
+meet a Catholic who is worth his salt. The Catholics of Ulster lack,
+not toleration, but brains, industry, and business capacity. Anyone
+who compares the harbours of Cork and Galway with Belfast will at once
+appreciate the situation. Wherefore let not the Keltic Irish waste
+their time in clamouring for the redress of non-existent grievances,
+but buckle to and make their own prosperity. The destinies of nations,
+like those of individuals, are in their own hands. Honest work is
+never wasted work. Selah.
+
+Athenry, May 27th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 28.--COULD WE RECONQUER IRELAND?
+
+
+The country people call this place "the back of God-speed," "the back
+of the world," and "the divil's own hunting ground," but why they do
+it nobody seems to know. The village is on the road to nowhere, and I
+dropped on it, as it were, accidentally, during a long drive to the
+remotest end of Galway Bay. Yet even here I found civilised people who
+regard the proposed College Green Parliament with undisguised
+aversion. Not the inhabitants, but Irish tourists, bent on exploring
+the wildest and remotest nooks of their native land, among them a
+Dublin barrister, whose critical analysis of the powers proposed to be
+entrusted to the unscrupulous and self-seeking promoters of the Land
+League may prove useful and interesting to non-legal English readers.
+A Galway gentleman having during the drive pointed out a large number
+of desolate mansions rapidly falling into ruin, the conversation
+turned on the universal subject, and my legal friend embarked on a
+dissertation on the iniquity of the Gladstone land laws, which have
+had the effect of ruining a large number of the country gentry of
+Ireland, driving them from their native shores, impoverishing the
+landlords without any perceptible benefit to the tenants, who appear
+to be no better off than ever. What surprised him most was the arrant
+nonsense talked by the English Gladstonians, and the blindness and
+apathy of the English people generally, who in his opinion were being
+gradually led to the brink of a frightful abyss, which threatened to
+swallow up the prestige and prosperity of the British people. He
+said:--
+
+"Have Englishmen forgotten the previous history of the men she is now
+on the point of entrusting with her future? Are Englishmen
+unacquainted with the traditional hatred of the Irish malcontents? Do
+they not know the aspirations of the Catholic clergy, and are they
+ignorant of their immense influence with the masses? Surely they are,
+or they would rise in their might and instantly trample out the
+present agitation, which has for its aim and end, not the benefit of
+Ireland, not the pacification of the people, who are perfectly
+peaceful if left alone, not the convenience of Ireland in matters
+which should be managed by local self-government, but the absolute
+independence of the country, the creation of a national army, and the
+affiliation of Ireland with some foreign Power hostile to England,
+such as either America or France, as occasion might serve. America is
+largely in the hands of the Irish electorate, and American politicians
+would not be particularly scrupulous how they purchased Irish support.
+No need to point out the embarrassing complications likely to result
+from giving large powers to men who are essentially inimical to
+England. You can do justice without putting your own head on the
+block. It has been my business to analyse the bill, in conjunction
+with other lawyers, Home Rule and otherwise in political colour, and
+we are all agreed that the so-called safeguards amount to nothing, and
+it would be incomparably safer for England to throw over the country
+altogether. Because that is what it must ultimately come to, and we
+think it would be better to avoid the inevitable agitation, the
+terrible difficulties foreshadowed by the measure, difficulties which
+would assuredly lead to the reconquest or the attempted reconquest of
+the country.
+
+"Gladstonians say this is an absurd idea, that Ireland could offer no
+resistance worth mentioning, that the British arms would prove
+instantly victorious over any show of resistance. But would you have
+Ireland alone to reckon with? Once give her the prestige of a spurious
+independence, once give to your enemies control over the resources of
+the country, and you would find the task of reconquest much more
+arduous than you think. The fact that England's distress would be
+Ireland's opportunity has been so often insisted upon, both by
+Unionists and the Nationalists themselves, that I need say nothing on
+this point, which, besides, is so obvious as to be in itself a
+sufficient answer to the Home Rule agitation under present
+circumstances. But even supposing that you had no Eastern and European
+difficulty--and we know not from one moment to another when war may
+break out--supposing you only had Ireland to reconquer, do you think
+this an agreeable prospect? Do you think that reconquest would settle
+the Irish question? Do you believe that the shooting of a few hundred
+patriots by the British Grenadiers would further what they call the
+Union of Hearts?
+
+"These followers of Mr. Gladstone who say, 'Let them have Home Rule to
+quiet the country, to relieve the House from the endless discussion of
+the Irish Question so that we can proceed with the disestablishment of
+the Church, the Local Option Bill, and the thousand-and-one other fads
+for which English Home Rulers have sold themselves'--the men who say
+this, and who also say 'If they kick over the traces we can instantly
+tighten the reins and reduce them to order,' surely these folks cannot
+be aware that the Gladstone-Morley Government is unable to give
+Strachan, of Tuam, the land which he has bought and paid for in the
+Land Courts. The British Government cannot collect the rents of
+Colonel O'Callaghan, of Bodyke; nor can it prevent the daily cases of
+moonlighting and outrage which are so carefully hushed up, and which
+hardly ever get into Irish newspapers. When the British Government
+cannot make a few farmers either pay their rent or leave the land, the
+said Government having control over the police and civil officers of
+the law, how is it going to collect the purchase money of the farms,
+in the form of rent, when it has not this control?
+
+"The new police will be in the hands of a Parliament, elected by these
+very farmers, who, so to speak, have tasted blood, have ceased to make
+efforts to pay rent, have been encouraged in their refusal to pay by
+the very men Mr. Gladstone proposes to entrust with the whole concern!
+Will these farmers suddenly turn round and say, 'We declined to pay
+when English rule would have forced payment, we shall be delighted to
+pay when nothing could make us do so?' I have been connected with
+Irish farmers and landowners for thirty years as a land specialist,
+and I tell you that the thing will work exactly as I have said. Put
+the Rebel party in power, and see what will happen to you. It is hard
+to believe that Englishmen will act so stupidly in a matter so vitally
+affecting their own interests. That is why educated people both in
+Ireland and England do not believe the bill will ever become law. They
+cannot conceive the final acceptance of anything so utterly
+preposterous. But call on me to-morrow, and I will go into the legal
+possibilities of the question."
+
+So I gathered posies of bog-bean bloom and walked round the big
+boulders with which this sterile region is thickly strewn. The natives
+know nothing of Home or any other Rule, and you might as well speak to
+them of the Darwinian theory, or the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, or
+the Homeric studies of the Grand Old Man, or the origin of the
+Sanskrit language. The only opinion I could glean was the leading idea
+of simple Irish agriculturists everywhere. A young fellow who appeared
+to be in a state of intellectual advancement so far beyond that of the
+other Barnans as to be almost out of sight, said:--
+
+"I'm towld that there's to be a Parlimint in Galway city that's to
+find imploymint for the people, an' that ivery man is to have five
+acres of good land for nothin', and that if it isn't good land he is
+to have ten acres, and that there's to be an Oirish King in Dublin,
+an' that all the sojers an' pleecemen is to be put out o' the
+counthry, an' all Protestants is to go to England, an' that's all very
+good, but the Protestants might be allowed to stay, for they're dacent
+folks, but thin they say that nobody's to howld land but the
+Catholics."
+
+I met an old lady clad in the short skirt of the Connaught peasantry,
+walking bare-headed, bare-footed, and almost bare-legged from chapel,
+carrying a bottle of holy water, probably destined for some important
+purpose within the sacred precincts of the domestic circle. Perhaps
+the old man was rheumatic, or it may be that the fairies had spoilt
+the butther, or that the cow was bewitched, or that the shadow of a
+black Protestant had fallen across the threshold. She was a promising
+subject for original conversation, but unhappily she could speak no
+English. My Galway friend explained the bottle, and said "Here we have
+true religion. If you want the genuine, unadulterated article you must
+come to Galway, and especially to Barna. Look how she clings to it,
+how she holds it to her breast, how reverentially she looks down on
+it. Suppose she caught her foot on a stone, stumbled, and broke the
+bottle! Horrid thought, involving (perhaps) eternal damnation, (unless
+she were quickly absolved by the priest). There is piety for you! As a
+good Catholic I am ashamed of myself when I think how little religion
+(comparatively) there is in me. Education has been a curse. How happy
+I should be if I had that old woman's simple, strong belief in the
+virtues of holy water, especially when carried home in a well-washed
+whiskey bottle. But, somehow, the more we Catholics know the less we
+believe. We go regularly to mass, at any rate I do (my wife is very
+devout), but I fear that Catholics have less and less faith in
+proportion to their culture. But for the women Catholicism would not
+hold its ground among the higher classes of Irishmen for so much as
+five-and-twenty minutes."
+
+It seems to me that the belief of uncultured Irishmen as to the
+immense benefits to be derived from Home Rule is exactly on a par with
+the belief of uncultured Irishwomen as to the immense benefits to be
+derived from the sprinkling of holy water. No reasonable man, who has
+carefully examined the subject, will for one moment assert that there
+is a pin to choose between the two. The votes of these poor folks,
+admitted by thousands to the electorate, have sent to Westminster the
+hireling orators whose persistent clamour has turned a slippery
+statesmen from the paths of patriotism and propriety, and whose
+subterranean machinations--aided and abetted by men versed in
+Jesuistic and Machiavellian strategy, and who believe that the end
+justifies the means--threaten to undermine the British Empire, and to
+involve the citizens of England in political and financial ruin. A
+pretty pass for a respectable individual like John Bull. England to be
+worked by the wire-pulling of a few under-bred, half-educated priests!
+whose tincture of learning John himself has paid for--poor Bull, who
+seems to pay for everything, and who would gladly have paid for
+gentility, too, if the Maynooth professors could have injected the
+commodity by means of a hypodermic syringe, or even by hydraulic
+pressure. No use in attempting impossibilities. As well endeavour to
+communicate good manners or gratitude to a Nationalist M.P.
+
+My legal friend was full of matter, but many of his points were too
+technical for the general reader. He said:--"Absurd to ask what an
+Irish Parliament _will_ do, because we know the tendencies of the
+present men. We must ask what it _can_ do, for it is certain that its
+members will from time to time be replaced by men of more 'advanced'
+opinions. Appetite grows by what it feeds on, and the Irish people
+want to pose as an independent nation. Englishmen and Scotchmen say
+Ireland would never be so foolish, and I am not surprised that they
+should say this. But when did Irishmen act on the lines of Englishmen
+or Scotchmen? They never did; they never will. The peoples are
+actuated by entirely different motives. Englishmen look at what is
+going to pay. They act on whatever basis promises the most
+substantial return. Irishmen are swayed by sentiment."
+
+Here I remembered a remark of Father McPhilpin, parish priest of
+Kilronane, Aran Isles. He said:--"The Irish people act more for fancy
+and less for money than any nation on earth. The poorest classes have
+less sentiment than the middle classes. They are too closely engaged
+in securing a livelihood. But the great difficulty of the English in
+managing the Irish lies in the fact that the English people work on
+strictly business principles, and that the Irish do not. The English
+people do not at all understand the Irish; and the reason is perfectly
+clear to me. They do not appreciate the extent to which mere sentiment
+will move the Irish race, mere sentiment, as opposed to what you would
+call business principles."
+
+Returning to my barrister. He continued:--"The Dublin bar has
+decided--has formally decided--that so far as the action of the
+Executive is concerned the Irish Parliament will be a supreme and
+irresponsible body. The action of its officers will not be in any way
+subject to the review of the English Government. What does this mean?
+Simply that the life, the liberty, the property of every citizen will
+be entirely in the hands of the Irish Government. Do the English
+people know this? I think not. For if they did know, surely they would
+think twice before they committed decent people to the tender mercies
+of the inventors and supporters of the Land League, with its ten
+thousand stories of outrage and murder."
+
+"Give instances of what they can do, say you? They can refuse police
+protection to persons whose lives are in danger from the National
+League. And, as you know, scores of persons are at this moment under
+protection in Ireland. Mr. Blood, of Ennis, would be shot on sight;
+Mr. Strachan, of Tuam, would be torn to pieces, if without the three,
+or four policemen who watch over him day and night; the caretakers on
+the Bodyke estate would get very short shrift, once the sixteen
+policemen who guard the two men were removed. Blood discharged a
+labourer, Strachan bought a farm. If, under the now _régime_, a farmer
+paid rent against the orders of the National League; if a man
+persisted in holding land from which someone had been evicted years
+ago; if a man worked for a boycotted person or in any way supported
+him, although it were his own father, he would be in danger of his
+life. Would the new Government give police protection to such people?
+To do so would be to stultify themselves.
+
+"Then again the Irish Executive can refuse police protection to
+Sheriffs' officers who desire to execute writs for non-payment of
+rent. No, I do _not_ think they would refuse a police escort to
+Sheriffs' officers proceeding to distrain on the Belfast
+manufacturers. I think they would order a strong force to proceed,
+fully armed, and I am of opinion that the police would require all the
+weapons they could carry. Not a stiver would they get in Belfast,
+until backed by the Queen's troops. Then the Ulstermen would pay--to
+refuse next year. So the process will go on and on, with bloodshed
+and slaughter every time, the British army enforcing the demands of
+rebels, against loyalists who sing 'God save the Queen,' Quite in the
+opera bouffe style of Gilbert and Sullivan, isn't it? Can't you get
+Gilbert to do a Home Rule opera comique? The absurdities of the
+situation are already there. No invention required. Immense hit. Wish
+I knew Gilbert. Money in it. English people might see the thing in the
+true light, if presented in comic songs, with a rattling chorus.
+Friend of mine bringing out a Gladstone Suppression Company Unlimited,
+forty million shares at twopence-halfpenny each. At a premium already.
+Money subscribed ten times over."
+
+"And won't the new Parliament have a high old time with the new Land
+Commission. Messrs. Healy and Co. will have the appointment of the
+Land Commissioners, whose function will be to fix rent. Wouldn't you
+like to be a landlord under such conditions? Don't you think that the
+rents will be reduced until the landlords are used up? Remember that
+the total extinction of the landlords and their expulsion from the
+country have been over and over again promised by the very men in
+whose hands you, or rather Mr. Gladstone will place them. No; I
+exculpate the English people from returning him to power, I know that
+the brains of England as well as those of Ireland are against him. But
+the English people stand by and see the thing pressed forward, hoping
+for the best. They rely on their immense wealth and energy to get them
+out of any hole they may get into. I am reminded of Captain Webb, who
+said, 'I am bound to have a go at the Niagara rapids. I know it's
+infernal risky and therefore infernally foolish, but I must have cash,
+and I expect I shall pull through somehow.' And I once met a sailor
+who said that his skipper had not his equal for getting the ship out
+of a scrape, nor yet his equal for getting into one. Same with
+England. Webb did not come up again. Might be the same with Bull.
+England is risking all for peace, just as Webb risked all for money.
+
+"The Irish Parliament may, after three years, break every contract
+having regard to land, no matter when or how made. Think of the
+ferment during that three years of waiting. Think of the situation of
+farmers as well as that of landowners. Who will work the land and do
+the best for the country without security? Then the College Green
+folks will have power to establish an armed and disciplined force. The
+Irish Army of Independence is already recruiting all over the country.
+For what? Is it to assist England? Is it friendly to England? Why, the
+very foundation of its sentiment is undying animosity to England. And
+your English Home Rulers say, 'Quite right, too, the Irish have good
+reason for their hatred!' Gladstonians come over here, mingle with
+haters of their native land, and earn a little cheap popularity by
+slanging John Bull. They get excellent receptions when they speak in
+that vein, especially if they have any money to spend. But what do the
+Irish think of them? The poor fools make me sick, splashing their cash
+about and vilifying England for the cheers of Fenians and the
+patronage of Maynooth priests. A lady from Wolverhampton, a good, kind
+lady, was woefully imposed upon somewhere in Connemara. A priest told
+me; a priest you have met." Here the name was given. "He laughed at
+the simplicity of this well-meaning benefactor, who was shown nineteen
+processes for rent, and who shelled out very liberally at the sight."
+
+"Seventeen of them were old ones! The rent had already been paid. But
+whenever an English _gobemouche_ called around out came the old writs
+until they were clean worn out. They were a splendid source of income
+while they lasted."
+
+This reminded me of a Bodyker, who said:--"A man named Lancashire came
+here from Manchester or Birmingham--I think it was Birmingham--and
+said he was going into the next Parliament, and that he was a great
+friend of Mr. Gladstone. He was very kind, and seemed made of money,
+and said he'd make England ring with our wrongs. My son had his name
+on a card, but a lawyer in Limerick said the name hadn't got in. I
+forget it now. D'ye know anybody, Sorr, of the name of Lancashire
+that's a great friend o' Misther Gladstone, an' that lives in
+Birmingham, an' that didn't get in?"
+
+These Irish peasants ask more questions than anybody can answer. They
+have a keen scent for cash, especially when the coin is in the keeping
+of English Gladstonians. They believe with the Claimant that "Sum
+folks has branes, and sum folks has money, and them what has money is
+made for them what has branes." The Bodyke farmers and the peasantry
+of Connemara believe that English Home Rulers have money. Impossible
+to escape the natural inference.
+
+Barna (Co. Galway), May 30th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 29.--WHAT RACK-RENT MEANS.
+
+
+I am disposed to call this quiet inland place a fishing village. The
+people not only sell fish and eat fish, but they talk fish, read fish,
+think fish, dream fish. The fishing industry keeps the place going.
+Anglers swarm hither from every part of the three kingdoms. Last year
+there were five fishing Colonels at the Greville Arms all at once.
+Brown-faced people who live in the open air, and who are deeply versed
+in the mysteries of tackle, cunning in the ways of trout, pike, perch,
+and salmon, walk the streets clad in tweed suits, with strong shoes
+and knickerbockers. The Mullingar folks despise the dictum of the
+American economist who said that every town without a river should buy
+one, as they are handy things to have. They boast of three magnificent
+lakes, and they look down on the Athlone people, thirty miles away,
+with their trumpery Shannon, of which they are so proud, but which the
+Mullingar folks will tell you is not worth the paper it is written
+on. Lough Owel, five miles long by two or three wide; Lough
+Derravarra, six miles by three or four; and Lough Belvidere, eight
+miles by three, all of which are in the immediate vicinity, may be
+considered a tolerable allowance of fishing water for one country
+town. Lough Belvidere, formerly called Lough Ennell, with its
+thousands of acres of water, would perhaps meet with the approval of
+the Yankee who called the Mediterranean "a nice pond," not for its
+size, but for its exceeding beauty. And the most remarkable feature
+about the fisher-enthusiasts of Mullingar, is the fact, the undoubted,
+well-attested fact, that they actually catch fish. English anglers,
+who in response to the inquiries of new arrivals at any Anglican
+fishing resort state that they have caught nothing yet, having only
+been fishing for a fortnight, will hardly believe that at Mullingar
+their countrymen catch fish every day, and big fish too. The lake
+trout vary from five to twenty pounds in weight, but the latter are
+not often seen. Nine-pounders are reckoned fairly good, but this
+weight excites no remark. How big the pike may be I know not, but Mr.
+Herring, of London, on Monday last, fishing in Lough Derravarra,
+hauled out a specimen which looked more like a shark than a pike. He
+weighed over thirty-six pounds, and measured four feet three inches
+over all. _Hoc egomet oculis meis vidi._ Birmingham anglers who win
+prizes with takes of four-and-a-half ounces would have recoiled in
+affright from the monster, even as he lay dead in the entrance hall of
+the Greville Arms. Old women stand at the street corners with silver
+eels like boa-constrictors, for which they wish to smite the Saxon to
+the tune of sixpence each. I vouch for the pike and eels, but confess
+to some dubiety _re_ the story of a fat old English gentleman, who
+said, "I don't care for fishing for the sake of catching fish. I go
+out in a boat, hook a big pike, lash the line to the bow, and let the
+beggar tow me about all day. Boating is my delight. Towards evening I
+cut my charger loose, and we part with mutual regret. Inexpensive
+amusement; more humane than ordinary fishing."
+
+Mullingar is a thriving town situate in a fertile district. The land
+is very rich, and the rents are reasonable. The farmers are well off,
+and admit the soft impeachment. They are Home Rulers to a man, and
+they boldly give their reasons. "Did ye ever know a man who was
+contint wid a good bargain when he has a prospect of a better bargain
+still?" said a prosperous agriculturist residing a mile outside the
+town. The country around has a decidedly English appearance. Fat land,
+good roads, high hedges, daisied meadows, and decent houses
+everywhere. The main street is long, wide, clean, well-paved,
+well-built. The shopkeepers who live in the surrounding district make
+money, and when they "go before," cut up for surprising sums. Said Mr.
+Gordon, "Everybody here has money. The people are downright well off.
+Living in constant communication with Dublin, fifty miles away on the
+main line of the Midland and Western Railway, they have adopted the
+prevailing politics of the metropolis. They do not understand what
+Home Rule means, and they blindly believe that they will do better
+still under a Dublin Parliament. I am quite certain of the contrary.
+Suppose we want Ł500 for some improvement, who will lend us the money?
+I am satisfied that the prosperity of the place would immediately
+decline. The priests influence the people to an extent Englishmen can
+never understand. The Protestant clergy do not intervene in mundane
+matters, but the Catholic clergy consider it their duty to guide the
+people in politics as well as in religion. Given Home Rule,
+Protestantism and Protestants would be nowhere. There is no doubt in
+my mind on this point."
+
+Mr. Mason said:--"The whole agitation would be knocked on the head by
+the introduction of a severe land measure, which would have the effect
+of further reducing the rents. No doubt all previous land legislation
+has been very severe, and I do not say that a further measure would be
+just and equitable. I merely say that the people do not want Home
+Rule, but they want the advantages which they are told will accrue
+from Home Rule. If the measure is not to benefit them in a pecuniary
+sense, then they do not care two straws about it. Do the English
+people grasp the present position of landowner and tenant
+respectively? Let me state it in a very few words.--
+
+"Formerly the landowner was regarded as the owner of the land. At the
+present moment, and without a line of further legislation, the tenant
+is the real owner, and not the nominal landlord at all. For owing to
+reduction of rent, fixity of tenure, free sale, and the tenant-right,
+the tenant is actually more than two-thirds owner. This is a matter of
+cash and not of theory, for the tenants' rights are at this moment
+worth more than double the fee-simple of the land itself. What will
+the Gladstonian party who prate about Rack-rents say to this?"
+
+This seems a suitable opportunity for calling attention to the term
+Rack-rents, which in England is almost universally misunderstood.
+Separatist speakers invariably use the term as denoting an excessive
+rent, an impossible rent--a rent, which is, as it were, extorted by
+means of the Rack. The term is purely legal, and denotes a rent paid
+by ALL yearly tenants, whether their rent, as a whole, be high or low.
+The lowest-rented yearly tenant in the country is paying Rack-rent.
+The whole case for the farmers has been obscured and a false issue
+raised by the constant use of this term, to which a new meaning has
+been given. Another common term is found in the word Head-rent, of
+which Gladstonians know no more than of Rack-rent. When Head-rent
+comes to be discussed in England we shall have Home Rulers explaining
+that the term refers to decapitation of tenants for non-payment of
+Rack-rent. This explanation will not present any appreciable departure
+from their usual vein. An English Home Ruler who supports Mr.
+Gladstone "because his father did," and who first landed in Ireland
+yesterday, said, "I do not approve of ascendency. Hang the rights of
+property! Give me the rights of intellect. Let us have equality.
+Treat the Irish fairly, even generously. They should have equal rights
+with Englishmen. Why keep them down by force of bayonets? Live and let
+live, that's what I say. Equal laws and equal rights for all."
+
+That is the usual patter of the self-satisfied Separatist, who, having
+delivered himself, looks around him with an air which seems to
+say--"What a fine fellow I am, how generous, fair, disinterested. Have
+I not a noble soul? Did you ever see such magnanimity? Can anybody say
+anything against such sentiments? Thank heaven that I am not as other
+men, nor even as this Unionist." He is plausible, but no more. The mob
+which applauds the hero and hisses the villain of a melodrama pats him
+on the back, while he looks upward with his hand on his heart and a
+heaven-is-my-home expression in his eye. Put him under the
+microscope--he needs it, and you will see him as he is. The platitudes
+in which he lives, and moves, and has his being have no foundation in
+fact. His talk is grand, but it lacks substance. It is magnificent,
+but it is not sense. Listen to what a statesman has said:--
+
+"I have looked in vain for the setting forth of any practical scheme
+of policy which the Imperial Parliament is not equal to deal with, and
+which it refuses to deal with, and which is to be brought about by
+Home Rule."
+
+"There is nothing Ireland has asked, and which this country and this
+Parliament has refused. This Parliament has done for Ireland what it
+would have scrupled to do for England or Scotland."
+
+"What are the inequalities of England and Ireland? I declare that I
+know none, except that there are certain taxes still remaining, which
+are levied over Englishmen and Scotchmen, and which are not levied
+over Irishmen; and, likewise, that there are certain purposes for
+which public money is freely and largely given in Ireland, and for
+which it is not given in England and Scotland."
+
+I read this deliverance to my Gladstonian friend, who was staggered to
+learn upon incontrovertible evidence, to wit, the printed report of
+his speech, that these were the publicly expressed opinions of the
+Grand Old Man, whose pandering to Irish opinion as expressed by
+outrage dates from the time of the Clerkenwell explosion. That his
+conversion to Home Rule is entirely attributable to the endless
+murders and atrocities of the Land League, the Invincibles, and other
+Fenian organisations, is universally admitted in Ireland by Unionists
+and Nationalists alike. And once an Irish Parliament is granted, how
+will he resist the demand for Irish independence, for the Irish
+Republic affiliated with America? Query--if a given number of murders
+were required to bring about Home Rule, how many murders will be
+required to effect complete separation? A mere question in arithmetic.
+
+Concurrently with the compulsory withdrawal of the Union Jack
+displayed by my friend Mrs. Gibson, of Northern Hotel, Londonderry,
+another occurrence, this time in the South, will serve to attest the
+progress made by the inventor and patentee of the Union of Hearts.
+During the progress of a cricket match on the Killarney Athletic
+Grounds, between the clubs of Limerick and Kerry, on Whit-Monday, a
+Union Jack was hoisted, not as a political banner, but as an ornament,
+and the only banner available for the purpose. It was left flying when
+the cricketers went home, but in the morning it lay prone and
+dishonoured. The forty-foot spar had been sawn through, and in falling
+had smashed the palings. Let a chorus of musical Gladstonians march
+through Ireland bearing the Union Jack and singing "God save the
+Queen," let them do it, with or without police protection, and I will
+gladly watch their progress, record their prowess, and will have great
+pleasure in writing their obituary notice. The people, as a whole, are
+enemies to England. They are filled with a blind, unreasoning,
+implacable resentment for injuries they have never received, their
+dislike engendered and sustained by lying priests and selfish
+agitators, who are hastening to achieve their ends, alarmed at the
+prospect of popular enlightenment, which would for ever hurl them from
+power. The opinions of Cardinal Logue have been quoted by Lord
+Randolph Churchill. The _Freeman's Journal_ is still more absolute.
+Does this sound like the Union of Hearts? Does this give earnest of
+final settlement, of unbroken peace and contentment, of eternal
+fraternity and friendship? The _Freeman_ says, "We contend that the
+good government of Ireland by England is _impossible_, not so much by
+reason of natural obstacles, but because of the radical, essential
+difference in the public order of the two countries. This, considered
+in the abstract, makes a gulf profound, impassible--_an obstacle no
+human ingenuity can remove or overcome_."
+
+This promises well for the success of the Home Rule Bill; but why is
+the thing "impossible"? Why is the gulf not only profound but also
+"impassible"? Why is the good government of Ireland by England
+prevented by an obstacle beyond human ability to remove, and which, as
+Mr. Gladstone would say, "passes the wit of man." The _Freeman_ has no
+objection to tell us. The writer assumes a high moral standpoint,
+addressing the eminently respectable and religious Mr. Bull more in
+sorrow than in anger, but notwithstanding this, in a style to which
+that highly moral and Twenty-shillings-in-the-pound-paying person is
+not at all accustomed. The _Freeman_ goes on--
+
+"We find ourselves bound by reason and logic to deny to English
+civilisation the glorious title of Christian."
+
+This is distinctly surprising. John always believed himself a
+Christian. The natural pain he may be expected to undergo after this
+disagreeable discovery is luckily to some extent mitigated by the
+information that although England is not Christian, Ireland is
+extremely so. The one people (the Irish) "has not only accepted but
+retained with inviolable constancy the Christian civilisation;" the
+other (the English) "has not only rejected it, but has been for three
+centuries the leader of the great apostacy, and is at this day _the
+principal obstacle to the conversion of the world_."
+
+Do the English Separatists see daylight now? Will they any longer deny
+what all intelligent Irishmen of whatever creed readily admit, namely,
+that religion is at the bottom of the Home Rule question? And is not
+Mr. Bull surprised to find that after all his missionary collections,
+he is without the right balm of Gilead, that his civilisation is not
+Christian, and that he is the principal obstacle to the salvation of
+the world? Is he not surprised to find that Ireland, with its thousand
+and ten thousand tales of horror, its brutal outrages on helpless
+women, its chronic incendiarism, its myriads of indecent anonymous
+letters addressed to young girls, such as I have seen filed by the
+ream in Irish police-stations--Ireland with its moonlighting
+atrocities, its barbarous boycotting of helpless children, its
+poisoning of wells and water supply, its mutilation of cattle, its
+unnumbered foul and cowardly murders, its habitual sheltering and
+protection of unspeakable felons--Ireland, one of the few remaining
+strongholds of the Catholic faith, has the true Christianity? Ireland
+would convert the world, but England stops her. The No-rent manifesto,
+the Plan of Campaign, and the Land League were sample productions of
+the genuine faith, to say nothing of Horsewhipped Healy, Breeches
+O'Brien, and T.D. Sullivan, who composed a eulogy on the murderers of
+Police-sergeant Brett, of Manchester (Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien),
+
+    High upon the gallows tree
+    Swung the noble-hearted three.
+
+That is all I can remember, but it may serve to show that Irish
+Christianity is the real stingo, and no mistake.
+
+A Mullingaringian who wishes to be nameless desires to know
+particulars of the gorging capacity of the average Gladstonian
+elector. The particular item that excites his wonder is the letter of
+Mr. J.W. Logan, M.P., on Irish rents. Briefly stated, Mr. Logan's
+point is this: That notwithstanding the complaints of Irish landlords
+they are getting more rent than ever! And he proceeds to adduce
+testimony thus: Income-tax valuation in Ireland, on land, in three
+years selected by himself stands as follows:--
+
+    1861            Ł8,990,830
+    1877            Ł9,937,681
+    1891            Ł9,941,368
+
+Then, after showing the amount of increase, he says:--"Rents continue
+to rise in Ireland as far as is indicated by the income-tax."
+
+My friend says:--"Mr. Logan is both culpably ignorant and flagrantly
+dishonest. He seems incapable of understanding the difference between
+an assessment, a mere valuation, and the actual payment of income-tax.
+He is dishonest, because he deliberately suppresses the explanation of
+the difference between the first and second row of figures. When I saw
+the curiously-selected years, I said, why 1861, 1877, and 1891? I knew
+there was some thimble-rigging. I looked at the twenty-eighth annual
+report of her Majesty's Commissioners, that for 1885, the latest I
+have, and behold, the year 1877 had an asterisk! It was the only
+starred number on the page. It referred to a foot-note, and that
+foot-note read as follows:--
+
+"'_The large difference as compared with prior years is due to the
+value of farmhouses having been previously included under the head of
+messuages._'
+
+"The land up to '77 was called land, and the farm buildings were
+called messuages. But in '77 they began to reckon the buildings as
+land, shifting an amount from one column of figures to another. A mere
+matter of book-keeping. Mr. Logan writes to the papers for an
+explanation which is given in a footnote. He carries his point, for
+hundreds of people will follow his figures. Give a lie twenty-four
+hours' start and you can never overtake it. Thrice is he armed who
+hath his quarrel just, But four times he who gets his blow in fust. I
+suppose the Gladstonians claim that the Land Commission reduced rents
+by 25 to 30 per cent. But here Mr. Logan is proving that the landlords
+are drawing more money than ever! They wish they could believe it.
+Valuation is a queer thing. It fluctuates in the most unaccountable
+way. What an increase shows is the prosperity of the tenant who is
+putting up buildings and making other improvements. Mr. Logan's third
+figures show a further increase. Look at the figures in the authorised
+Report, not for '77 and '91, but between the two. What do you see
+there?"
+
+I looked, and this is what I saw:--
+
+    1880            Ł9,980,543
+    1881            Ł9,980,650
+    1882            Ł9,980,215
+    1883            Ł9,981,156
+    1884            Ł9,982,072
+    1885            Ł9,982,031
+    1886            Ł9,954,535
+
+So that Mr. Logan might have shown from these figures that during the
+No-Rent Campaign the landlords were enjoying an untold period of
+prosperity, for his chosen year, 1891, shows a _decrease_ as compared
+with any one of the seven years above-mentioned. The truth is that the
+figures prove nothing in support of Mr. Logan's case, which is based
+on fallacy and suppression of material facts. His comparison of 1861
+with 1877, without reference to the explanatory footnote, is of itself
+sufficient to shoulder him out of court, and stamps him as little more
+scrupulous than Father Humphreys, of venerated memory. Mr. Logan's
+belief that assessment and tax-paying are one and the same thing is
+here regarded as ridiculous, and my friend thinks that if Mr.
+Gladstone should impose a tax on Brains, the Grand Old Man's followers
+will escape with an easy assessment.
+
+Mullingar (Co. Westmeath), June 1st.
+
+
+
+
+No. 30.--THE "UNION OF HEARTS."
+
+
+It was strange to hear the tune of "Rule Britannia" in the streets of
+Mullingar. The Irish madden at "God Save the Queen," and would make
+short work of the performer. It was market day, and the singer was
+selling printed sheets of poesy. The old tune was fairly correct, but
+the words were strange and sad. "When Britain first at Hell's command
+Prepared to cross the Irish main, Thus spake a prophet in our land,
+'Mid traitors' scoff and fools' disdain, 'If Britannia cross the
+waves, Irish ever shall be slaves.' In vain the warning patriot spoke,
+In treach'rous guise Britannia came--Divided, bent us to her yoke,
+Till Ireland rose, in Freedom's name, and Britannia boldly braves!
+Irish are no longer slaves." The people were too busily engaged in
+selling pigs to pay much attention to the minstrel who, however, was
+plainly depending on disloyalty for custom. Westmeath was once the
+home of Whiteboyism, Ribbonism, Fenianism, and all the other isms
+which have successively ruined the country by banishing security; and
+a spice of the old leaven still flavours the popular sentiment. "They
+may swear as they often did our wretchedness to cure, But we'll never
+trust John Bull again nor let his lies allure. No we won't Bull, we
+won't Bull, for now nor ever more; For we've hopes on the ocean, we've
+trust on the shore. Oh! remember the days when their reign we did
+disturb, At Limerick and Thurles, Blackwater and Benburb. And ask this
+proud Saxon if our blows he did enjoy When we met him on the
+battlefield of France, at Fontenoy. Then we'll up for the green, boys,
+and up for the green! Oh! 'tis still in the dust and a shame to be
+seen! But we've hearts and we've hands, boys, full strong enough, I
+ween, To rescue and to raise again our own unsullied green." A group
+of farmers standing hard by paid some attention to this chant, and one
+of them, in answer to my inquiry as to how the Union of Hearts was
+getting on, chuckled vociferously and said, "Aye, aye, Union iv
+Hearts, how are ye? How are ye, Union iv Hearts?" The group joined in
+the laugh, and I saw that the joke was an old one.
+
+The Invincibles had a few recruits in Mullingar and district, and the
+Land Leaguers also made their mark. The stationmaster sued somebody
+for travelling without a ticket. He was shot dead in the street
+immediately afterwards. Miss Croughan did not meet popular opinion in
+the matter of farm management. She was shot as she walked to church
+one fine Sunday morning. Patrick Farrelly took land which somebody
+else wanted. Shot as he walked home from work. Mr. Dolan, of a flour
+mill in the neighbourhood, had some misunderstanding with his workmen.
+Shot, on the chance that his successor would take warning, and
+accommodate himself to the public sentiment. Miss Ann Murphy, who with
+her two brothers lives at a small farm a mile or two away, supplied a
+jug of milk, and said that things were quiet for the moment, but there
+was no telling what might happen. The house was roofed with corrugated
+iron. "Ah," said Miss Murphy, "we were nearly burned to death, myself
+an' my two brothers. An' this was the way iv it. Tramps and ruffians
+would call here at nightfall, an' would ask for a shelter an' a lie
+down, an' I would lay a few bags or something on the flure over
+beyant, an' they would sthretch themselves out till mornin', an' often
+and often I would wash their cheeks an' heads where they had been
+fightin', an' would be all cut an' hacked. One fellow was often here,
+an' my brothers had reason to refuse him free lodgin's, an' so the
+next mornin' we found the gate lifted off the hinges an' carried away
+down the lane. My brothers spoke to the police-sergeant about this,
+an' the very next thing was to try to burn us alive in our beds. Some
+ruffian came in the night an' put a match in the thatch, an' I woke
+almost suffocated. I ran out, an' there was the house on fire, and the
+cow-house, with a beautiful, lovely cow, all a solid piece of blazin'
+flames, till ye could see nothin' else. We saved the four walls an'
+some of the furniture, an' we got Ł50 from the County. That's the sort
+of people the Land League brought out all over the country."
+
+A sturdy farmer living near said:--"An' that's what we'll have to
+suffer again, once ye let Home Rulers have the upper hand. The only
+way ye can manage these scamps is to make them feel the lash. No good
+tomfooling with these murdherin' ruffians. With Home Rule they expect
+to do as they like. If I go into a whiskey shop on a market day, what
+do I hear? Ever an' always the same things. There is to be no
+landlords, no policemen, no means of enforcing the law. There ye have
+it, now. The respectable people who work and make money will be a mark
+for every robber in the country. An' in Ireland ye can rob and murther
+widout fear of consequences. See that hill there? Mrs. Smith had her
+brains blown out as she drove by the foot of it. They meant the shot
+for her husband, who was with her. They don't make many mistakes. They
+bide their time, avoid hurry, and do the work both nately an'
+complately. They track down their victims like sleuth hounds, an'
+there's one thing they never go in for,--that's executions. Mrs.
+Smith, Farrelly, Dolan, Miss Croughan, and the stationmaster, were all
+comfortably shot without anyone incurring evil consequences. It's
+devilish hard to catch an Irishman, an' when ye've caught him it's
+harder still to convict him. They're improvin' in their plannin', but
+they are not so sure o' their shootin' as they used to be. They fired
+at Moloney from both sides of the road at once. That was a good idea.
+But they failed to kill him, and seven of them are arrested. Of
+course, we'll have no convictions, but it looks better to arrest them,
+an' it ensures the man that's arrested a brass band an' a collection.
+So everybody's pleased an' nobody hurt. An' what would ye ask for
+more?"
+
+On Thursday last, at eleven in the morning, Mr. Weldon C. Moloney,
+solicitor, of Dublin, was driving near Milltown, on the Bodyke
+property, when he was wounded from the ankle to the thigh by several
+simultaneous shots from both sides of the road, and the horse so badly
+injured that it must probably be destroyed. Mr. Moloney believes that
+he will be able to identify his assailants, and the police are sure
+they have the right men. Nothing, therefore, is now wanting to the
+formalities accompanying the Morley administration of Justice but the
+march to Court, the cheers of the crowd, the twelve good men and
+true--who, having sworn to return a verdict in accordance with the
+evidence, will assuredly say Not Guilty--and the brass band to
+accompany the marksmen home. If the heroes of this adventure be
+liberated in the evening a torchlight procession will make the thing
+complete, and will be handy for burning the haystacks of anyone who
+may not have joined the promenade.
+
+Athlone is well built and beautifully situated. The Shannon winds
+round the town, and also cuts it in two, so that one-half is in County
+Westmeath, province of Leinster, the other in County Roscommon,
+province of Connaught. The people are fairly well clad, but dirt and
+squalor such as can hardly be conceived are plentiful enough. The
+Shannon Saw Mills, which for twenty years have given employment to two
+hundred men, will shortly be removed to Liverpool, and the Athloners
+are sad at heart and refuse to be comforted. The concern belongs to
+Wilson, of Todmorden, Lancashire; and the manager, Mr. Lewis Jones,
+says that all the timber within reasonable distance is used up,
+besides which the place is not well fixed for business purposes. The
+workpeople are manageable enough, but somewhat uncertain in their
+attendance. They require a half-hour extra at breakfast time every now
+and then, perhaps twenty times a year or more, that they may attend
+mass, on the saints' days and such like occasions.
+
+This reminded me of my first entrance to Galway. All the bridges and
+other lounging places were covered with men who looked as if they
+ought to be at work. It was Ascension Day, and nobody struck a stroke.
+My invasion of Athlone afforded a similar experience. There were
+sixty-five able-bodied men lounging on the Shannon bridge at three in
+the afternoon--all deeply anxious to know whence I came and whither I
+was going, all with an intense desire to learn my particular business.
+Other pauper factories were in full swing, and at the first blush it
+seemed that the Athloners lived by looking at the river and discussing
+the affairs of other people. It was Corpus Christi Day, and none but
+heathen would work. The brutal Saxon with his ding-dong persistency
+may be making money, but how about his future interests? When the last
+trump shall sound and the dead shall be raised, where will be the
+workers on saints' days? Among the goats. But the men who spend these
+holy seasons in smoking thick twist, with the Shannon for a spittoon,
+will reap the reward of their self-denial.
+
+Mr. Lewis Jones has always taken a strong interest in politics, and
+his present opinion is remarkable. "I came to Ireland a Gladstonian, a
+Home Ruler, and, what is more, a bigoted Home Ruler. How the change to
+my present opinion was brought about I hardly know. It was not
+revolution, but rather evolution. No-one can remain a Home Ruler when
+he understands the subject. The change in myself came about through
+much travelling all over the country and mixing with the people. I do
+not blame the English Home Rulers a bit. How can I do so, when I
+myself was just as ignorant? Had I remained in Liverpool I should have
+remained a Home Ruler. I am certain of that. Unless you actually live
+in the country you cannot gauge its feeling, and the Irish people are
+very difficult to understand. I have always got along with them
+famously, and I shall take ninety per cent. of our workmen with me to
+England. No, Home Rule has nothing to do with the removal of the
+works.
+
+"My cousin and I worked like horses to get in Mr. Neville for the
+Exchange Division of Liverpool. We actually won, for by a piece of
+adroit management we polled a number of votes which would certainly
+have remained unpolled, and we polled them all for our man, who won by
+a very small majority, eleven, I think. I would willingly go to
+Liverpool to undo that work, as I now see how completely I was
+mistaken in my views of the Irish question. I was always a great
+Radical, and such I shall always remain; but as a Radical I am bound
+to support what is best for the masses of the people, and I am
+convinced that Home Rule would reduce the country to beggary.
+Bankruptcy must and will ensue, and with the flight of the landowners
+and the destruction of confidence, employment will be unobtainable.
+Who will embark capital in Ireland under present circumstances?"
+
+A financial authority told me that poor Ireland has thirty-six
+millions of uninvested money lying idle in the banks. The Irish not
+only lack enterprise, but they will not trust each other. Great
+opportunities are lying thickly around, but they seem unable to avail
+themselves of the finest openings. Mr. Smith, of Athlone, makes twelve
+and a half miles of Irish tweed every week, and sells it rather faster
+than he can make it. He commenced with two shillings a week wages, and
+now he owns a factory and employs five hundred people. A Black
+Protestant, of course. Mr. Samuel Heaton, of Bradford, is about to go
+and do likewise. I went over his place an hour ago, and this is what
+he said:--"This was a flour mill which cost Ł10,000 to build. The
+machinery would cost Ł10,000 more, I should think. It did well for
+many years, and then it was left to three brothers, who disputed about
+it until the concern was ruined as a paying business, and the place
+was allowed to lie derelict. The water power alone cost them Ł100 a
+year, and goodness knows what these splendid buildings would be worth.
+The Board of Works had got hold of it, and it was understood that
+anybody might have it a bargain, but nobody came forward. I offered
+them Ł30 a year for the whole of the buildings, the waterpower, and
+the dwelling house hard by, also that other immense building yonder,
+which might prove handy for a store-house; and my offer was accepted.
+I took all at that rent for sixty years, with six months' free tenancy
+to start with, and I was also to have a free gift of all machinery and
+fittings in the place. Here we are going nicely, only in a small way,
+but we shall do. We make blankets, tweeds for men's suits and ladies'
+dresses. When the Athlone people saw us knocking about they were
+surprised they had never thought of it before. There are hundreds of
+derelict flour mills going to ruin all over the country, and the
+owners would gladly let anyone have them and grand water power for
+nothing for two or three years, just to get a chance of obtaining rent
+at some future day. We work from morning till night, and neither I nor
+my sons have ever tasted a spot of intoxicating liquor. Now there are
+many small mills going in the country, the proprietors of which go on
+the spree three days a week. If they can do, we can do. This is going
+to be a big thing. The only difficulty I have is to turn out the
+stuff. Irish tweeds have such a reputation that we simply cannot meet
+the demand. Mills and water power may be had for next to nothing, but
+the Irish have no enterprise, and the English are afraid to put any
+money in the country under present circumstances."
+
+The Lock Mills above mentioned are three or four stories high, with
+perhaps a hundred yards of front elevation, a grandly built series of
+stone buildings close to the Shannon, which is here about a hundred
+and twenty yards wide, and carries tolerably large steamers and
+lighters. Six months' occupancy for nothing, the old machinery a free
+gift, water power and buildings for sixty years at Ł30 a year. I have
+previously mentioned the twelve big mills abandoned on the Boyne.
+Twelve openings for small capitalists--but Irishmen put their money in
+stockings, under the flure, in the thatch. _They_ will not trust
+Irishmen, although they have no objection to John Bull's doing so. A
+bank manager of this district said:--
+
+"Poor Connaught, as they call the province, is a great hoarder. And
+when Irishmen invest they invest outside Ireland. Seventy-eight
+thousand pounds in the Post Office savings bank in Mayo, the most
+poverty-stricken district--as they will tell you. There is Connaught
+money in Australia, in America, in England, and in all kinds of
+foreign bonds. Irishmen want to keep their hoardings secret. They like
+to walk about barefoot and have money in their stocking. An old woman
+who puts on and takes off her shoes outside the town has three sons
+high up in the Civil Service, and could lend you eight hundred pounds.
+You would take her for a beggar and might offer her a penny, and she'd
+take it. Have you noticed the appalling mendicancy of Ireland? Have
+you reflected on the 'high spirit' of the Irish people? Have you
+remembered their pride, their repugnance to the Saxon? And have you
+noticed the everlastingly outstretched hands which meet you at every
+corner? Beggary, lying, dirt, and laziness invariably accompany
+priestly rule, and are never seen in Ireland in conjunction with
+Protestantism? I wish somebody would explain this. The Irish masses
+are the dirtiest and laziest in the world, but there are no dirty,
+lazy Protestants. Nobody ever heard of such a thing. And yet because
+there are more dirty, lazy Catholics than clean, industrious
+Protestants Mr. Gladstone would give the Catholic party the mastery,
+and England in future would be ruled from Rome.
+
+"Mr. Gladstone is not responsible for his actions. The Civil Service
+will not employ a man after sixty-five. The British Government forbids
+a man to work in its service after that time. The consensus of
+scientific opinion has fixed sixty-five as the limit at which the
+control of an office or the execution of routine office work should
+cease. Slips of memory occur, and the brain has lost its keen edge,
+its firm grip, its rapid grasp of detail. At sixty-five you are not
+good enough for the Civil Service, but at eighty-four, when you are
+nineteen years older, you may govern a vast empire. It is an anomaly.
+Even the Nationalists think Mr. Gladstone past his work."
+
+This statement was fully borne out by a strong anti-Parnellite of
+Athlone. He said:--"The bill is a hoax, but it is better than nothing.
+We'll take what we can get, an' we'll get what we can take--afterwards.
+Ye wouldn't be surprised that the people's bitter about the bill. Sure,
+'tis no Home Rule it is at all, even if we got it as it first stood.
+'Tis an insult to offer such a bill to the Irish nation. We want
+complete independence. We have a sort of a yoke on us, an' we'll never
+rest till we get it off. Ye say 'This'll happen ye, and That'll happen
+ye,' an' ye care the divil an' all about it. We don't care what
+happens, once we get rid of that yoke. A friend of mine said yesterday,
+'I never see an Englishman but I think I'd like to have him under my
+feet, an' meself stickin' somethin' into him.' There's murther in their
+hearts, an' ye can't wonder at it. An' owld Gladstone's a madman, no
+less. I'm towld he ordhers a dozen top hats at once, an' his wife gets
+the shop-keeper to take thim back. An' I'm towld he stales the spoons
+whin he goes out to dine wid his frinds, an' that his wife takes thim
+back in a little basket nixt mornin'. And I thought that was all
+nonsinse till I seen the bill. An' thin I felt I could believe it; for,
+bedad, nobody but a madman could have drawn up sich a measure, to
+offind everybody, an' plaze nobody. 'Tis what ye'd expect from a
+lunatic asylum. But, thin, 'tis Home Rule. 'Tis the principle; an' as
+the mimber for Roscommon says, ''Tis ourselves will apply it, an' 'tis
+ourselves will explain it. That's where we'll rape the advantage,' says
+he."
+
+The Athlone market is "now on," and several hundred cows and calves
+are lowing in front of the Royal, Mrs. Haire's excellent caravanserai.
+Sheep are bleating, and excited farmers are yelling like pandemonium
+or an Irish House of Commons. Athlone is a wonderful place for
+donkeys, which swell the nine-fold harmony with incessant cacophonous
+braying, so that the town might fairly claim the distinction of being
+the chosen home, if not the _fons et origo_, of Nationalist oratory.
+
+Athlone, June 3rd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 31.--THE "UNION OF HEARTS."
+
+
+Once again the Atlantic stops me. The eighty-three miles of country
+between here and Athlone have brought about no great change in the
+appearance of the people, who, on the whole, are better clad than the
+Galway folks. The difference in customs, dress, language, manners, and
+looks between one part of Ireland and another close by is sometimes
+very considerable. There is a lack of homogeneity, a want of fusion,
+an obvious need of some mixing process. The people do not travel, and
+in the rural districts many of them live and die without journeying
+five miles from home. The railways now projected or in process of
+construction will shortly change all this, and the tourist, with more
+convenience, will no longer be able to see the Ireland of centuries
+ago. The language is rapidly dying out. Not a word of Irish did I hear
+in Athlone, even on market day. The Westporters know nothing about it.
+The tongue of the brutal Saxon is everywhere heard. The degenerate
+Irish of these latter days cannot speak their own language. They
+preach, teach, quarrel, pray, swear, mourn, sing, bargain, bless,
+curse, make love in English. They are sufficiently familiar with the
+British vernacular to lie with the easy grace of a person speaking his
+mother-tongue. They are a gifted people, and a patriotic--at least
+they tell us so, and the Irish, they say, is the queen of languages,
+the softest, the sweetest, the most poetical, the most sonorous, the
+most soul-satisfying. And yet the patriot members speak it not.
+William O'Brien is said to know a little, but only as you know a
+foreign language. He could not address the people on the woes of
+Ireland, could not lash the brutal Saxon, could not express in his
+native tongue the withering outpourings of his patriotic soul. He
+always speaks in English, of which he thinks foul scorn. He is the
+best Gaelic scholar of the rout, and yet he could not give you the
+Irish for breeches.
+
+Westport is splendidly situated in a lovely valley watered by a
+nameless stream which empties itself into Clew Bay. A grand range of
+mountains rises around, the pyramidal form of Croagh Patrick
+dominating the quay. It was from the summit of this magnificent height
+that Saint Patrick sent forth the command which banished from the
+Green Isle the whole of the reptile tribe. "The Wicklow Hills are very
+high, An' so's the hill of Howth, Sir; But there's a hill much higher
+still, Aye, higher than them both, Sir! 'Twas from the top of this
+high hill Saint Patrick preached the sarmint, That drove the frogs out
+of the bogs An' bothered all the varmint. The toads went hop, the
+frogs went flop, Slap-dash into the water, An' the snakes committed
+suicide to save themselves from slaughter." Pity there is no modern
+successor of Saint Patrick to extirpate the reptilia of the present
+day, the moonlighters and their Parliamentary supporters, to wit.
+
+The Westport people are very pious. As I have previously shown by
+quotations from Irish authorities, Ireland has the true Christianity
+which England so sadly needs. Unhindered by England, Ireland would
+evangelise the world, and that in double-quick time. Every town I
+visit is deeply engaged in religious exercises. In Limerick it was a
+Triduum with some reference to Saint Monica. In Cork it was something
+else, which required much expenditure in blessed candles. In Galway
+the Confraternity of the Holy Girdle was making full time, and in
+Westport three priests are laying on day and night in a mission. A few
+days ago they carried the Corpus Christi round the place, six hundred
+children strewing flowers under the sacerdotal feet, and the crowds of
+worshippers who flocked into the town necessitated the use of a tent,
+from which the money-box was stolen. On Sunday last the bridge
+convaynient to the chapel was covered with country folks who could not
+get into the building, and a big stall with sacred images in plaster
+of Paris and highly-coloured pictures in cheap frames was doing a
+roaring trade. Barefooted women were hurrying to chapel to get
+pictures blessed, or walking leisurely home with the sanctified
+treasure under their shawls. A brace of scoffers on the bridge
+explained the surging crowd, and advised instant application, that
+evening being the last. "Get inside, wid a candle in yer fist, an' ye
+can pray till yer teeth dhrop out iv yer head." This irreverence is
+probably one of the accursed fruits of contact with the sacrilegious
+Saxon. "The people here are cowardly, knavish, and ignorant," said an
+Irishman twenty years resident in Westport. "They believe anything the
+priests tell them, and they will do anything the priests may order or
+even hint at. They would consider it an honour if the priests told
+them to lie down that they might walk over them. Politically they are
+entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic clergy. They are totally
+unable to understand or to grasp the meaning of the change now
+proposed, which would place the country entirely at the mercy of the
+clerical party. We see the result of popular election in the return of
+Poor Law Guardians, who spend most of their time in calling each other
+beggars and liars. Patronage under the Home Rule Bill would mean the
+instalment of the relatives of priests in all the best offices. Once
+we have an Irish Parliament, a man of capacity may leave the country
+unless he have a priest for his uncle.
+
+"We want a liberal measure of Local Government, and a final settlement
+of the land question. The poor people are becoming poorer and poorer
+through this eternal agitation which drives away wealth and capital,
+and undermines the value of all Irish securities. Poor as we were, we
+were much better off before the agitation commenced. The poor
+themselves are becoming alive to the fact that continuous agitation
+means continuous poverty. We must now have some sort of Home Rule, but
+we shall be ruined if we get it from a Liberal Government. If we get
+it from a Tory Government, the English will run to lend us money, but
+if from a Morley-Gladstone combination they won't advance us a stiver.
+The present Irish Parliamentary representatives have the confidence
+of no single Irish party. They were well enough for their immediate
+purpose, and no better men would come forward. To entrust them with
+large powers is the very acme of wild insanity. Admitting their
+honesty, which is doubtful, they have had no experience in business
+affairs, and their class is demonstratedly devoid of administrative
+capacity. The Poor Law Guardians of Cork, Portumna, Ballinasloe,
+Swinford, Ballyvaughan, and many other towns and cities, have by their
+mismanagement brought their respective districts to insolvency. That
+every case was a case of mismanagement is clearly proved by the fact
+that the Government having superseded these Boards in each case by two
+paid Guardians, a period of two years has sufficed to wipe off all
+debts, to reduce expenses, and to leave a balance in hand. They then
+begin to drift again into insolvency. And where the guardians have not
+been superseded, where they have not yet become bankrupt, they still
+have a bank balance against them. You will scarcely hear of a solvent
+parish, even if you offer a reward. And that is the class of persons
+Mr. Gladstone would entrust with the administration of Irish finance.
+The result would be the country's bankruptcy, and England would have
+to pay the damage. Serve England right for her stupidity."
+
+What my friend said anent the class of men who compose the ranks of
+the Irish Parliamentary party reminds me of something I heard in
+Athlone. A great anti-Parnellite said:--"Poor Mat Harris was the
+splindid spaker, in throth! Parnell it was that sent him to the House
+of Commons. Many's the time I seen him on the roof of the Royal Hotel,
+fixin the tiles, an' puttin things sthraight, that the rain wouldn't
+run in. 'Tis a slater he was, an' an iligant slater, at that. An' when
+he came down for a big dhrink, the way he'd stand at the bar and
+discoorse about Ireland would brake yer heart. Many's the time I seen
+the ould waiter listenin' to him till the wather would pour out iv his
+two good-lookin' eyes. An, thin, 'twas Mat Harris had the gab, rest
+his sowl! Ye haven't anybody could come up to him barrin' owld
+Gladstone, divil a one." Another Athloner, speaking of an Irish
+Nationalist M.P., who luckily still lives, said:--"Mr. Parnell took
+him up because he was a wonderful fellow to talk, and so was popular
+with the mob of these parts. I think he was a blacksmith by trade.
+Parnell got him made M.P., and set him up with a blue pilot coat, but
+forgot to give him a handkerchief. So he used the tail of his coat
+alternately with his coat sleeve. He never had a pocket-handkerchief
+in his life, but he was a born legislator, and the people believed he
+could do much to restore the vaunted ancient prestige and prosperity
+of Ireland. He came to Athlone, and went to the Royal, but the waiter,
+who did not know he was speaking to a member of Parliament, and
+moreover one of his own kidney, declined to take him in, and
+recommended a place where he could get a bed for Thruppence! And the
+M.P. actually had to take it. This was only inconsistent with his new
+dignity, and not with his previous experiences. This is the kind of
+person who is to direct Irish legislation more efficiently than the
+educated class, who unanimously object to Home Rule as detrimental to
+the interests of both countries, and as likely to further impoverish
+poor Ireland. The men who now represent the 'patriotic' party will
+feather their own nests. They care for nothing more."
+
+The Westport folks may not deserve the strictures of their friend of
+twenty years, but two things are plainly visible. They are dirty, and
+they have no enterprise. The island-dotted Clew Bay and the sublime
+panorama of mountain scenery, the sylvan demesne of the Earl of Sligo,
+and the forest-bordered inlets of Westport Bay, form a scene of
+surpassing loveliness and magnificence such as England and Wales
+together cannot show. The town is well laid out, the streets are broad
+and straight, and Lord Sligo's splendid range of lake and woodland,
+free to all, adjoins the very centre. And yet the shops are small and
+mean, the houses are dirty and uninviting, and dunghills front the
+cottages first seen by the visitor. A breezy street leads upward to
+the heights, and all along it are dustheaps, with cocks and hens
+galore, scratching for buried treasure. At the top a stone railway
+bridge, the interstices facing the sea full of parsley fern, wild
+maidenhair, hart's-tongue, and a beautiful species unknown to me. The
+bracing air of the Atlantic sweeps the town, which is sheltered withal
+by miles of well-grown woods. The houses are dazzling white, and like
+the Rhine villages look well from a distance. Beware the interiors, or
+at least look before you leap. Then you will probably leap like the
+stricken hart, and in the opposite direction. You will be surprised at
+your own agility. Flee from the "Lodgings and Entertainment" announced
+in the windows. Your "Entertainment" is likely to be livelier than you
+expected, and you will wish that your Lodgings were on the cold, cold
+ground. The Westporters are too pious to wash themselves or their
+houses. "They wash the middle of their faces once a month," said a
+Black Methodist. For there are Methodists here, likewise Presbyterians
+and Plymouth Brethren--besides the Church of Ireland folks, who only
+are called Protestants. All these must be exempted from the charge of
+dirtiness. Cleanliness, neatness, prosperity, and Protestantism seem
+to go together. Father Humphreys himself would not deny this dictum.
+
+For the other clause of the indictment--lack of enterprise--the
+Westporters are no worse and no better than their neighbours. The
+Corkers make nothing of their harbour, spending most of their time in
+talking politics and cursing England. Commercial men speak of the
+difficulty of doing business at Cork, which does not keep its
+appointments, is slippery, and requires much spirituous lubrication.
+Cork ruins more young commercial men than any city in Britain, and
+owing to the unreliability of its citizens, is more difficult to work.
+Galway has scores of ruined warehouses and factories, and has been
+discussing the advisability of building a Town Hall for forty years
+at least. Limerick has a noble river, with an elaborate system of
+quays, on which no business is done. The estuary of the Shannon, some
+ten miles wide, lies just below, opening on the Atlantic; and a little
+enterprise would make the city the Irish head-quarters for grain. The
+quays are peopled by loafers, barefooted gossiping women, and dirty,
+ragged children playing at marbles. Great buildings erected to hold
+the stores that never come, or to manufacture Irish productions which
+nobody makes, are falling into ruin. I saw the wild birds of the air
+flying through them, while the people were emigrating or complaining,
+and nothing seemed to flourish but religious services and
+fowl-stealing. It was during my sojourn in Limerick that somebody
+complained to the Town Council of poultry depredations, which
+complaint drew from that august body a counter-complaint to the effect
+that the same complainant had complained before, and that he always
+did it during a Retreat, that is, when the town was full of people
+engaged in special religious services--so that the heretic observer,
+and especially the representative of the _Gazette_, referred to by
+name, might couple the salvation of souls with the perdition of hens,
+to the great discredit of the faith. But this is a digression.
+
+Westport should brush itself up, cleanse its streets, tidy up its
+shops, sanitate its surroundings, and offer decent accommodation to
+tourists. The latter does exist, but is scarce and hard to find. The
+people of Cork, Limerick, and Galway blame England and English rule
+for the poverty which is their own fault alone. They hate the
+Northerners as idle unsuccessful men hate successful industrious men.
+Belfast is a standing reproach. The people of Leinster, Munster, and
+Connaught have had the same government under which Ulster has
+flourished, with incomparably greater advantages of soil and climate
+than Ulster, with better harbours and a better trading position. But
+instead of working they stand with folded hands complaining. Instead
+of putting their own shoulders to the wheel they wait for somebody to
+lift them out of the rut. Instead of modern methods of agriculture,
+fishing, or what not, they cling to the ancient ways, and resent
+advice. The women will not take service; the men will not dig, chop,
+hammer. They are essentially bone-idle--laziness is in their blood.
+They will not exert themselves. As Father McPhilpin says, "They will
+not move. You cannot stir them if you take them by the shoulders and
+haul at them." What will Home Rule do for such people? Will it serve
+them instead of work? Will it content the grumblers? Will it silence
+the agitators? Will it convert the people to industry? Will it imbue
+them with enterprise? Will it make them dig, chop, fish, hammer? Will
+it make the factory hands regular day by day? Will it cause the women
+to wash themselves and cleanse their houses? Will it change their
+ingrained sluttishness to tidiness and neatness and decency? Father
+Mahony, of Cork, said that the Irish fisherman turned his back on the
+teeming treasures of the deep, because he groaned beneath the cruel
+English yoke. Since then I have seen him fishing, but I did not hear
+him groan. He wanted boats, nets, and to be taught their use. Mr.
+Balfour supplied him with plant and instructions. Father Mahony and
+his tribe of wind-bags feed the people on empty air. The starving poor
+ask for bread, and they get a speech. They are told to go on
+grumbling, and things will come all right. Nobody ever tells them to
+work. Murder and robbery, outrage and spoliation, landlord-shooting
+and moonlighting, are easier ways of getting what they want. The Plan
+of Campaign, the No Rent combination, the Land League brotherhood when
+rightly considered, were just so many substitutes for honest work.
+Ireland will be happy when Ireland is industrious, and not a moment
+before.
+
+No need to say that the Westporters are Home Rulers. The clean and
+tidy folks, the Protestant minority, are heart and soul against the
+bill, but the respectable voters are swamped all over Ireland, by
+devotees of the priests. "We think the franchise much too low," said a
+Presbyterian. "We think illiterate Ireland, with its abject servility
+to the Catholic clergy, quite unfit to exercise the privilege of
+sending men to Parliament. We think the intelligent minority should
+rule, and that the principles which obtain in other matters might well
+be applied to Parliamentary elections. These ignorant people are no
+more fit to elect M.P.'s than to elect the President of the Royal
+Society or the President of the Royal Academy. And yet if mere numbers
+must decide, if the counting of heads is to make things right or
+wrong, why not let the people decide these distinctions? The West of
+Ireland folks know quite as much of art or science as of Home Rule, or
+any other political question. They have returned, and will in future
+return, the nominees of the priests."
+
+One of the highest legal authorities in Ireland, himself a Roman
+Catholic, said to me:--
+
+"You saw the elections voided by reason of undue priestly influence.
+That was because, in the cases so examined, money was available to pay
+the costs of appeal. If there had been money enough to contest every
+case where a Nationalist was returned, you would have seen every such
+election proved equally illegal, and every one would have been
+adjudicated void."
+
+The Westport folks are looking for great things from the great
+Parliament in College Green. A Sligo man who has lived in Dublin was
+yesterday holding forth on these prospective benefits, his only
+auditor being one Michael, an ancient waiter of the finest Irish
+brand. Michael is both pious and excitable, and must have an abnormal
+bump of wonder. He is a small man with a big head, and is very
+demonstrative with his hands. He abounds with pious (and other)
+ejaculations, and belongs to that popular class which is profuse in
+expressions of surprise and admiration. The most commonplace
+observation evokes a "D'ye see that, now?" a "D'ye tell me so, thin?"
+or a "Whillaloo! but that bates all!" As will be seen, Michael
+artistically suits his exclamations to the tone and matter of the
+principal narrator, mixing up Christianity and Paganism in a quaintly
+composite style, but always keeping in harmony with the subject. The
+Sligo man said:--
+
+"I seen the mails go on the boat at Kingstown, an' there was hundhreds
+of bags, no less."
+
+"Heavenly Fa-a-ther!" said Michael, throwing up eyes and hands.
+
+"Divil a lie in it. 'Twas six hundhred, I believe."
+
+"Holy Moses preserve us!"
+
+"An' the rivinue is millions an' millions o' pounds."
+
+"The saints in glory!"
+
+"An' wid Home Rule we'd have all that for Oireland."
+
+"Julius Saysar an' Nibuchadnizzar!"
+
+"Forty millions o' goolden sovereigns, divil a less."
+
+"Thunder an' ouns, but ye startle me!"
+
+"An' we're losin' all that"--
+
+"Save _an'_ deliver us!"
+
+"Becase the English takes it"--
+
+"Holy Virgin undefiled!"
+
+"To pay peelers an' sojers"--
+
+"Bloody end to thim!"
+
+"To murther and evict us"--
+
+"Lord help us!"
+
+"An' collect taxes an' rint."
+
+"Hell's blazes!"
+
+Ten minutes after this conversation under my window Michael adroitly
+introduced the subject of postal profits in Ireland. I told him there
+was an ascertained loss of Ł50,000 a year, which the new Legislature
+would have to make up somehow. Michael bore the change with fortitude.
+The loss of forty millions plus fifty thousand would have upset many a
+man, but Michael only threw up his eyes and said very softly--
+
+"Heavenly Fa-a-ther!"
+
+Westport, June 6th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 32.--HOME RULE AND IRISH IMMIGRATION.
+
+
+A bright country town with a big green square called The Mall,
+bordered by rows of great elm trees and brilliantly whitewashed
+houses. The town is about a mile from the station, and the way is
+pleasant enough. Plenty of trees and pleasant pastures with thriving
+cattle, mansions with umbrageous carriage-drives, and the immense mass
+of Croagh Patrick fifteen miles away towering over all. The famous
+mountain when seen from Castlebar, is as exactly triangular as an
+Egyptian pyramid, or the famous mound of Waterloo. Few British heights
+have the striking outline of Croagh Patrick, which may be called the
+Matterhorn of Ireland. Castlebar is always dotted with soldiers, The
+Buffs are now marching through the town, on their way to the exercise
+ground, but the sight is so familiar that the street urchins hardly
+turn their heads. The Protestant Church, square-towered, fills a
+corner of The Mall, and there stands a statue of General O'Malley,
+with a drawn sword of white marble. Lord Lucan, of the Balaklava
+Charge, hailed from Castlebar. The town and its precincts belong to
+the Lucans. There is a convent with a big statue of the Virgin Mary,
+and the usual high wall. The shops are better than those of Westport,
+and the streets are far above the Irish average in order and
+cleanliness. The country around is rich in antiquities. Burrishoole
+Abbey and Aughnagower Tower, with the splendid Round Tower of
+Turlough, are within easy distance, the last a brisk hour's walk from
+Castlebar. There in the graveyard I met a Catholic priest of more than
+average breadth and culture, who discussed Home Rule with apparent
+sincerity, and with a keener insight than is possessed by most of his
+profession. He said:--
+
+"When the last explosion took place at Dublin, the first to apprise me
+of the affair was the Bishop of my diocese, whose comment was summed
+up in the two words 'Castle job!' Now that riled me. I am tired of
+that kind of criticism."
+
+Here I may interpolate the critique of Colonel Nolan, who was the
+first to apprise me of the occurrence.--"I do not say that the Irish
+Government officials are responsible for the explosion. That would not
+be fair, as there is no evidence against them. But I do say that if
+they did arrange the blow-up they could not have selected a better
+time, and if some mistaken Irish Nationalist be the guilty person he
+could not have selected a worse time from a patriotic point of view."
+Thus spake the Colonel, who has an excellent reputation in his own
+district. The stoutest Conservatives of Tuam speak well of him. "All
+the Nolans are good," said a staunch Unionist; and another said, "The
+Nolans are a good breed. The Colonel is good, and Sebastian Nolan is
+just as good. Nobody can find fault with the Nolans apart from
+politics." The Colonel is one of the nine Parnellites accursed of the
+priests. Perhaps he was present at the Parnellite meeting at Athenry,
+regarding which Canon Canton, parish priest of Athenry, declared from
+the altar that every person attending it would be guilty of mortal
+sin. English readers will note that the Parnellites resent priestly
+dictation.
+
+Another interpolation anent "the Castle job." I thought to corner a
+great Athlone politician by questions _re_ the recent moonlighting,
+incendiarism, and attempted murders in Limerick and Clare. He said--
+
+"All these things are concocted and paid for by the Tories of England.
+The reason Balfour seemed to be so successful was simple enough when
+you know the explanation. Balfour and his friends kept the
+moonlighters and such like people going. They paid regular gangs of
+marauders to disturb the country while the Liberals were in power.
+When the Tories get in, these same gangs are paid to be quiet. Then
+the Tories go about saying, 'Look at the order we can keep.' Every
+shot fired in County Clare is paid for by the English Tories. Sure, I
+have it from them that knows. Ye might talk for a month an' ye'd never
+change my opinion. There's betther heads than mine to undershtand
+these things, men that has the larnin', an' is the thrue frinds of
+Ireland. When I hear them spake from the altar 'tis enough for me. I
+lave it to them. Ye couldn't turn me in politics or religion, an' I
+wouldn't listen to anybody but my insthructors since I was twelve
+inches high." Well might Colonel Winter, who knows the speaker
+above-mentioned, say to me, "He has read a good deal, but his reading
+seems to have done him no good."
+
+It is time I went back to Turlough's Tower and my phoenix priest who
+was riled to hear his Bishop speak of the Dublin explosion as a
+"Castle job." He claimed that "the clergy are unwilling instruments in
+the hands of the Irish people, who are unconquerable even after seven
+hundred years of English rule. The Irish priesthood is so powerful an
+element of Irish life, not because it leads, but because it follows.
+Powerful popular movements coerce the clergy, who are bound to join
+the stream, or be for ever left behind. No doubt at all that, being
+once in, they endeavour to direct the current of opinion in the course
+most favourable to the Catholic religion. To do otherwise would be to
+deny their profession, to be traitors to the Church. They did not
+commence the agitation. The Church instinctively sticks to what is
+established, and opposes violent revolutionary action. History will
+bear me out. The clergy stamped out the Smith-O'Brien insurrection.
+The Catholic clergy of the present day, mostly the sons of farmers,
+are perhaps more ardently political than the clergy of a former day, a
+little less broad in view, a little more hot-headed; yet in the main
+are subject to the invariable law I laid down at first--that is, they
+only follow and direct, they do not lead, or at any rate they only
+place themselves in the front when the safety of the Church demands
+it. The bulk of the clergy believe that the time to lead has now come.
+My own opinion, in which I am supported by a very few,--but I am happy
+to say a very distinguished few,--is this: The Roman Catholic Church
+is making immense progress in England; a closer and closer connection
+with England will ultimately do far more for the Church than can be
+hoped from revolutionary and republican Ireland. We should by a Home
+Rule Bill gain much ground at first, but we should as rapidly lose it,
+while our hold on England would be altogether gone. Many of the
+so-called Catholic Nationalists are atheists at heart, and the
+tendency of modern education is decidedly materialistic. So that
+instead of progressive conquest the Church would experience
+progressive decline, which would be all the more striking after the
+great but momentary accession of prestige conferred by the Home Rule
+Bill. My theory is--Let well alone. The popular idea is to achieve
+commanding and lasting success at a blow."
+
+The Castlebar folks have diverse opinions, the decent minority, the
+intelligence of the place, being Unionist, as in every other Irish
+town. A steady, well-clad yeoman said:--"I've looked at the thing in a
+hundred ways, and although I confess that I voted for Home Rule, yet
+when we have time to consider it, and to watch the debate on every
+point, we may be excused if we become doubtful as to the good it will
+do. The people round here are so ignorant, that talking sense to them
+is waste of time. They will put their trust in coal mines and the like
+of that. Now, I have gone into the subject of Irish mines. I have read
+the subject up from beginning to end. Wicklow gold would cost us a
+pound for ten shillings' worth. The silver mines wouldn't pay, and the
+lead mines are a fraud; while the copper mines would ruin anybody who
+put their money into them. I know something about Irish coal. Lord
+Ranfurly did his best for Irish coal at Dungannon. Mines were sunk and
+coal was found, but it was worthless. Well, it fetched half a crown a
+ton, and people on the spot went on paying a guinea a ton for
+Newcastle coal because it was cheaper in the end. We may have iron,
+but what's the good when we have no coal to smelt it? The Irish
+forests which formerly were used for this purpose are all gone. Then
+the people put their trust in wool and cotton manufactures. They may
+do something with the wool, because England is waking up to the
+superior quality of Irish woollen productions; but in the cotton
+England is here, there and everywhere before us. 'Oh,' say some who
+should know better, 'put a duty on English goods, and make the Irish
+buy their own productions.' What rubbish! when England buys almost
+every yard of Irish woollen stuff, and could choke us off in a moment
+by counter-tariffs. Without English custom the Irish tweed mills would
+not run a single day.
+
+"As an Irishman, I should like to have a Parliament of my own. I
+suppose that is a respectable ambition. At the same time, I cannot see
+where it would do us any substantial good. No, I do not think the
+present Nationalist members loyal to the English Crown. Nor are they
+traitors. A priest explained that very well. There's a distinction. 'A
+man may not be loyal and yet not be a traitor, for how can a man be a
+traitor to a foreign government?' said he. That sounded like the
+truth. I thought that a reasonable statement. For, after all, we _are_
+under foreign rule, and we have a perfect right to revolt against it
+and throw off the English yoke if we could do it, and if it suited us
+to do it. How to do it has been the talk since my childhood, and many
+a year before. It is the leading idea of all secret societies, and
+hardly any young man in Kerry and Clare but belongs to one or other of
+them. The idea is to get rid of the landlords who hold the country for
+England. There it is, now. We'll never be a contented conquered
+province like Scotland. We'd be all right if we could only make
+ourselves content. But the Divil is in us. That's what ye'll say. The
+Divil himself is in Irishmen."
+
+The Mayo folks are great temporary migrants. From the County Mayo and
+its neighbour Roscommon come the bands of Irish harvesters which
+annually invade England. Latterly they are going more than ever, and
+the women also are joining in large numbers. The unsettled state of
+the country and the threat of a College Green Parliament have made
+work scarcer and scarcer, and the prevailing belief among the better
+classes that the bill is too absurd to become law, is not sufficient
+to counteract the chronic want of confidence inspired by the presence
+of Mr. Gladstone at the helm of state. Five hundred workers went from
+Westport Quay to Glasgow the other evening. More than two-thirds were
+women from Achil Island, sturdy and sun-burnt, quaintly dressed in
+short red kirtle, brilliant striped shawl, and enormous lace-up boots,
+of fearful crushing power. Though not forbidding, the women were very
+plain, ethnologically of low type, with small turn-up noses, small
+eyes, large jaws, and large flat cheekbones. The men were ugly as sin
+and coarse as young bulls, of which their movements were remindful. A
+piper struck up a jig and couples of men danced wildly about, the
+women looking on. Five shillings only for forty hours' sea-sickness,
+with permission to stand about the deck all the time. Berths were, of
+course, out of the question, and the boat moved slowly into the
+Atlantic with hundreds of bareheaded women leaning over the sides.
+Another boat-load will land at Liverpool, to return in September and
+October. The best-informed people of these parts think that under the
+proposed change the young female population of Mayo would be compelled
+to stay in England altogether, and that their competition in the
+English labour market would materially lower the rate of factory wage.
+"They live hard and work like slaves when away from Ireland," said an
+experienced sergeant of the Royal Irish Constabulary. "And yet they
+are lazy, for on their return they will live somehow on the money they
+bring back until the time comes to go again, and during the interval
+they will hardly wash themselves. They will not work in their own
+districts, nor for their friends, the small farmers. Partly pride,
+partly laziness; you cannot understand them. The man who attempts to
+explain the inconsistencies of the Irish character will have all his
+work before him. Make the country a peasant-proprietary to suit the
+small farmers, and the labouring class will go to England and Scotland
+to live. The abolition of the big farmers will cut the ground from
+under their feet. You will have Ireland bossing your elections, as in
+America, and cutting the legs from under your artisans. For let me
+tell you that once Paddy learns mechanical work he is a heap smarter
+than any Englishman."
+
+If Home Rule should become law, and if England should be over-run by
+the charming people of Connaught, the brutal Saxon will be interested
+to observe some of the ancient customs to which they cling with a
+touching tenacity. Marriage with the Connaught folks is entirely a
+matter of pecuniary bargain. The young folks have no act or part in
+the arrangements. The seniors meet and form a committee of ways and
+means. How much money has your son? How much has your daughter? The
+details once understood, the parties agree or disagree, or leave the
+matter pending while they respectively look about for a better
+bargain. And even if the bargain be ostensibly agreed to, either party
+is at liberty to at once break the match, on hearing of something
+better. The prospective bride and bridegroom have nothing to say in
+the negotiations, and may never have seen each other in their lives.
+Previous acquaintance is not considered necessary, and the high
+contracting parties are frequently married without having met before
+they meet at the altar. This was hard to believe, but careful inquiry
+established the fact. Never was a case of rebellion recorded. The lady
+takes the goods the gods provide her, and the gentleman believes that
+the custom yields all prizes and no blanks. Marriage is indeed a
+lottery in Connaught. The system works well, for unfaithfulness is
+said to be unknown. The Connaught funerals are impressive. One of
+these I have seen, and one contents me well. The coffin arrived on a
+country cart, the wife and family of the deceased sitting on the body,
+after the fashion attributed to English juries. To sit elsewhere than
+on the coffin would in Connaught be considered a mark of disrespect.
+The children sit on the head and feet, the wife jumps on the chest of
+the dear departed, and away goes the donkey. The party dismount at the
+churchyard gates, and as the coffin enters they raise the Irish cry, a
+blood-curdling wail that makes your muscles creep, while a cold chill
+runs down your spine, and you sternly make for home. You may as well
+see it out, for you can hear the "Keen" two miles away against the
+wind. The mourners clasp their hands and move them quickly up and
+down, recounting the deceased's good deeds, and exclaiming, in Irish
+and English, "Why did ye die? Ah, thin, why did ye die?" To which very
+reasonable query no satisfactory answer is obtainable. The widow is
+expected to tear her hair, if any, and to be perfectly inconsolable
+until the churchyard wall is cleared on leaving. Then, and not before,
+she may address herself to mundane things. Good "Keeners" are in much
+request, and a really efficient howler is sure of regular employment.
+The Connaught folks are somewhat rough-and-ready with their dead.
+Colonel Winter, of the Buffs, told me that he came across a
+donkey-cart in charge of two men, who were waiting at a cross-road. A
+coffin had been removed from the cart, and stood on its end hard by.
+"I thought it was an empty coffin," said the Colonel, "but it wasn't.
+The men were waiting, by appointment, for the mourners, and meanwhile
+the old lady in the coffin was standing on her head. Wonderful country
+is Ireland.
+
+"An old woman died in the workhouse of typhus fever, or some other
+contagious disorder. The corpse was placed in a parish coffin, and
+was about to be buried, when a relative came forward and offered to
+take charge of the funeral, declining to accept the workhouse coffin.
+The authorities consented, on condition that the proposed coffin
+should be large enough to enclose the first one, explaining that the
+body was dangerously contagious. The relative, a stout farmer, duly
+arrived at the workhouse with the new coffin, which was found to be
+too small to include the first one, and the authorities thereupon
+refused to have the coffins changed. So the mourner knocked down two
+men, and, making his way into the dead-room, burst open the receptacle
+containing his revered grandmother, whipped her out of the parochial
+box, planked her into the family coffin, and triumphantly walked her
+off on his shoulder. There was filial piety for you! They arrested
+that man, locked him up, and, for aught I know, left the old lady to
+bury herself, which must have been a great hardship. What Englishman
+would have done as much for his grandmother? And yet they say that
+Connaught men have no enterprise!"
+
+A Protestant of Castlebar said:--"If the English people fail to
+correctly estimate the supreme importance of the present crisis it is
+all over with us, and, I think, with England. If the Unionist party
+persevere they must ultimately win. The facts are all with them.
+Enlightenment is spreading, and if time to spread the truth can be
+gained Home Rule will be as dead as a door-nail. If, on the other
+hand, the English people fail to see the true meaning of Home Rule,
+which is revolution and disintegration, England, from the moment an
+Irish Parliament is established, must be classed with those countries
+from which power has dwindled away; her glory will have commenced to
+wane, her enemies will rejoice, and she will present to the world the
+aspect of a nation in its decadence. The Irish leaders and the Irish
+people alike, who support Home Rule, are ninety-nine hundredths
+disloyal. Already the leaders are cursing England more deeply than
+before, this time for deceiving them about the Home Rule Bill. Their
+most respectable paper is already preparing the ground for further
+agitation. The _Irish Independent_ says that the Irish people are
+being marched from one prison to another, and told that is their
+liberty. Such is the latest criticism of the Home Rule Bill, as
+pronounced by the Nationalist party. The same paper ordered the Lord
+Mayor of Dublin and the City Council to refuse an address of
+congratulation on the marriage of the Duke of York and Princess May,
+and they refused by more than four to one. They refused when it was
+the Duke of Clarence. We could understand that, but why refuse now,
+when Home Rule is adopted as the principal measure of the Government
+whose only aim is the Union of Hearts? The English people must indeed
+be fools if they cannot gauge the feeling that dictated a vote so mean
+as this. Surely the English will at the eleventh hour draw back and
+save us and our country, and themselves and their country from unknown
+disaster. If they allow this ruinous measure to become law I shall
+almost doubt the Bible where it says, 'Surely the net is set in vain
+in the sight of any bird.'"
+
+I met a very savage Separatist in Castlebar. They are numerous in Mayo
+and Galway. The more uncivilised the district, the more ignorant the
+people, the more decided the leaning to Home Rule. My friend was not
+of the peasant class, but rather of the small commercial traveller
+breed, such as, with the clerks and counterskippers of the country
+stores, make up the membership of the Gaelic clubs by which the
+expulsion of the Saxon is confidently expected. He said, "I am for
+complete Independence, and I do not believe in what is called
+constitutional agitation. Who would be free, themselves must strike
+the blow. Every country that has its freedom has fought for it. I
+would not waste a word with England, which has always deceived us and
+is about to deceive us once again. England has always wronged us,
+always robbed us. England has used her vast resources to ruin our
+trade that her own might flourish. The weakest must go to the
+wall--that is the doctrine of England--which thrives by our beggary
+and lives by our death. You have heaps of speakers in England who
+admit this. Gladstone knows it is true. The Irish people have let the
+English eat their bread for generations. The Irish people have seen
+the English spending their money for centuries. This must be stopped
+as soon as possible, and Ireland grows stronger every day. Every
+concession we have obtained has been the result of compulsion, and I
+am for armed combination. Every Irishman should be armed, and know the
+use of arms. The day will come when we shall dictate to England, and
+when we may, if we choose, retaliate on her. We shall have an army and
+navy of our own; all that will come with time. We must creep before we
+walk, and walk before we run. The clubs already know their comrades;
+each man knows his right and left shoulder man, and the man whose
+orders he is to obey. Merely a question of athletic sports, at
+present. But when we get Home Rule the enthusiasm of the people will
+be whetted to such an extent that we shall soon enroll the whole of
+the able-bodied population, and after then, when we get the WORD, you
+will see what will happen. Where would be your isolated handfuls of
+soldiery and police, with roads torn up, bridges destroyed, and an
+entire population rising against them? Yes, you might put us down, but
+we'd first have some fun. In a week we'd not leave a red coat in the
+island."
+
+The gratitude, the warm generosity of the Irish people is very
+beautiful. The Union of Hearts, however, as a paying investment seems
+to have fallen considerably below par.
+
+Castlebar, June 8th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 33.--TUAM'S INDIGNATION MEETING.
+
+
+Here I am, after two hours' journey by the Midland and Great Western
+Railway, which leads to most of the good things in Ireland, and is
+uncommonly well managed, and with much enterprise. By the Midland and
+Great Western Railway you may cover the best tourist districts in
+quick time and with great comfort. By it you may tackle Connemara
+either from Galway or Westport, and the company, subsidised by Mr.
+Balfour, will shortly open fifty miles of line between Galway and
+Clifden. Then we want a thirty-mile continuation from Clifden by
+Letterfrack and Leenane to Westport, and the circle will be complete.
+For that, Paddy must wait until the Tories are again in office. As he
+will tell you, the Liberals spend their strength in sympathetic talk.
+Mr. Hastings, of Westport, said:--"I care not who hears me say that
+the Tories have instituted the public works which have so much
+benefited the country. The Liberals have always been illiberal in this
+respect. Mr. Balfour did Ireland more good than any Liberal Irish
+Secretary." Mr. Hastings is as good a Catholic Home Ruler as Father
+McPhilpin, who said substantially the same thing. Ballina is on the
+Moy--every self-respecting town in Ireland has a salmon river--and the
+Midland and Great Western Railway gives fishing tickets to tourists,
+who anywhere on this line should find themselves in Paradise. From the
+three lakes of Mullingar to the Shannon at Athlone, from the Moy at
+Ballina to the Corrib at Galway, the waters swarm with fish. The
+salmon weir at Galway is worth a long journey to see. The fish
+literally jostle each other in the water. They positively elbow each
+other about. Sometimes you may stand against the salmon ladder in the
+middle of the town, and although the water is clear as crystal you
+cannot see the bottom for fish--great, silvery salmon, upon whose
+backs you think you might walk across the river. The Moy at Ballina is
+perhaps fifty yards wide, and the town boasts two fine bridges, one of
+which is flanked by a big Catholic church. The streets are not
+handsome, nor yet mean. Whiskey shops abound, though they are not
+quite so numerous as in some parts of Ennis, where, in Mill Street,
+about three-fourths of the shops sell liquor. Castleisland in Kerry
+would also beat Ballina. Mr. Reid, of Aldershot, said:--"The
+population of Castleisland is only one thousand two hundred, but I
+counted forty-eight whiskey-shops on one side of the street." Of a row
+of eleven houses near the main bridge of Ballina I counted seven
+whiskey-shops, and one of the remaining four was void. There were
+several drink-shops opposite, so that the people are adequately
+supplied with the means of festivity. The place has no striking
+features, and seems to vegetate in the way common to Irish country
+towns. It probably lives on the markets, waking up once a week, and
+immediately going to sleep again. The Post Office counter had two
+bottles of ink and no pen, and the young man in charge was whistling
+"The Minstrel Boy." The shop-keepers were mostly standing at their
+doors, congratulating each other on the fine weather. A long, long
+street leading uphill promised a view of the surrounding country, but
+the result was not worth the trouble. It led in the direction of
+Ardnaree, which my Irish scholarship translates "King's Hill," but I
+stopped short at the ruins of the old workhouse, and after a glance
+over the domain of Captain Jones went back through the double row of
+fairly good cottages, and the numerous clans of cocks and hens which
+scratched for a precarious living on the King's highway. The people
+turned out _en masse_ to look at me, and to discuss my country, race,
+business, appearance, and probable income. The Connaught folks have so
+little change, are so wedded to one dull round, that when I observe
+the interest my passage evokes I feel like a public benefactor. A bell
+rings at the Catholic church. Three strokes and a pause. Then three
+more and another pause. A lounger on the bridge reverently raises his
+hat, and seeing himself observed starts like a guilty wretch upon a
+fearful summons. I ask him what the ringing means, and with a
+deprecatory wag of his head he says:--
+
+"Deed an' deed thin, I couldn't tell ye."
+
+The Town Crier unconsciously launched me into business, and soon I was
+floating on a high tide of political declamation. What the crier cried
+I could not at all make out, for the accent of the Ballina folks is
+exceedingly full-flavoured. When he stopped I turned to a well-dressed
+young man near me and said, "He does not finish, as in England, with
+God save the Queen."
+
+"No," said my friend with a laugh, "he has too much regard for his
+skin."
+
+"What would happen if he expressed his loyalty?"
+
+"He would be instantly rolled in the gutter. The people would be on
+him in a moment. He'd be like a daisy in a bull's mouth. He might say
+"God save Ireland," just to round the thing off, but "God save the
+Queen"!
+
+My friend was a Home Ruler, and yet unlike the rest. He said: "I am a
+Home Ruler because I think Home Rule inevitable now the English people
+have given way so far. Give Paddy an inch and you may trust him to
+take an ell. We must have something like Home Rule to put an end to
+the agitation which is destroying the country. It is now our only
+chance, and in my opinion a very poor chance, but we are reduced so
+low that we think the bottom is touched. The various political
+agencies which have frightened away capital and entirely abolished
+enterprise will continue their work until some measure of Home Rule is
+given to the country, and then things will come to a head at once. It
+is barely possible that good might ultimately result, but young men
+would be gray-headed before things would work smoothly. The posture of
+the poorer classes is simply absurd. They will have a dreadful
+awakening, and that will also do good. They are doing nothing now
+except waiting for the wonderful things they have been told will take
+place when Irishmen get into power. You must have heard the
+extraordinary things they say about the mines and factories that will
+be everywhere opened. Some of their popular orators tell them of the
+prosperity of Ireland before the Union. That is true enough, but the
+conditions are totally changed. We did something in the way of
+manufacturing, but we could not do it now. We had no Germany, no
+America to compete against. Those who tell us to revive that period of
+prosperity by the same means might just as well tell us to revive the
+system of tribal lands or the chieftainship of Brian Boru.
+
+"The people need some tremendous shock to bring them to their senses.
+They used to work much better, to stand, as it were, on their own
+feet. Now they make little or no exertion. They know they will never
+be allowed to starve. They know that at the cry of their distress
+England and America will rush to their succour. And they have tasted
+the delights of not paying. First it was the rent, the impossible
+rent. In this they had a world-wide sympathy, and a very large number
+of undeserving persons well able to pay chummed in with the deserving
+people who were really unable to meet their engagements. And at the
+meetings of farmers to decide on united action, the men who could pay
+but would not were always the most resolute in their opposition to the
+landlord. This was natural enough, for they had most to gain by
+withholding payment. The landlords always knew which was which, and
+would issue ejectment processes against those able to pay, but what
+could be done against a whole county of No-rent folks? And never have
+these people been without aid and sympathy from English politicians.
+We have had them in Ireland by the dozen, going round the farmers and
+encouraging them to persevere.
+
+"The great advantage of Home Rule in the eyes of the farmers is this
+and this only--that an Irish House would settle the land question for
+ever. The people would take a good bill from the House of Commons at
+Westminster if they could get it, but they can't. They believe that
+their only hope is with an Irish Parliament. The most intelligent are
+now somewhat doubtful as to the substantial benefits to come. They
+fear heavy taxation. They say that everything must come out of the
+land, and they wonder whether the change would pay them after all. On
+the whole, they will risk it, and under the advice of the clergy, who
+have their own little ideas, they will continue to vote for Home Rule.
+Throw out this bill, let Mr. Balfour settle the land question, and the
+agitators will not have a leg left to stand on."
+
+All this I steadfastly believe. No farmer wants Home Rule for anything
+beyond his personal interests. Mr. Patrick Gibbons, of Carnalurgan, is
+one of the smartest small farmers I have met, and he confirms the
+statements of his fellows. "Give the farmers the land for a reasonable
+rent," said he, "and they would not care two straws for Home Rule."
+The small traders admit that they would like it, as a mere matter of
+fancy, and because they have been from time to time assured that the
+English Parliament is the sole cause of Ireland's decadence. They are
+assured that an Irish Parliament by instituting immense public works
+would prevent emigration, and that the people staying at home and
+earning money would bring custom to their shops. Nearly everybody
+insists on an exclusive system of protective tariffs. England, they
+say, competes too strongly. Ireland cannot stand up to her. She must
+be kept out at any cost.
+
+According to a Ballina Nationalist this is where the "shock" will come
+in. He said:--
+
+"The bill is being whittled down to nothing. Gladstone is betraying
+us. It is doubtful if he ever was in earnest. 'Twould be no Home Rule
+Bill at all, if even it was passed. An' what d'ye mane by refusing us
+the right to put on whatever harbour dues we choose? An' what d'ye
+mane by sayin' we're not to impose protective tariffs to help Irish
+industries? Ye wish to say, 'Here's yer Parlimint. Ye're responsible
+for the government of the counthry, for the advancement of the
+counthry, for the prosperity of the counthry; but ye mustn't do what
+ye think best to bring about all this. When we have a Parlimint we'll
+do as _we_ choose, an' not as _you_ choose, Ye have no right to
+dictate what we shall do, nor what we shan't do. We'll do what we
+think proper, an' England must make the best of it. England has always
+considered herself: now we'll consider ourselves. If we're not to
+govern the counthry in every way that _we_ think best, why on earth
+would we want a Parlimint at all? Tell me that, now. If Ireland is to
+be governed from England, if we are to have any interference, what
+betther off will we be? An' Protection is the very first cry we shall
+raise."
+
+The good folks at Tuam have held an indignation meeting to protest
+against the statements contained in my Tuam letter, which they
+characterise as "vile slanders" which they wish to "hurl back in my
+teeth" (if any). The meeting took place in the Town Hall on Sunday,
+which day is usually selected by the Tuamites to protest against the
+brutal Saxon, and to hold meetings of the National League, a
+colourable successor to the Land League. All these meetings are
+convened by priests, addressed by priests, governed by priests. The
+Tuamites are among the most priest-ridden people in Ireland, and,
+after having seen Galway and Limerick, this is saying a good deal. The
+meeting was from beginning to end a screaming farce, wherein language
+was used fit only for an Irish House of Commons. The vocabulary of
+Irish Town Commissioners and Irish Poor Law Guardians was laid under
+heavy contribution. The speakers hurled at the _Gazette_ the pet terms
+they usually and properly reserve for each other. The too flattering
+terms which in a moment of weakness I applied to Tuam and its people
+are described as "lying, hellish, mendacious misrepresentations."
+Misther MacCormack said the English people would know there was "not
+a wurrud of thruth in these miserable lies." The report of the _Tuam
+Herald_ reads like a faction fight in a whiskey-shop. You can hear the
+trailing of coats, the crack of shillelaghs on thick Irish skulls, the
+yells of hurroosh, whirroo, and O'Donnell aboo! Towards the end your
+high-wrought imagination can almost smell the sticking plaister, so
+vivid is the picture. "The bare-faced slanders of this hireling scribe
+from the slums of Birmingham" were hotly denounced, but nobody said
+what they were. The clergy and their serfs were equally silent on this
+point. I steadfastly adhere to every syllable of my Tuam letter. I
+challenge the clergy and laity combined to put their fingers on a
+single assertion which is untrue, or even overstated. Let them point
+out a single inaccuracy, if they can. To make sweeping statements, to
+say that this "gutter-snipe," this "hireling calumniator," this
+"blackguard Birmingham man" has made a series of "reckless calumnies,"
+"devoid of one particle of truth," is not sufficiently precise. I
+stand by every word I have uttered; I am prepared to hold my ground on
+every single point. Most of my information was obtained from Catholics
+who are heart-weary of priestly tyranny and priestly intimidation; who
+are sufficiently enlightened to see that priestly power is based on
+the ignorance of priestly dupes, that priestly influence is the real
+slavery of Ireland, the abject condition of the poor is its
+unmistakable result, and that where there are priests in Ireland there
+are ignorance and dirt in exact proportion. They have compared the
+clean cottages of the North with the filthy hovels of the South, and
+they have drawn their own conclusions. But to descend to detail. What
+do the Tuamites deny? "Not a particle of truth in the whole letter!"
+Father Humphreys said my Tipperary letter was "a pure invention,"
+without a syllable of truth. Since then Father Humphreys has been
+compelled to admit, in writing, that all I said was true, and that he
+"could not have believed it possible." That was his apology.
+
+Turning to the Tuam letter, I find these words--
+
+"The educated Catholics are excellent people--none better anywhere,
+none more tolerant." This is construed into "a gross insult on our
+holy priests, and particularly on our Archbishop," who, by the way,
+was not mentioned or made the subject of any allusion, however remote.
+Do the Tuamites deny that "many of the streets are wretchedly built,"
+and "the Galway road shows how easily the Catholic poor are
+satisfied?" Do they deny that the cabins in this district are
+"aboriginal in build, and also indescribably filthy," and that "the
+condition of the inmates is not one whit higher than that obtaining in
+the wigwams of the native Americans?" Do they deny that "the hooded
+women, barefooted, bronzed, and tanned by constant exposure, are
+wonderfully like the squaws brought from the Far West by Buffalo
+Bill?"
+
+All this I reiterate and firmly maintain, with the addition of the
+statement that the squaws were in a condition of compulsory
+cleanliness the like of which seems never to be attained by the ladies
+of the Galway Road, Tuam. The meeting is called a "monster" meeting.
+How many people does the Tuam Town Hall hold? The fact is that the
+Town Hall of Tuam, with the entire population of Tuam thrown in, could
+be put into the Town Hall of Birmingham. Do the Tuamites deny that Mr.
+Strachan, one of their most worthy citizens, is unable to walk the
+streets of the town wherein live the people he has benefited, without
+a guard of policemen to protect him from the cut-throat emissaries of
+the Land League? So it was when I visited Tuam, Mr. Strachan's crimes
+being the purchase of a farm in the Land Court and his Protestant
+creed. Do they deny the scenes of persecution I described as having
+taken place in former days? All this I had from a source more reliable
+than the whole Papist hierarchy. The Tuamites can deny nothing of what
+I have written. The tumbledown town is there, the filthy cabins and
+degraded squaws of the Galway Road are still festering in their own
+putridity, and probably the police are still preserving Strachan from
+the fate of the poor fellow so brutally murdered near Tuam a few weeks
+ago. The priests called a town meeting to protest against insult to
+the Church. Great is Diana of the Ephesians! When the tenants refused
+to pay their lawful dues the priests called no meeting. When the
+country from end to end echoed with the lamentations of widows and the
+wailing of helpless children whose natural protectors had been
+murdered by the Land League, the Tuamites suppressed their
+indignation, the Tuam priests made no protest. When scores of men were
+butchered at their own firesides, shot in their beds, battered to
+pieces at their own thresholds, these virtuous sacerdotalists never
+said a word, called no town's meeting, used no bad language, spoke not
+of "hirelings," "calumniators," "blackguards," and "liars." Two of the
+speakers threatened personal injury should I again visit the town.
+That is their usual form,--kicking, bludgeoning, outraging, or
+shooting from behind a wall. When they do not shoot they come on in
+herds, like wild buffaloes, to trample on and mutilate their victim.
+From the strong or armed they run like hares. Their fleetness of foot
+is astonishing. The _Tuam News_, owned and edited by the brother of a
+priest, exhibits the intellectual status of the Tuam people. Let us
+quote it once again:--
+
+               TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TUAM NEWS."
+
+  Sir--Permit me a little space in the next issue of the _Tuam
+  News_, relative to my father being killed by the fairies which
+  appeared in the _Tuam News_ of the 8th of April last. I beg to say
+  that he was not killed by the fairies, but I say he was killed by
+  some person or persons unknown as yet. Hoping very soon that the
+  perpetrators of this dastardly outrage will be soon brought to
+  light, I am, Mr. Editor, yours obediently,
+
+                                            DAVID REDINGTON.
+  Kilcreevanty, May 8th, '93.
+
+After this I need add nothing to what I have said except a
+pronouncement of Father Curran, who said that "Tuam could boast as
+fine schools as Birmingham, and that he would then and there throw
+out a challenge that they boast more intelligence in Tuam than
+Birmingham could afford." Poor Father Curran! Poor Tuam! Poor Tuamites
+with their rags, pigs, filth, priests, fairies, and Intelligence! I
+shall visit them once more. A few photographs from the Galway Road
+would settle the dispute, and render null and void all future Town's
+meetings. They have sworn to slay me, but in visiting their town I
+fear nothing but vermin and typhoid fever. Their threats affect me
+not. As one of their own townsmen remarked,--
+
+"You cannot believe a word they say. They never speak the truth except
+when they call each other liars. And when they are in fear, although
+too lazy to work, they are never too lazy to run. They have no
+independence of thought or action. Their religion crushes all manhood
+out of them. They are the obedient servants of the priests, and no man
+dare say his soul's his own. Any one who did not attend that meeting
+would be a marked man, but if it had been limited to people who know
+the use of soap it would necessarily have been small, even for the
+Tuam Town Hall."
+
+Everywhere in Connaught I hear the people saying, "When you want to
+roast an Irishman you can always find another Irishman to turn the
+spit."
+
+Thrue for ye, ma bouchal!
+
+Ballina, June 10th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 34.--WHY IRELAND DOES NOT PROSPER.
+
+
+A community of small farmers with a sprinkling of resident gentry. All
+sorts of land within a small compass, rock, bog, tillage, and
+excellent grazing. The churchyard is a striking feature. A ruined
+oratory covered with ivy is surrounded by tombstones and other
+mortuary memorials strange to the Saxon eye. The graves are dug east
+and west on a rugged mound hardly deserving to be called a hill,
+although here and there steep enough. Huge masses of sterile mountain
+form the background, and from the ruin the Atlantic is seen, gleaming
+in the sun. Patches of bog with diggers of turf, are close by the
+untouched portions covered with white bog-bean blooms, which at a
+short distance look like a snowfall. On a neighbouring hill is a fine
+old Danish earthwork, a fort, called by the natives "The Rath," fifty
+yards in diameter, the grassy walls, some ten feet high and four yards
+thick, reared in a perfect circle, on which grow gorse and brambles.
+The graveyard is sadly neglected. Costly Irish crosses with elaborate
+carving stand in a wilderness of nettles and long grass. Not a
+semblance of a path anywhere. To walk about is positively dangerous.
+Ruined tombstones, and broken slabs which appear to cover family
+vaults, trip you up at every step. Every yard of progress is made with
+difficulty, and you move nervously among the tall rank nettles in
+momentary fear of dislocating your ankle, or of being suddenly
+precipitated into the reeking charnel house of some defunct Mayo
+family. The Connaught dead seem to be very exclusive. Most of the
+ground is enclosed in small squares, each having a low stone wall,
+half-a-yard thick, with what looks like the gable-end of a stone
+cottage at the west end. Seen from a distance the churchyard looks
+like a ruined village. At first sight you think the place a relic of
+some former age, tenanted by the long-forgotten dead, but a closer
+inspection proves interments almost up to date. Weird memorials of the
+olden time stand cheek by jowl with modern monuments of marble; and
+two of suspiciously Black Country physiognomy are of cast-iron, with
+I.H.S. and a crucifix all correctly moulded, the outlines painted
+vermilion, with an invitation to pray for the souls of the dead in the
+same effective colour. The graveyard shows no end of prayer, but
+absolutely no work. No tidiness, order, reverence, decency, or
+convenience. Nothing but ruin, neglect, disorder, untidiness,
+irreverence, and inconvenience. _Ora et labora_ is an excellent
+proverb which the Irish people have not yet mastered in its entirety.
+To pray _and_ work is as yet a little too much for them. They stop at
+the first word, look round, and think they have done all. This
+graveyard displays the national character. Heaps of piety, but no
+exertion. Any amount of talk, but no work. More than any people, the
+Irish affect respect for their dead. You leave the graveyard of
+Oughewall smarting with nettle stings, and thankful that you have not
+broken your neck. The place will doubtless be tidied, the nettles
+mowed down and pathways made, when the people get Home Rule. They are
+clearly waiting for something. They wish to be freed from the cruel
+English yoke. When this operation is happily effected, they will clean
+their houses, move the dunghills from their doors, wash themselves,
+and go to work in earnest. The Spanish Queen vowed she would never
+wash herself till Gibraltar was retaken from the English. Seven
+hundred years ago the Irish nation must have made a similar vow--and
+kept it.
+
+A passing shower drove me to the shelter of a neighbouring farmhouse,
+where lived a farmer, his wife, and their son and daughter. The place
+was poor but tolerable, the wife being far above the Irish average. The
+living room, about ten feet square, was paved with irregularly-shaped
+stones of all sizes, not particularly flat, but in places decidedly
+humpy; the interstices were of earth, the whole swept fairly clean, but
+certainly not scrubbed. The rafters, of rough wood, were painted black,
+and a rough ladder-like stair, open at the sides, led to the upper
+regions. To have an upstairs is to be an aristocrat. The standard of
+luxury is much lower than in England, for almost any English
+agricultural labourer would have better furniture than that possessed
+by this well-to-do but discontented farmer. An oak cupboard like a
+wardrobe, a round deal table, and four rough rush-bottomed chairs of
+unstained wood comprised the paraphernalia. The kitchen dresser, that
+indispensable requisite of English farm kitchens, with its rows of
+plates and dishes, was nowhere to be seen. The turf fire on the hearth
+needed no stove nor grate, nor was there any in the house. A second
+room on the ground floor, used as a bed room, had a boarded floor, and
+although to English notions bare and bald, having no carpet, pictures,
+dressing table, or washstand, it was clean and inoffensive. The
+churning and dairy operations are carried on in the room first
+described, where also the ducks and hens do feed. The farmer holds
+fifty acres of good land, for which he pays fifty pounds a year. His
+father, who died thirty years ago, paid twenty-four pounds, which he
+thinks a fair rent to-day. Has not made application to the Court,
+although he _might_ benefit by twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. Is
+aware that the Judicial Rent is sometimes fixed at a sum above what the
+tenant had been paying, and admits that this might happen to him. "Yes,
+the land round the house is very good, very good indeed, but what can
+be seen from here is by far the best of it. That is always the way in
+this world, the best at the front."
+
+From this and other remarks of like tendency I gather that the noble
+landlord is in the habit of placing all the best land of his estate
+along the high read, concealing the boggy, rocky portions in the
+remote interior, fraudulently imposing on the public, and alienating
+sympathy from the tenant, thereby inflicting another injustice on
+Ireland.
+
+"The English laws are right enough, as far as they go," said the
+farmer, "but the English will not do the right thing about the land.
+Now we know that an Irish Parliament will settle the matter
+forth-with. That's why we support Home Rule. We know the opinions of
+the men who now represent us, and we can trust them in this matter if
+in no other. The land is the whole of it. If that were once put on an
+unchangeable bottom I would rather be without Home Rule. Some say that
+even if our rents are reduced by one-half, the increased taxes we must
+pay would make us nearly as poor as ever, and that all this bother and
+disturbance would not really save us a penny piece. And I think this
+might be true. So that if something could be done by the English
+Parliament I should prefer it to come that way. And so would we all, a
+hundred times. For with the English Parliament we know where we are,
+and what we're doing. I'm not one to believe that the land will be
+handed over to us without payment. Plenty of them are ignorant enough
+to believe even that. My view is just this: If the English Parliament
+would settle the land question, I would prefer to do without an Irish
+Parliament. That's what all the best farmers say, and nothing else.
+No, I wouldn't invest money in Ireland. No, I wouldn't trust the bulk
+of the present members for Ireland. Yes, I would prefer a more
+respectable class of men who had a stake in the country. But we had to
+take what we could catch, for people who have a stake in the country
+are all against Home Rule. What could we do? We had no choice. We sent
+Home Rulers because an Irish Parliament is pledged to meet our views
+about the land. We know they will fulfil their pledges, not because
+they have promised, nor because they wish to benefit us, but because
+they wish to abolish landlordism and landlords from the country. The
+landlord interest is English interest, and that they want to get rid
+of. Their reasons for settling the land question are not the farmers'
+reasons, but so long as it _is_ settled the farmer will reap the
+benefit, and will not care _why_ it was settled. Give us compulsory
+sale and compulsory purchase, at a fair price, and you will find the
+farmers nearly all voting against Home Rule. No, the priests would not
+be able to stir us once we were comfortably settled. Why, we'd all
+become Conservatives at once. Sure anybody with half-an-eye could see
+that in a pitch-dark night in a bog-hole."
+
+My friend assured me that secret societies are unknown in Mayo, or at
+any rate, in the Westport district. The young men of Clare, he
+thought, were Fenians to a man. "They are queer, blood-thirsty folks,
+enemies to Ireland. Why, they object to other Irishmen. They will not
+allow a poor fellow from another county to work among them as a
+harvest-man. They would warn him off, and if he would not go, they'd
+beat him with sticks, and when once they begin, you never know where
+they'll stop. They should be put down with a strong hand."
+
+But where is the strong hand? Mr. Morley, recently replying to Mr.
+Arnold Forster, said that "it was admitted that the police were
+working as faithfully and as energetically under the present as under
+the late Government, and added that the authorities concerned were
+taking all the steps which experience and responsibility suggested."
+Mr. Morley is right in attributing faithfulness to the police, and
+their energy is doubtless all that can be reasonably expected under
+very discouraging auspices. Mr. Morley speaks more highly of the
+police than the police speak of Mr. Morley. From Donegal to Bantry
+Bay, from Dublin to Galway and Westport, north, south, east, west,
+right, left, and centre, the police of Ireland condemn Mr. Morley's
+administration as feeble, vacillating, and as likely to encourage
+crime. They speak of their duties in despondent tones. I have from
+time to time given their sentiments, which are unvarying. They know
+not what to do, and complain that while they continue to be held
+responsible they dare not follow up their duties with the requisite
+energy. Only yesterday an experienced officer said:--"The men are
+disheartened because they do not know how their action will be taken,
+and because they feel that anything in the nature of enterprise is
+very likely to injure themselves individually. They feel that in the
+matter of arrests it is better to be on the safe side, and then they
+know how unavailing all their efforts must be in the disturbed
+districts of Kerry, Clare, and Limerick, where the arm of the law has
+been paralysed by Mr. Morley's rescision of the salutary provisions so
+necessary in those counties. Outrages and shooting are every-day
+occurrences, for many cases are never reported to the police at all.
+If the police caught the criminals in the act there would be no
+result, for the juries of those three counties would not convict, and
+the venue cannot now be changed to Cork.
+
+"Some of the Nationalist members were the other day asking in the
+House whether the Cork magistrates had not been presented with white
+gloves, and so on, to bring out the fact that there was no crime to
+punish on a recent occasion; but what does this prove? Merely that Mr.
+Balfour's action in changing the venue of three counties to the city
+of Cork, where moonlighters are tried by a jury of independent traders
+of Patrick Street was wise and sagacious. The white gloves of Cork
+were a tribute to Tory administration. The Cork juries convicted their
+men, and stood by the consequences. They have escaped so far, as all
+bold men escape. If the Limerick moonlighters must have been tried in
+Cork there would have been no moonlighting. The police can always
+catch them, when there is any use in catching them. In country
+districts the movements of people are pretty well known, and these
+fellows are always ready to betray each other. Mr. Morley may talk
+fine, and may mean well, but the people who have been riddled with
+shot have Mr. Morley to thank. Of course he is under compulsion. He
+has to please the Irish Separatists. Old women and children are
+outraged and shot in the legs because of Mr. Morley's political
+necessities."
+
+I think my friend was right as to the effect of boldness in action.
+There is too much truckling to the ruffian element, not only by Mr.
+Morley, but by most Unionists resident in Ireland. Opinions on this
+point vary with varying circumstances. Several shopkeepers in a Mayo
+town were utterly ruined for expressing their political opinions, or
+for being suspected of harbouring opinions contrary to the feeling of
+the majority. They were boycotted, and had to shut up shop. Others,
+older-established, or in possession of a monopoly, weathered the
+storm, but their opinions cost them something. These are the milder
+cases. Yet shooting or bludgeoning are likely enough to follow overt
+political action, such as refusing to join a procession or to
+illuminate.
+
+It was hard to find a Protestant farmer in this district, but I
+succeeded at last. His notions were strange, very strange indeed. He
+thought his rent fair enough, and was of opinion that the tenant must
+be prepared to take the good years with the bad years. "These
+countrymen of mine, like somebody I've read of, never learn anything
+and never forget anything. They do not half farm the land. They don't
+understand any but the most elementary methods. They do not put the
+land to its best use. When they had prosperous years, and many a one
+they had, they put nothing by for a rainy day. They are very
+improvident. I have been in both England and Scotland, and I know the
+difference in the people. They have more self-reliance, and they are
+keen after improvements. They are not satisfied to have just enough,
+to live from hand to mouth. They must have comfort, and they like to
+be independent. Now, Paddy is content to just scrape along. If he can
+barely exist he's quite satisfied. He's always on the edge of the
+nest, but he feels sure that when the worst comes to the worst,
+somebody or something will step in and save him from starvation.
+
+"Nearly every man in this county has been in England, many of them
+twenty times or more, working for months and months in the best farmed
+districts. Have they got any wrinkles? Divil a one. They have not
+planted a gooseberry or currant tree, they have no pot-herbs, no
+carrots or parsnips--nothing at all but potatoes and turnips. The
+farmers have no system of winter feeding, and they won't learn one.
+There is a great and growing demand in England for Irish butter,
+which, properly put up in a tasty way, would fetch fine figures, but
+the lack of system in winter feeding and winter calving prevents the
+supply from being kept up. The farmers will make no change in their
+habits, and they don't work as if they meant it. They lounge about all
+day, waiting for the crops to grow and the cattle to get fat, and then
+they wonder they are so poor. The only hope of the Irish people is
+their absorption in America. They work well enough when surrounded by
+new influences. Once get them away from the priests, and away they go;
+you can't stop them. They have great natural abilities, but somehow
+they won't bloom in Ireland. If they put forth the same energy in
+Ireland as in America they would do well. But they never will. Their
+religion keeps them down, and they can't get out of their old habits."
+
+I observed that the Earl of Sligo had obtained eighty-two decrees of
+possession against tenants for non-payment of rent, and that the _Mayo
+News_, while censuring his action, admitted that most of the tenants
+owed two years' rent at least. My Black Protestant friend might tell
+me whether the heading "Another Batch of Death Sentences" was a fair
+description of this legal action, and whether the tenants were, in his
+opinion, totally unable to pay the rent.
+
+"To call them sentences of death is absurd, The people are not evicted
+and left homeless, but merely deprived of their rights as tenants. In
+England, if a man does not pay his rent, he is thrown out, and nobody
+says Nay. In Ireland a man may pay no rent for seven years, and yet,
+when he is evicted, the people cry Shame on the landlord, who, in most
+cases, has been patient to the limit of human endurance. The landlord
+has watched the tenant neglecting the land, and living more
+expensively on the money he ought to have paid as rent. Now, let me
+submit a point which never seems to strike the English Unionist
+speakers. And yet it is plain enough. The Separatists say evictions
+are cruel and tyrannical because the people cannot pay the awful,
+exorbitant rents. Now notice my point!
+
+"A rent may be too high, but the land must be worth _something_. Now
+these people have paid _nothing at all for two years or more_.
+
+"Talk to these defaulters, and they will usually say 'The land is
+worth just one-half.'
+
+"Why don't they pay that half?
+
+"Then they would be only one year behind, instead of two, and they
+would get no notice to quit.
+
+"But instead of paying the one-half which they themselves say the land
+is worth, they pay nothing at all. Does that look honest? Does it look
+genuine? Don't you think anybody could see that they are taking
+advantage of the unsettled state of things to avoid any payment
+whatever? They await Home Rule, which is to give them the land, and
+they are anticipating its advantages.
+
+"They all know Hennessy's brandy, and can tell you the difference
+between the one-star and the three-star brands.
+
+"In England everybody is at work. In Ireland most are at play. A man
+who has been taught to work in England feels inclined to follow them
+up here with a whip, they look so idle even when at work. They move
+about as if half-dead. They are as lazy as Lambert's dog, that leaned
+his head against the wall to bark. The young women won't work either.
+My sister in Athlone is obliged to give her servants three nights a
+week off from five to ten, or she could have nobody. Then they are
+always going to mass or keeping some festival of the Church. Speak a
+word of reproof and away they go. They are as proud as Lambert's other
+dog, that took the wall of a muck-cart and got squelched for his
+pains.
+
+"Home Rule would never do Ireland any good. Quite the contrary. What
+can do a man good who tries to get his dinner by standing about and
+saying how hungry he is?
+
+"As to the agitators, they will always agitate. When one source is
+dried up they'll invent another. They have their living to get, and
+agitation is their trade. And a paying trade it is. Are they disloyal
+to England? I believe them Fenians at heart--that is, Fenians in the
+matter of loyalty. They would use any power they might get to damage
+England, and if England gives them power she'll bitterly rue the day.
+Paddy may be lazy, but put your finger in his mouth and he'll bite.
+The English Separatists don't see this, but when I see the fox in the
+hen-roost I can guess what brought him there. If I put the cat in the
+dairy I should expect her to taste the cream. Trust the Irish
+Nationalist members! I'd as soon trust a pack of wolves with my
+lambs."
+
+My friend is a scientific gardener, and descanted on the wonderful
+climate of Ireland, where plants that will not grow in England nourish
+luxuriously. I told him I had seen bamboo growing in the open air at
+Dundalk, and asked him if the Bonds of Brotherhood (_Humbugis
+Morleyensis_) or the Union of Hearts (_Gladstonia gammonica
+gigantica_) would come to perfection in Hibernia. He thought the soil
+and climate unsuitable, and was sure they would never take root. The
+_gammonica_ had been tried, but it withered and died. It could not be
+"budded" for want of an Irish "stock."
+
+A scrap-book, fifty years old, revealed a condition of things so
+strangely like that of the present day that I obtained permission to
+copy the following skit, which, but for the mention of the old convict
+colony, might have been written last week. It is headed "Extract from
+the forthcoming history of the Irish Parliament." The Home Rule
+project is therefore ancient enough:--
+
+    One blow and Ireland sprang from the head of her Saxon
+    enslaver like a new Minerva!
+
+    Proudly and solemnly she then sat down to frame a Republic
+    worthy of Plato and Pat. Her first
+
+    President had been a workhouse porter, who was also a night
+    watchman. He was, therefore, eminently fitted for both civil
+    and military administration. The speech of President Pat on
+    opening Congress developes his policy and his well-digested
+    plans of legislative reform. Here are a few quotations:--
+
+    The Key-stone of Government is the Blarney-stone.
+
+    Political progress may always be accelerated by a bludgeon.
+
+    Our institutions must be consolidated by soft-soap and whacks.
+
+    The People's will is made known by manifesto, and by many
+    fists too.
+
+    Every man shall be qualified to sit in Congress that is a
+    ten-pound pig-holder, provided that the pig and the member
+    sleep under the same roof.
+
+    Members of Congress will be paid for their services. Gentlemen
+    wearing gloves only to have the privilege of shaking the
+    President's hand. The unwashed members to be paid at the door.
+
+    Pipes will not be allowed on the Opposition benches, nor may
+    any member take whiskey until challenged by the President.
+
+    Under no circumstances will a member be suffered to sit with
+    his blunderbuss at full cock, nor pointed at the President's
+    ear.
+
+    Our Ambassadors will be chosen from our most meritorious
+    postmen, so that they may have no difficulty in reading their
+    letters.
+
+    The Foreign Office will be presided over by a patriotic editor
+    who has travelled in New South Wales and is thoroughly
+    conversant with the language.
+
+    Instead of bulwarks, the island will be fortified with Irish
+    Bulls, our engineers being of opinion that no other horn-works
+    are so efficient.
+
+    To prevent heartburnings between Landlord and Tenant, a
+    Government collector of rents shall be appointed, and
+    Tenant-right shall include a power to shoot over the land and
+    at anyone on it.
+
+    And this was written half-a-century ago. It reads like
+    yesterday!
+
+Oughewall, June 10th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 35.--IN A CONGESTED DISTRICT.
+
+
+This is the first station on the Balfour line which is to run from
+Westport to Achil Sound--now in process of construction by Mr. Robert
+Worthington, the great Dublin contractor, who has built about a
+million pounds' worth of Irish railway, and who is of opinion that
+Home Rule means the bankruptcy of Ireland, and that the labouring
+population of the country would by it be compelled to emigrate to
+England, bringing their newly-acquired skill as railway workers into
+competition with the navvies and general working population. The seven
+miles of line between here and Westport are not yet packed and
+ballasted, and the ride hither on an engine kindly placed at the
+disposal of the _Gazette_, was not lacking in pleasurable excitement.
+The bogey engine kicked and winced and bucked and cavorted in a
+fashion unique in my experience. She seemed to be exhilarated by the
+pure mountain air, charged with ozone from the Atlantic main. Watching
+her little eccentricities, it was hard to believe her not endued with
+animal vitality. She walked the railway like a thing of life. She
+ducked and dived and plunged and snorted and reared and jibbed like a
+veritable cocktailed nag of the true old Irish breed. Sometimes she
+seemed to go from under you as she suddenly dipped into a slight
+depression. Sometimes she rolled like a ship at sea, and you began to
+wonder if sea-sickness were possible on land. The scenery is not
+striking, and the surrounding country, though poor and desolate, is by
+no means sterile. No tracts of black bog, no impassable morasses, no
+miles of rocks and boulders, but a fairly good grazing country, with
+here and there, at long intervals, a white cottage. The engine slows
+at one point, where the rails are twisted into serpentine convolutions
+by yesterday's tropical heat. Both sides are considerably displaced,
+but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful
+machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over
+the contorted path. A short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and
+roof-arch of brick, again demands extra care, and it is well that the
+pace is slowed, for half-way through, a man becomes dimly visible
+running a trolley off the line. Mountains arise on the left and in
+front, and my old friend Croagh Patrick puts in his Nationalist
+appearance. Then Newport heaves in sight, a cemetery on high ground
+opposite the site of the station, and overhanging the line, kept in
+its place by an immense retaining wall, without which the "rude
+forefathers of the hamlet" would fall from their narrow cells and
+block the progress of the civilising train. A handsome viaduct ends
+the run, _finis coronat opus_, and I walk a hundred yards to see the
+awkward spot which at first seemed to have no bottom, but which energy
+and industry have conquered, as they conquer everything. The line was
+going on happily until this point was reached, when a soft bog was
+broached, which threatened to swallow everything, opening its
+cavernous jaws with appetite which long seemed insatiable. The
+engineer choked it off with a hundred thousand cubic yards of earth, a
+quantity which to the untechnical ear sounds like a little kingdom, or
+at least like a decent farm, and the bog cried, Hold! enough. The
+total length of the line will be twenty-six-and-a-half miles, the
+cost, exclusive of the permanent way, which is an extra of some Ł1,800
+a mile, being Ł110,000, most of which is dispensed among the labourers
+of the district, who thank the Balfour Administration for a great work
+which would never have been undertaken as a merely commercial
+speculation. The congested areas here, as elsewhere, have been
+powerfully assisted and benefited by the sagacity which at once
+afforded relief, improved the country, and opened the way to great
+markets. Temporary assistance is succeeded by a solid and permanent
+benefaction.
+
+And still the people are not happy. Most of them are rather below the
+Irish average. Their isolated position in the extreme west, and their
+want of means of communication, may partly account for this. Few ever
+see a newspaper, and when they do they only read stuff concocted for
+them by unscrupulous people who write down to their level, and
+deliberately endeavour to keep them in total darkness. The men
+employed on the line work well, and Mr. William Ross, civil engineer,
+tells me they are even better workers than the Galway men, to whom I
+gave due credit for industry. The townsfolk are great politicians.
+That is, they echo the absurdities they hear, and are ready to believe
+anything, provided it is unlikely enough. The country papers of
+Ireland are poor and illiterate beyond belief, but their assumption of
+knowledge and superior information is amazing. One of the Galway rags
+recently treated its readers to a confidential communication having
+reference to the real sentiments of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour as
+opposed to those ostensibly affected by those statesmen and to those
+with which they are popularly credited. Lord Salisbury is really dying
+for Home Rule, and Mr. Balfour would depart in peace if he could once
+behold a Dublin Parliament bossed by Tim Healy and William O'Brien.
+Lord Salisbury is not so bad as he seems, nor is Balfour altogether
+beyond hope of salvation. Both are under a kind of Tory terrorism
+which makes them say the thing that is not, compels them against their
+wishes to fight, forces them reluctantly to make a show of opposition.
+But both of them wink the other eye and have doubtless unbosomed
+themselves--in strict confidence--to the editor of the Galway paper.
+The poor folks of Ireland swallow this stuff, and will quote it
+gravely in argument. The _Irish Catholic_ has a large circulation, and
+a glance over its columns, particularly its advertising columns, is
+highly suggestive at the present juncture. People offer to swop
+prayers, just as in _Exchange and Mart_ people wish to barter a pet
+hedgehog for a lop-eared rabbit, or a cracked china cup for a gold
+watch and chain. Gentleman wishes someone to say fifteen Hail Marys
+every morning at eight o'clock for a week, while he, in return, will
+knock off a similar number of some other good things. The trade in
+masses is surprising. For a certain sum you get one mass a week for a
+year, for a higher figure you get two masses a week _and_ an
+oleograph, for a trifle more you get mentioned in special prayers for
+benefactors, with a rosary that has touched the relics of
+Thomas-a-Becket or has been laid on the shrine of Blessed Thomas More.
+One advertisement sets forth the proviso that unless the payment is
+regular the supplications will be stopped. No pay, no prayer. _Point
+d'argent, point de prętre._ Prayers and advice, political or
+otherwise, at lowest terms for cash. No discount allowed. A reduction
+on taking a quantity.
+
+A very knowing Newport man explained the present political position.
+"'Tis as simple as Ah, Bay, Say. Parnell wint over to France an'
+Amerikay, an' explained to thim how the English was oppressin' and
+ruinin' the poor Irish people; an' whin the Saxon seen he was found
+out, an' whin the Americans sent thousands an' thousands of pounds to
+pay the cliverist men in Ireland to fight the English in Parlimint,
+thin the English begun to give us back part of what they robbed us of.
+Every bite ye get in England manes that much less in an Irish mouth,
+an' the counthry is all starvin' becase England is fattenin'. All the
+young folks is gone out of the counthry; an' why did they go? Becase
+England makes the laws, an' becase she makes the laws to suit herself,
+an' to ruin us. Sure nine-tenths of the land is owned by Englishmen,
+who make us pay twice, aye, an' four times the rint the land is worth;
+an' that's what England thinks us good for, an' nothin' else. We're
+just slaves to the Saxon, as many's the time I heard the priest sayin'
+it. An' it was thrue for him. Sure, the counthry is full of coal, an'
+if we wor allowed to get it we'd be as rich as England in five years.
+Sure, Lord Sligo's estate is made of coal, an' although he's a
+Conservative, an' a Unionist, an' a Protestant, the English Parlimint
+wouldn't allow him to get it because it was in Ireland, an' they wor
+afraid the Irish would get betther off. An' sure they want to keep us
+paupers, so that we'll be compelled to 'list for sojers, an' fight for
+England against Rooshia and Prooshia, an' Injy, an' foreign parts,
+that the English is afraid to do for themselves."
+
+His opinions are not below the intellectual average of those held by
+the majority of the Irish electorate. The ignorance of the rank and
+file of the Irish voters is exasperating to Englishmen, who are quite
+unable to understand their credulity, to combat their bitter
+prejudices, or to make headway against their preconceived notions.
+English Gladstonians who believe that Home Rule ought to be a good
+thing will stagger with dismay when confronted with the people who
+will rule the roost. For the intelligent are nowhere in point of
+numbers. The thick-witted believers in charms, in fairies, in the
+curative and preservative virtues of holy water, will have the country
+in their hands. The poor benighted peasants, who firmly believe that
+Mr. Balfour has the moonlighters in his pay, and that the murders of
+the Land League were ordered by Lord Salisbury to cast discredit on
+the national cause--these are the people who, voting as they are told
+by the priests, would govern the action of the Irish Parliament. They
+believe that Home Rule by some magic process will supply the place of
+industry and enterprise, will open up innumerable sources of boundless
+wealth, and will bring about Mr. Gladstone's "chronic plethora" of
+money. But, above all, the people are to be for ever delivered from
+the "English yoke." What the phrase means they know not. They only
+repeat what they have heard. The dogs around Newport are muzzled. It
+would be well for the people if their advisers were muzzled too.
+
+Public feeling is well organised in Ireland. Although the people are
+not readers of daily news, the kind of sentiment ordered at
+head-quarters is immediately entertained. How it spreads nobody knows,
+unless it is spread from the altar. A change has come over the public
+sentiment. Among the more intelligent farmers there is a revolt
+against Home Rule. At a Unionist meeting held the other day at
+Athenry, all the speakers agreed on this point. One said that the
+change might be inoperative, because the farmers dare not avow their
+true opinions, because they have little or no faith in the secrecy of
+the ballot, and because they dread the unknown consequences of ruffian
+vengeance. The ignorant masses have also experienced a change. They
+have been undergoing a process of preparation for the next agitation.
+The poor folks at first believed that when they got Home Rule all
+would be well. That consummation devoutly to be wished, was to enrich
+them all. The agitators have to guard against the resentment of the
+disappointed people. They are hedging industriously. If Home Rule
+should come it will do no good, because it is not the right brand.
+John Bull has spoilt it all, as he spoils everything. Home Rule would
+have done all they promised, but this is not the Home Rule they meant!
+They took it at first as a small instalment of what they would
+afterwards kick out of the Saxon, but those outrageous Unionists have
+shaved it down to almost nothing. It is not worth having, and the only
+thing to do, say some Newport politicians, is for the Irish
+Nationalist party to rise in a body an' lave the House, an' not put a
+fut back into it till they get what they want. I wish my Newport
+friends could make their counsel prevail.
+
+The latest phase of feeling, then, is an affected indignation at this
+supreme treachery of the English people. Over and over again I have
+quoted the opinions of people who said Mr. Gladstone meant to hoax
+Ireland again. This was when all seemed to be going quite smoothly.
+The Government concessions and the moderate use of the closure have
+convinced the doubters that they were right, and they breathe battle
+and slaughter. Irishmen like fighting debates, decided measures,
+tremendously hard hitting. As a people they do not believe in
+constitutional agitation. They would prefer sudden revolutions,
+cannons roaring, blood and thunder. They openly avow their preference,
+and say that this would have been their method, but that England has
+elaborately disarmed the country, which declaration clashes with the
+popular opinion, often exultantly expressed, that Ireland is full of
+arms. The truth is with the revolutionaries, who would certainly
+prefer battle but for its well-known danger. If Ireland could be freed
+by moonlighters firing at long ranges from behind stone walls, with an
+inaccessible retreat within easy reach, the English yoke would have
+but a short shrift.
+
+A frantic Newporter said:--"We never got anything by love, but always
+by fear, and compulsion should be our motto. I've no patience wid thim
+that'll stand hat in hand, or be going down on their knees to England
+for every bit an' sup. John Mitchel an' James Stephens was the only
+men of modern times who properly understood how to manage the English.
+Of coorse, Parnell did something to advance the cause, an' 'tis thrue
+that he had no revolution nor insurrection of the old sort. But the
+Land League was arranged to include all the secret associations and to
+make use of thim all. Ye had Whiteboys, an' Fenians an' Ribbonmen agin
+ye, an' ye can't say but what the secret societies did the business,
+an' not what they call the constitutional agitation. Ye might have
+talked to the English Parlimint till doomsday an' ye'd not make it
+move a hair's-breadth for Ireland. But follow up yer talk wid a bit of
+shootin' an' then ye'll see what ye will see. 'Twas very bad, an' no
+man could agree wid it; but it did what no talkin' would ever have
+done. Compulsion is the right idea. An' what about dynamite? If ye
+look properly at the thing, why wouldn't we use dynamite? Haven't we a
+right to do as _we_ choose in Ireland? Ought not the Irish people to
+be masters of Ireland? We say clear out--lave us to ourselves, take
+away yer landlords, yer sojers, yer police, an' _thin_ we'll not have
+recoorse to dynamite. We have a right to free ourselves by any means
+that comes handy. All's fair in love an' war. No, I'm not sayin' that
+I'd do it meself personally. But whin ye come to look into it, why
+wouldn't we be justified in usin' dynamite? Ye pitched shells into
+Alexandria whin it suited ye. Why wouldn't we blow up London wid
+dynamite, if it suited us?"
+
+The Newport people have not heard of the Union of Hearts. A decent old
+man who was trying to sell home-spun tweed of his own making,
+said:--"The English has been hittin' us for many a year, but whin we
+git Home Rule we'll be able to hit thim back. God spare me to see that
+day!" And he raised his hat, just as the people mentioned by Mr. A.M.
+Sullivan, M.P., "raised their hats reverentially" when they heard that
+a landlord or agent was shot. Whenever I hear a friendly sentiment, a
+friendly wish, a friendly aspiration in connection with England from
+the lips of any Nationalist I will gladly record it, if possible, in
+letters of gold. I do not expect this to happen. Speakers who attack
+England are most popular. The more unscrupulous and violent they are,
+the better their reception. Nationalist M.P.'s who in England have
+spoken well of Mr. Gladstone or of the English people are sharply
+hauled over the coals. The fighting men are the patriot's glory. The
+Irish people believe that the introduction of a Home Rule Bill is due
+to the action of their bullies, rather than to the persuasive argument
+of their civilised men. A very small minority desire to give John Bull
+some credit for fair play, an opinion hotly resented by the mob.
+
+"Ah, now, listen to me, thin."
+
+"Sure, I'm lookin' at ye."
+
+"Don't I know we bate the Bill out of Bull."
+
+"An' how would ye know, at all, at all?"
+
+"How would I know, is it? D'ye take me for a fool?"
+
+"Arrah, thin, sure I would not judge ye by yer looks!"
+
+That is a model bar spar, the combatants drinking dog's-nose,
+sometimes called "powdher an' ball"--a drink of neat whiskey washed
+down by a pot of porter. The Connaught folk drink whiskey neat, but
+usually follow the spirit with water. They take up both glasses at
+once, and after a loving sniff at the poteen they pour it slowly down,
+the shebeen stuff tasting like a torchlight procession. Then they
+hastily toss off the water, making a wry face, and mostly addressing
+to the despised fluid the remark--
+
+"Ye'll find IT gone on before!"
+
+The desperate appeal of the Parnellite party for funds has evoked much
+merriment among Irish Unionists, and much burning scorn from
+anti-Parnellites--who themselves have much need of the money. A young
+friend has sent me the following parody, adapted from an old and
+well-known, melody:--
+
+    The patriot came down like a wolf on the fold,
+    And all that he asked was their silver and gold;
+    And he pocketed all that he got, as his fee,
+    From the shores of the Liffey to rocky Tralee.
+    Tho' Pat looked as naked and bleak as his soil,
+    Yet there stood the patriot to sack up the spoil.
+    And from parish to parish the box went its rounds--
+    If we give you our speeches you must give us your pounds.
+
+The coming golden time is neatly hinted at. Home Rule will pay for
+all:--
+
+    When it comes, you no longer shall lie in a ditch,
+    Every beggar among you at once shall be rich;
+    The hedger and ditcher shall have an estate,
+    And drive his four horses, and dine off his plate.
+    What! you won't? And your champion in want of a meal,
+    With his coat out at elbows, his shoes down at heel;
+    With his heart all as black as his speeches in print!
+    Boys, I know what you'll do: you'll just keep back the Rint.
+    Now down with your cash, never think of the jail,
+    For Erin's true patriots the Virgin is bail;
+    She'll rain down bank notes till the bailiff is blind--
+    Still you're slack! Then I'll tell you a piece of my mind.
+
+The priest is invoked to compel unwilling subscribers:--
+
+    Would you like to be sent, in the shape of a ghost,
+    To be pokered by demons and browned like a toast?
+    Or be hung in a blaze with a hook in your backs,
+    Till you all melt away like a cake of bees'-wax?
+    Would you like to be pitchforked down headlong to Limbo,
+    With the Pope standing by with his two arms akimbo?
+    No matter who starves, plank down on the spot,
+    Pounds, shillings, and pence; we'll take all that you've got.
+
+The poem breathes the true spirit of Separatism-cum-Sacerdotalism.
+
+Newport (Co. Mayo), June 15th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 36.--IRISH IMPROVIDENCE THE STUMBLING BLOCK.
+
+
+The further journey from Newport to Mulranney on the _Gazette_ special
+engine was yesterday delayed for a few hours by the announcement that
+during the night part of the line had sunk into a bog--a circumstance
+which might have seemed unusual and ominous to English engineers, but
+which Mr. Lionel Vaughan Bennett regarded as a mere matter of daily
+routine, hardly worth more than a passing mention. There was nothing
+for it but to take another walk round Newport, and after further
+admiring the great wall holding up the embankment opposite the
+station--a colossal work executed under great difficulties--to look at
+the surrounding landscape. Those who are interested in engineering may
+like to know the dimensions of this wall, which is two hundred feet
+long, thirty-five feet high, and ten feet thick at the base, tapering
+off to a thickness of five feet at the top, and is built of a fine
+limestone quarried from the railway cutting a little further out. The
+view from either of the ridges between which the town is built, is
+magnificent, mountain, valley, sea, and river contributing to the
+effect. From one ridge you see Clew Bay and the Croagh Patrick range,
+with an immense tract of country of varied appearance. From the other,
+immediately above the station, an enormous valley stretches away to
+the Bogagh mountain in front and the peaked summit of Lettermoughra on
+the left. At the latter point of view are some wooden cabins which the
+Saxon might mistake for pigsties or small cowsheds until he discovered
+they were inhabited by patriots, keen on Home Rule and charitable
+coppers. Beware of civility in these parts. From casual passers-by it
+nearly always means an appeal for alms, and after a few days'
+experience you are apt to fall into misanthropy. Some of these beggars
+have a fine dramatic way of opening the conversation. A hale and
+seemingly able-bodied man of fifty or thereabouts came up carrying a
+wheel, which he dropped when about ten yards away with the fervently
+uttered exclamation--
+
+"God help the poor--owld--man!"
+
+This adjuration falling short of its aim, he came up and asked for "a
+few coppers," at the same time invoking about sixpennyworth of
+blessings in advance, a sort of sprat to catch a mackerel.
+
+"Got no coppers," I said, rather impatiently.
+
+"May ye never have one till the day of yer death," said the good old
+man, this time with an unmistakable accent of sincerity. He hobbled
+off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings,
+and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "Good mornin', an' 'tis a
+foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go
+into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe
+would be as welkim as the flowers of May, an' 'tis England is the
+grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that Englishmen is tin
+per cint. betther than Irishmen, aye, twinty per cint."--and so
+forth, and so forth. There were six more applications in a hundred
+yards, one of them from a well-dressed boy of fourteen or fifteen, who
+gracefully reclined on a bank with his legs crossed, his arms under
+his head. Begging to the Irish race is as natural as breathing. They
+have an innate affinity for blessing and begging, and they beg without
+need. Anything to avoid work. They are for the most part entirely
+destitute of a spirit of independence. They will not dig, and to beg
+they are not ashamed. According to a Newport authority they are
+growing worse than ever. While I awaited the fishing up of the line he
+said:--
+
+"The conduct of the poorer classes is becoming more and more a
+disgrace to the country. There is poverty, of course, but not so much,
+nor in so great a proportion, as in England. This line has been in
+progress for two years and a half, and the people of this district
+have received many thousands of pounds without any perceptible
+improvement of position, either as to solvency or personal appearance.
+They are as ragged as ever, as dirty as ever, and decidedly more
+dishonest than ever. They are more extravagant in their eating and
+drinking, and the women spend more in ridiculous finery; but in spite
+of the wages they have earned, they have not paid their way one bit
+better than before. They usually sow the land and live on the crops,
+selling the surplus to pay the rent, which is usually very moderate,
+and well within what the land will pay. For thirty months many
+hundreds of them, thanks to Mr. Balfour, have enjoyed an additional
+income of fifteen shillings a week, but they have not paid their rents
+any better than before. They have so many people agitating for them,
+both here and in England, that whatever they do or fail to do, they
+know they are sure of substantial support. While Irishmen only were
+working for them, they felt less secure, but now Mr. Gladstone and his
+following have taken their cause in hand, they feel more sure of their
+ground, and accordingly they have lapsed into confirmed laziness and
+dishonesty. They have found out the strength of combination, and the
+possibility of withholding payment of rent, and year by year they are
+falling lower and lower. Their morality is sapped at the root. They
+have the utmost confidence in their clergy, and their conduct being
+supported, and even advised from the altar, they spend all their money
+quite comfortably, sure that in case of eviction the country will be
+up in arms for their assistance, and that weak but well-meaning
+English tourists, seeing their apparent condition, will help them
+liberally. The English tourist has much to answer for. He couples dirt
+and nakedness with misfortune and poverty, and nine times out of ten
+he is altogether wrong. People with five hundred pounds in the bank
+will go about barefoot, unwashed, and in rags. No Englishman can
+possibly know his way about until he has lived for some time in the
+country, remaining in one spot long enough to find out the real state
+of things. He runs about hurriedly from place to place, observing
+certain symptoms which in England mean undeserved poverty and
+suffering. His diagnosis would be right for England, but for Ireland
+it is hopelessly wrong. What he sees is not so often symptomatic of
+undeserved misfortune, as of laziness, improvidence, and rank
+dishonesty. The Irish are a complaining people. Self-help is
+practically unknown among them, at any rate, among the Catholic
+population. They have reduced complaining to a system, or, if you
+will, they have elevated it to the level of a fine art. The recent
+agitations have demolished any rudimentary backbone they ever had, and
+the No-rent Campaign, with its pleas of poverty and financial
+inability, has done more to pauperise the people than all the famines
+Ireland ever saw.
+
+"You can do nothing for them. One great argument for Home Rule is the
+fact that the people are leaving the country. Best thing they can do.
+Let them get to some country where they must work or starve. Then they
+will do well enough. They work like horses in America, and their
+native cuteness conies out in trade with surprising results. The Irish
+race make a splendid mixture, but you must not take them neat. I am
+looked upon as a monster when I say, Let them go. I think it would be
+best. Let them clear out of the country, and leave it to people who
+can make it pay. Let Ireland be populated by Englishmen or Scotsmen,
+or both, and in twenty years the country would be one of the most
+prosperous in the world. Those are my opinions, and few Irishmen will
+gainsay them. They think them cruel, but their truth is generally
+admitted. Mr. Balfour has helped the people, and in a way which was
+best calculated to put them permanently on their feet. All to no
+purpose. You can't go on making lines that will not pay. You can't go
+on doling out charity for ever. Take the boats, nets, and so on, given
+to the congested districts. When those are gone you may give them
+more. The people will be exactly where they were. A few have been
+taught fishing, you say. But it will not spread. Those who have
+learned the art have been taught almost by compulsion, and at the
+first opportunity they will fall back into their own ways. The farmers
+will not change their methods. If one among them did so he would be a
+mark for derision. No Irish villager has the pluck to say, I will do
+this or that because it is the best thing to do. He must do as the
+others do, even to planting his farm, selling the produce, and also in
+disposing of the proceeds. Nowhere is public opinion so powerful, so
+tyrannical, or so injuriously conservative as in Ireland. I challenge
+contradiction. Any intelligent Irishman who has lived in an
+agricultural and Roman Catholic neighbourhood will admit every
+statement I have made."
+
+Later in the day I laid these observations before three Irish
+gentlemen dining at the Mulranney Hotel. All three readily and fully
+concurred, and there can be no doubt that these sentiments will be
+unanimously confirmed by any competent tribunal in or out of Ireland,
+Such being the case, the absurdity of the Home Rule agitation becomes
+evident at once.
+
+At last the sportive young engine whose playfulness and prankishness
+were mentioned in my last, came whinnying up, harnessed to an empty
+truck in which was a bench with a green cloth, emblematic of Ireland.
+This was better than convulsively clinging to the engine while she
+madly careered along narrow and dizzy precipices, every kick
+threatening to be your last, and emerging from the fiery ordeal,
+begrimed and swarthy, your knees half cooked by the engine fire. All
+this happened on my journey from Westport to Newport, but now the
+truck promised Sybaritic luxury, and if the rail should again give
+way, if the bog-hole, "still gaping to devour me, opened wide," I
+should at least disappear with dignity, should take my _holium cum
+dignitatis_ in a truck, on a green-covered seat, and with the
+consciousness that I was doing something to fill up the gap, to solace
+the aching void in Ireland's bosom. Away we went, thundering along
+between the quivering bogs, as through a land of brown-black
+calves'-foot jelly. The line itself is sound, well-made and firm. I
+had this from Mr. Hare, engineer of the Board of Works, who said that
+Mr. Worthington's railways have an excellent name for solidity and
+thorough, conscientious work. Mr. Hare was formally taking over the
+last bit of line, that between Mulranney and Achil Sound, with which
+the Midland and Great Western Company will at present have nought to
+do. The company will work from Westport to Mulranney, although some
+portions of the line have a gradient of one in sixty, and the
+directors are shy of anything steeper than one in a hundred by reason
+of the wear and tear involved to rolling stock and permanent way by
+gradients requiring so much brake power. But the last seven miles they
+decline to touch on the terms offered by the Government at present. No
+doubt the line will be worked, and by the company aforesaid, but the
+contracting parties are for the moment at a deadlock. No line between
+Mulranney and the Sound could possibly pay. England is building Irish
+railways to give the people a chance, as the splendid quays of
+Newport, Limerick, and Galway were built.
+
+Nothing, or next to nothing, is done on these quays. The Channel, as
+it is called at Newport, is a fine expanse of water about one hundred
+and twenty yards wide, leading through Newport Bay directly into the
+Atlantic. Only one boat, I was told, comes into the port. I saw it
+there, unloading a hundred and eighty tons of Indian corn--a Glasgow
+vessel, the Harmony, a sailer, which had taken three weeks to the
+voyage, which a steamer easily runs in thirty six to forty hours.
+Galway was busier, but not by Irish enterprise, and Limerick was
+mostly fast asleep. The people cry aloud and shout for quays,
+harbours, piers, and railways; and when they are built they ask for
+something else. They are without the faculty of industrial enterprise.
+They are always waiting for weather, wind, and tide. They lack
+resourcefulness, energy, invention. When the flour mills ceased to pay
+they had no notion of using the buildings and water-power for some
+other purpose. When the Coventry ribbon trade went to the dogs the
+people found salvation in bicycles. If Coventry had been in Ireland
+the people would have starved and murmured to the end of time.
+
+Two miles out we came to Deradda, where eighty men were at work. Next
+came Shellogah and the squeamish bit of bog. A number of men were busy
+on the line, and right in front of us was a gap in the rails, the
+platelayers laying the steel for dear life while the engine came up.
+We slackened speed, but made no stop, and the last rail was finally
+bolted as we ran upon it. Carefully and gingerly we pushed along, my
+triumphal chariot in front of the engine, over the shivering
+embankment, on each side of which were deep-cut channels which seemed
+to have been hewn through acres of Day and Martin's blacking, so jetty
+and oily seemed this Irish bog. The subsidence of yesterday had forced
+the boundary walls of the line into wide semicircles, and it seemed
+likely to be touch-and-go with the engine, truck, and your humble
+commissioner. I took a last look at the landscape, and made a final
+note, but, while inly wondering whether I should be ultimately
+consumed in the form of peat or dug up and exhibited to future ages as
+a bog-preserved brutal Saxon, with a concluding squash we passed the
+rotten spot, and it was permissible to breathe again. "We prefer it to
+sink at once," said Mr. Bennett. "Then we know the 'hard' is not far
+off, and we can fill up till the line becomes solid as a rock. When it
+goes down by degrees, sinking a foot to-day and a foot to-morrow, we
+find our work more difficult. We never leave a bad bit till we are
+assured, by careful examination and severe and repeated tests, that
+all is solid and secure." He told me how much earth had been dumped on
+this spot, which, like the soft place mentioned in my last, has given
+Mr. Balfour's _protégés_ a world of employment. I forget the quantity,
+but it sounded like an island or a small range of mountains. Soon on
+the left we saw the great expanse of Clew Bay, with its three hundred
+and sixty-five considerable islands, nearly all with cottages, cattle,
+and pasture, but without a tree. The Yankee breezes blew refreshingly,
+and the scenery around became of wildest grandeur. High mountains
+hemmed us in on every side, rising one over another, huge masses of
+rock impending over untrodden passes, unknown to any guide-book, and
+leading no man knows whither. Some mountain sheep on the line scaled
+the embankment and leaped the five-foot wall like squirrels. Then a
+group of obstinate black cattle, one of which narrowly escaped sudden
+transformation into beef. Then the station of Mulranney, or rather its
+site, for the foundations are not yet dug out. Some neat wooden
+cottages attested the contractor's care for his workmen, and the
+beautiful bay with its extensive sands and lovely surroundings came
+into view far below. A steep descent brought us to the hotel, an
+unlicensed house kept by a Northern Protestant. A quaint and charming
+place, known and prized by a select few. The Board of Works gave
+Mulrannoy a pier, but the whole bay boasted only a single boat. The
+people make no use of their pier. It stretches into the sea in a
+lonely, melancholy way, and, so far as I could see, without a boat
+near it, without a soul upon it or within half-a-mile. The Mulranians
+cannot do anything with the pier until they get Home Rule. In Limerick
+one day I saw a dead cat before a cottage door, in a crowded part of
+Irishtown. A week later pussy was diffusing an aromatic fragrance from
+the self-same spot. The denizens of this locality are waiting for Home
+Rule. They cannot move their dead cats while smarting 'neath the cruel
+English yoke.
+
+The Home Rulers of Mulranney are not original. They say the same
+things over and over again, merely echoing what they have been told by
+others. They believe that their country has unlimited good coal, and
+that the English Parliament prevents the mines being sunk for fear of
+losing Irish custom. "We wish it were trap," said Mr. Bennett. "We are
+always looking for it, but although we have made a million's worth of
+railway, we have never seen a vestige of coal. It is safe to say that
+there is no coal in Ireland, except in one or two well-known spots,
+where it exists, and is mined, in small quantities." Another
+enlightened Irishman, of wide experience in many lands, expressed the
+conviction of the majority of his countrymen that the proposed
+Parliamentary change will never take place.
+
+"The thing is too ridiculous to be possible. The respectable portion
+of the community were alarmed at first, as well they might be, knowing
+as they do precisely what it means. But as time went on that alarm has
+to a great extent subsided, not, as some will say, because the people
+are in any degree reconciled to the idea, but purely and simply
+because they see that the bill must perish when exposed to the light
+of criticism. The people as a whole do not want the bill. The poorer
+classes do not know in the least what it means, nor what all the
+bother is about. They are told that they will be hugely benefited, but
+nobody can tell them how. Of course they vote for Home Rule, because
+in these parts the priest stands at the door of the polling booth and
+tells them as they go in how they are to vote. He also questions them
+as they come out, and they know beforehand that he will do so, and act
+accordingly. They dare not tell him a lie, for fear of spiritual
+trouble. They believe that the priest has their eternal future in his
+hands, and this belief is encouraged by the well-known argument used
+by the Roman Catholic clergy, a very familiar phrase in Ireland, "You
+must do as I tell you, for _I_ am responsible. God will require your
+soul of _me_ at the day of judgement!" What can the poor folks do?
+Even the higher classes are not exempt from this superstitious fear.
+They may be more or less freethinkers--freethinking is common among
+educated Catholics who are yet compelled by custom to conform to the
+outward observances of their faith--but yet, when the pinch comes,
+they are influenced by the prepossessions of their childhood and
+environments, and they mostly vote as they are told. They dread to
+offend the priest, though not to the same extent as the poor
+peasantry, who believe that confession of a wrong vote would entail
+the refusal of extreme unction, and that this would mean untold and
+endless torture in the world to come. And the priests preach politics
+every Sunday. The people like it better than the old style of
+Instruction. They call their sermons Instructions, you know, and they
+instruct the people to some tune. No doubt they have a right to
+persuade their flocks to follow a certain course. The temptation to
+preach something which at once catches the people's attention and
+furthers their own views is very great, and perhaps excusable. But is
+their teaching designed or calculated to suit England? The English may
+not understand the Irish question, but they may be sure that whatever
+suits the Papal power does not suit them. The modern Irish priest is a
+sworn foe to England. It cannot be otherwise. He springs from the
+small farmer class, which has sworn to extirpate landlordism, which,
+to their minds, is synonymous with British rule. The English
+Parliament, hoping to win over the farmers, who are the strength of
+Ireland, has made one concession after another, with what result?
+Absolutely none. The property of the landlord has been sacrificed bit
+by bit, in fruitless endeavour to please these people, who are more
+discontented than ever. And so they will continue to be as long as
+discontent pays. In Ireland the landlord is nothing, the tenant is
+everything. The policy of England with regard to Irish landlords
+reminds me of the man who, having to dock a dog's tail, cut off
+half-an-inch every day to gradually accustom him to the loss, and to
+minimise the 'suffering of the baste.'"
+
+You can go nowhere in Ireland without meeting an Ulsterman. There was
+one at Mulranney. You may know them by their accent, by their size, by
+a general effect of weight, decision, and determination. They are
+mostly big men, large-boned and large-limbed, of ruthless energy, of
+inexhaustible vitality. They are demons in argument, tenacious and
+crushing. They bowl straight over-hand and dead on the middle stump.
+The lithe and sinuous Celt is no match for them. No matter how he
+twists and turns they grab him up, and, will he, nill he, fix him in
+front of the argument. They are adepts in cornering an opponent by
+keeping him to the point. You cannot catch them napping, and you
+cannot turn their flank. They are contented enough, except that they
+sigh for more worlds to conquer. They delight in difficulties, and
+demolish Home Rulers with a kind of contempt as if the work were only
+fit for children. They seem to be fighting with one hand, with great
+reserve of power, and, after doubling up an opponent, they chuck him
+over the ropes, and look around, as if, like Oliver, asking for
+"more." My Mulranney friend said:--
+
+"Bull confessedly does not know what to do, and he calls in two sets
+of Irish experts (we'll say) and asks for their opinions. One set of
+Irishmen never quarrel with anybody and always pay their debts. The
+other set quarrel with everybody and don't pay what they owe. One set
+are successful in everything, the other set are successful in nothing.
+One set have always been friendly and helpful to Bull, the other set
+have always been unfriendly and obstructive to him. He proposes to
+reject the advice of the successful, amicable, helpful men, who have
+always stuck up for him, and to follow the advice of the quarrelsome,
+unsuccessful, unfriendly men, who have always spoken ill of him and
+have spent their energies in trying to damage him. Bull must be a
+fool--or rather he would be if he meant to act in this foolish way. He
+will not do so; that can never be. But why waste so much time?"
+
+I submitted that this waste was due to Mr. Gladstone, and not to
+England at all. He said--
+
+"There is no England now. There's nothing left but Gladstone."
+
+Of course he was wrong, but the mistake is one that under present
+circumstances any loyal Irishman might easily make.
+
+Mulranney (Co. Mayo), June 17th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 37.--ON ACHIL ISLAND.
+
+
+The final spurt from Mulranney to Achil Sound was pleasant, but devoid
+of striking incident. This part of the line is packed and ballasted,
+and the _Gazette_ engine sobered down to the merely commonplace,
+dropping her prancing and curveting, with other deplorable excesses of
+the first two runs, and pushing my comfortable truck with the
+steadiness of a well-broken steed. No holding on was required, as we
+ran between the two ranges of mountains which guard the Sound, and
+along the edge of a salt-water creek, which seemed to be pushing its
+investigations inland. Barring the scenery the ride became
+uninteresting by its very safety. The line for the most part is based
+upon the living rock, and there were no exciting skims over
+treacherous bogs, no reasonable chance of running off the line, no ups
+and downs such as on our first flight were remindful of the switchback
+railway, no hopping, jumping, or skipping. Anybody could have ridden
+from Mulranney to Achil. There was no merit in the achievement. All
+you had to do was to sit still and look about. You could no longer
+witch the world with noble truckmanship. We ran over a bridge built to
+replace one washed away by a mountain torrent. The engineer who
+constructed the first had failed to realise that the tinkling rivulet
+of summer became in winter a fiercely surging cataract. The Achil
+Mountains loomed in full view, Croaghaun to the left, Sliebhmor
+(pronounced Slievemore) the Great Mountain, in front, with many others
+stranger still of name. Then the Sound came in sight, with the iron
+viaduct-bridge which has turned the island into a peninsula. Then the
+final dismount, and a scramble among rusty rails, embankments,
+sleepers, and big boulders strewn about in hopeless chaos. Then the
+little inn, with a stuffed fox and a swan in the porch. A glance at
+the day-before-yesterday's paper, which has just arrived, and is
+considered to serve up news red-hot; and then invasion of the island.
+A few hookers are anchored near the swivel-bridge of the viaduct, in
+readiness for their cargoes of harvesters for England and Scotland,
+and now and then big trout and salmon throw themselves in air to see
+what is going on in the world around them. A group of men who are
+busily engaged in doing nothing, with a grace and ease which tells of
+long experience, manifest great interest in the stranger, whom they
+greet civilly and with much politeness. Men, women, and children are
+digging turf in a bog beside the road. All suspend operations and look
+earnestly in my direction. This is one of the amenities of Irish life.
+Driving along a country road you see men at work in a field. They stop
+at the first rumble of the car, and leaning on their spades they watch
+you out of sight. Then they resume in leisurely style, for work they
+will tell you is scarce, and, to their credit be it observed, they
+show no disposition to make it scarcer still. They husband it, hoard
+it up, are not too greedy, leave some for another day. They dig
+easily, with a straight back, and take a long time to turn round. The
+savage energy of the Saxon is to them unknown. Why wear themselves
+out? "Sweet bad luck to the man that would bur-rst himself as if the
+wuruld wouldn't be afther him. Divil sweep the omadhaun that would
+make his two elbows into a windmill that niver shtops, but is always
+going. Fair an' aisy goes far in a day. Walkin' is betther than
+runnin', an' standin' is betther than walkin', an' sittin' is betther
+than standin', an' lyin' is betther than any o' thim. Twas me owld
+father said it, an' a thrue wurud he shpoke, rest his sowl in glory."
+
+The Achil folks are ardent politicians. They have been visited by
+Michael Davitt, Dr. Tanner, and others, and most of the population,
+all the Catholics in fact, became members of the Land League. The area
+of the island is about forty thousand acres, a vast moorland, with
+miles of bog, and hills and mountains in every direction. There are
+also several large lakes, which abound with white trout. The
+cultivated portions of the land only seem to dot the great waste,
+which nevertheless supports a population of some five thousand
+persons. The houses are mostly filthy, the people having cattle which
+live with the family. I approached a house to make inquiries, and was
+driven from the open door by the smell issuing from the interior. The
+next was sweeter, having perhaps been more recently cleaned out. Only
+one room, with a big turf fire, creating an intolerable atmosphere. A
+bed filled one-third of the floor, most of the remainder being
+occupied by two cows. A rough deal table near the bed comprised the
+furniture, and visitors, therefore, must sit on the sleeping
+arrangement. A civilised Irishman said:--"Two cows, two clean cows
+only, and you're surprised at that! Where have you been? Where have
+you been brought up? Let me tell you something, and when you get to
+Dugort ask the doctor there whether I am correct. A family not far
+away were stricken down with typhus fever. The people are mostly
+healthy and strong, although living under circumstances which would
+soon kill people not used to them, or not enjoying the same splendidly
+pure air. Well, the poor folks, eight of them, were all down at once,
+and no wonder, for when I visited them I never saw such a sight in my
+life. There were three in one bed in one corner, three in one bed in
+another corner, and two in shake-down beds on the floor. In the same
+room were a mare and foal, three cows, one pig under a bed, and a
+henroost above, on the ceiling. What would the sanitary authorities of
+Birmingham say to that menagerie in a sick room? Somebody wrote to the
+Local Government Board, and the Board referred the matter to the Poor
+Law Guardians. But the Guardians themselves kept cattle in their
+houses. It is the prevailing custom. Wherever you go in Achil, you
+will find cattle in the houses, along with the family, sharing the
+same room. The people cannot be moved from this custom. A large
+landowner built some good cottages for them, and offered them rent
+free, on condition that they would not live with the cattle. The
+people would not accept, so they got the houses at last on their own
+terms, and took the cows with them as before. They say that the cows
+enjoy the warmth and give better milk. They also say that the big turf
+fire stands them in lieu of feed to some extent. The Achil folks are
+hopeless in the direction of improvements. They have had the
+Protestant Colony at Dugort before them for more than sixty years--a
+well-housed, well-clad community, living clearly and respectably,
+paying their way, and keeping at peace with all men, but they have not
+moved an inch in the same direction. They bury their dead in the old
+savage way, without any funeral rites, except such as the relatives
+may have in their minds. The priest says no prayer, reads no service,
+does not attend in his official character, unless specially engaged
+and paid. Usually he does not attend funerals at all, although he may
+sometimes join the procession as a mark of respect. And the weddings
+are arranged in a way you might think barbarous. A young man fancies a
+girl he sees at mass, or at a funeral. He gets a bottle of whiskey and
+goes to see the father, who nearly always wishes to get the daughter
+off his hands, without any regard whatever for the poor girl's
+feelings. I was present at one of these negotiations. 'What will you
+give with her?' said the young fellow, a boy of eighteen or so. 'Three
+cows and a calf,' said the father. 'So-and-so got three cows and a
+calf and a sheep.' said the suitor. The father pondered a bit, but
+eventually, not to be behind, conceded the sheep. The lover tried a
+bit further. Somebody else had three cows and a calf and a sheep and a
+lamb, but the old man stood firm, and the bargain was struck, with
+mutual esteem, after several hours' haggling and a second bottle of
+whiskey. I called in the evening to learn the girl's fate. She had
+been two years in service and had got unorthodox notions. She
+screamed with affright when the father brought the fellow forward and
+told her what was arranged. She had seen him before, but had never
+spoken to him, and the sight of him had always been most repugnant to
+her. She ran away into the bogs, but the country was up, and she was
+soon found. Then after a sound beating she was handed over to the
+ardent swain along with the cows, and so forth, nominated in the bond.
+
+"They marry early or go to America. The boy is usually seventeen or
+eighteen, the girl fifteen or sixteen. I have known girls marry at
+thirteen. Not long ago a boy I knew well, a mere weakling, unable to
+do even a boy's work, got married. He was seventeen, or nearly
+seventeen, but he didn't look it. They believe that their poverty,
+such as it is, is due to the predominance of England. Their hatred of
+the English is very pronounced, but a casual visitor will not see it.
+He has money to spend, and they flock round him in a friendly way. But
+let him live among them! They tried to boycott the Protestant
+settlement, and if their priests had ruled on that occasion they would
+have starved us out or would have made things so unpleasant that we
+must have left the field. That was during the Land League agitation.
+The Protestants declined to join and vengeance was declared, but
+Bonaventure, head of the monastery, forbade it. He is a splendid
+fellow, not like the ordinary priests at all. So they were saved. But
+let this change come about, once let that bill become law, and all
+Protestants must leave the island, must give up the land they have
+tilled and tended until it is like a garden, and seek their fortunes
+elsewhere. That is a certainty. Ask everyone you meet, and you will
+find that each will say just the same thing."
+
+A smart car driver, named Matthew Henay, was dubious as to the
+benefits accruing from Home Rule. His driving was a study, and his
+conversations with Maggie, his little mare, were both varied and
+vigorous. "Now me little daughter, away ye go. That's the girl now. Me
+little duck, ye go sweetly. There's the beauty, now. Maggie me love,
+me darlint, me pride; ye know ivery word I spake. Yes, she does, Sorr.
+She ondhershtands both English an' Irish. I can dhrive her in both,
+but I have an owld woman o' me own that can only dhrive her in Irish.
+Home Rule will do no good at all. Twinty years I wint to England to
+harvest, an' eighteen iv it to the same masther an' on the same farm.
+An' ye don't get me to belave all I hear widout thinkin' a bit. An' I
+say, get out o' that wid yer talk o' mines an' factories, an' rubbish.
+Where's the money to come from? says I. That's what nobody knows.
+Sure, we'd be nothin' widout England. A thousand goes from this part
+every year, an' even the girls brings back ten to fifteen pounds each.
+That's all the circulation of money we have. An' as all we get's from
+England, I say, let us stick to England, but nobody agrees wid me.
+There's the girl, now. Away ye go, me little duck, me daughter, me
+beauty, me--bad luck to ye, _will_ ye go? What are ye standin' there
+for? Will ye get out o' that, ye lazy brute? Take that, an' that, an'
+_that_, ye idle, good-for-nothin', desavin', durty daughter of a pig.
+_Now_ d'ye ondhershtand who's masther, ye idle, skulkin', schamin',
+disrespictable baste?"
+
+Misther Henay was favourably disposed towards the Protestant settlers
+of Dugort, but another Sounder was very bitter indeed. "A set of
+Soupers an' Jumpers an' Double-Jumpers. What's the manin' iv it ye
+ask? Soupers is Catholics that's turned Protestants for the sake of
+small pickin's sich as soup. That's what they are at Dugort. An'
+Jumpers is worse than Soupers. For Soupers only changed once, but
+Jumpers is thim that turned once an' then turned back again, jumpin'
+about from one religion to another. Ye can have Jumpers in anythin'.
+Ye can have thim in politics. Owld Gladstone is a Jumper and a
+Double-Jumper an' a Double-Thribble Jumper. An' if we get a Parlimint
+for ourselves, 'tis because he daren't for the life of him say No--an'
+divil thank him. Yes, we'll take the bill; what else will we do? We
+can amend it whin once we get it. But afther so much jumpin', owld
+Gladstone's a man I wouldn't thrust. A man that would make so many
+changes isn't to be thrusted. I wouldn't be surprised if he wouldn't
+bring in a coercion bill at any minute. Ah, the thricks an' the dodges
+iv him! An' the silver tongue he has in his head! Begorra, I wouldn't
+lave him out o' me sight. 'Tis himself would stale the cross off a
+donkey's back."
+
+The Achil ditches are full of ferns, and a hundred yards from the sea
+are clumps of _Osmunda regalis_--otherwise known as the Royal
+fern--spreading out palm-like fronds four feet long. Other ferns,
+usually regarded as rare, abound in every direction, and potatoes and
+cabbages grow at the very water's edge. The vast plains are treeless
+save for the plantations round the house of Major Pike, who has shown
+what can be done to reclaim the land, but his excellent example has
+attracted no imitators. Except in the Major's grounds there is not a
+tree on the island, unless we count the hedges of fuchsias, twelve to
+fifteen feet high, which fence in some of the gardens. The Post
+Office, engineered by Mr. Robins, of Devonshire, an old
+coastguardsman, is surrounded by fuchsia bloom, and every evidence of
+careful culture. Here I met some Achil folks who did not understand
+English, and a mainland man who does not believe in the future of the
+race. He said:--
+
+"I think their civilisation has stood still for at least five
+centuries. They are so wedded to their ancient customs that nothing
+can be done for them. They are not so poor as they look, and the
+starvation of which you hear in England is totally unknown. As an
+object of charity Achil is a gigantic swindle. When the seed potatoes
+were brought here in Her Majesty's gunboats the people were too lazy
+to fetch them ashore. I was there and heard an Irish bluejacket
+cursing them as a disgrace to his country. They do just what the
+priests tell them from week to week. Every Sunday they get their
+instructions. They keep up the cry of distress when there is no
+distress, for fear of breaking through the custom. They have been
+helped on all sides, but they will not utilise their advantages. The
+sea is before them, swarming with fish, which they will not catch.
+They said, we have no pier, no quay. They were set up with these and
+everything they needed. What did they do with them? Nothing at all.
+The work is falling to pieces and they let it go. They sometimes go
+out in coraghs, and catch enough fish for the day's food, but that is
+all. They don't pay their rents, and their rents would amuse you.
+Twenty-five shillings a year for a decent house and a good piece of
+land is reckoned a heavy responsibility. One man I know named McGreal
+has twenty acres of good land and a house for seventeen shillings and
+sixpence a year. They will not sell you butter, they will not sell you
+milk. They say they want it for themselves. None of them has ever paid
+a cent for fuel. All have turf for the digging, and much of the Achil
+turf is equal to coal. The sea is in front of them, and all round
+them, and the lakes are full of fish. And yet the hat is sent round
+every other year.
+
+"They used to pay their debts. Now they will pay nothing, and their
+audacity is something wonderful. A gentleman over there has bought
+some land, and the people turn their cattle on it to graze. He
+remonstrates, and they say, 'What business have you here? Keep in your
+own country.' He sued them for damages. They had nothing but the
+cattle aforesaid, and, as he could not find heart to seize, he had no
+remedy. They keep their cattle on his land, although he has, since
+then, processed them for trespass. They have already divided the
+spoils of the Protestants; that is, in theory. They are anticipating
+the Home Rule Bill in their disposal of the land. They have marked out
+the patches they will severally claim, and are already disputing the
+future possession of certain desirable fields.
+
+"English Gladstonians ridicule the fears of Irish Protestants, who
+declare unanimously their conviction that Home Rule means oppression.
+This ridicule is absurd in face of the fact that every Protestant
+sect, without exception, has publicly and formally announced its
+adherence to this opinion. The Church of Ireland believes in Catholic
+intolerance; the Methodists believe it; the Baptists believe it; the
+Plymouth Brethren believe it; the Presbyterians believe it; the
+Unitarians, the most radical of all the sects, believe it; the
+Quakers, who never before made a public deliverance of opinion in any
+political matter, believe it; and all these have issued printed
+declarations of their belief. The Roman Catholic laity, the best of
+them, believe it; but the Catholic Bishops say No, they will not admit
+the soft impeachment. And Englishmen who are Gladstonians believe
+these Bishops in preference to all the sects I have enumerated. Could
+anything be more unreasonable? But it is of a piece with the whole
+conception of the bill, which seems to contain every possible
+absurdity, and is based on extravagant assumptions of amity on the
+part of Irish Catholics, of which there is not one particle of
+evidence in existence. All the evidence points the other way, and
+Irish Protestants know that under Home Rule their fate is sealed.
+There would be no open persecution, but we should be gently elbowed
+out of the country. All who could leave Ireland would do so at once,
+and England would lose her most powerful allies in the enemy's camp.
+For it is the enemy's camp, and this fact should be borne in mind. Mr.
+Gladstone and his followers would be horrified to hear such a
+statement, which they would regard as rank blasphemy. But every
+Irishman knows it, and every Englishman knows it who lives here long
+enough to know anything. Irish Nationalists have two leading ideas--to
+get as much out of England as possible, and to damage her as much as
+possible by way of repayment. Mr. Gladstone wants to put England's
+head on the block, to hand an axe to her sworn enemy, and to say, 'I'm
+sure you won't chop.' People who have common sense stand amazed,
+dumbfounded at so much stupidity."
+
+A pious Catholic bore out the statements of my first Achil friend with
+reference to the comparative comfort of the Islanders. He said:--"We
+live mostly on bread and tea. Of course we have plenty of butter and
+eggs, and now and then we go out and get some fish. I had a go at a
+five-pound white trout to-day, with plenty of butter and potatoes. At
+Dugort people who live in cabins have money in the bank, aye, some of
+them have several hundred pounds. And yet they took the seed potatoes
+sent by England. Well, they wanted a change of seed, and they must do
+the same as their neighbours. It would not do to pretend to be any
+better off than the rest. They are compelled to do as the majority do
+in everything, or they would be boycotted at once. They cease work
+when a death occurs in the parish. If an infant three days old should
+give up the ghost, every man shoulders his spade and leaves the field.
+And he does not return till after the funeral. If another death
+occurred on the funeral day, he would leave off again, and so on. No
+matter how urgent the state of the crop, he must leave it to its fate,
+or leave the country, for no one would know a person who would work
+while a corpse lay in the parish. They would look upon him as an
+infidel, and, if possible, worse than a Protestant. Luckily we don't
+often die hereabouts, or we'd never get the praties set or the turf
+cut. Sometimes they won't go to work because someone is expected to
+die, and they say it isn't worth while to begin. I have known a
+lingering case to throw the crops back a fortnight or more. Oh, they
+don't grumble; any excuse for laziness is warmly welcomed. They
+complain when people die at inconvenient times, and will say the act
+might have been delayed till a more convenient season, or might have
+been done a little earlier. The whole population turn out for the
+funeral, but they don't dig the grave until the procession reaches the
+graveyard. Then the mourners sit around smoking, both men and women,
+while a couple of young chaps make a shallow hole, and cover the
+coffin with four to six inches of earth. No, it is not severely
+sanitary, but we are not too particular in Achil."
+
+These unsophisticated islanders are decidedly interesting. Their
+customs, politics, manners, morals, odours seem to be strongly
+marked--to have character, originality, individuality. I fear they are
+mostly Home Rulers, for in Ireland Home Rule and strong smells nearly
+always go together.
+
+Achil Sound, June 20th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 38.--THE ACHIL ISLANDERS.
+
+
+Dugort, the capital city of Achil, is twelve miles from the Sound, a
+terrible drive in winter, when the Atlantic storms blow with such
+violence as to stop a horse and cart, and to render pedestrianism
+well-nigh impossible; but pleasant enough in fine weather,
+notwithstanding the seemingly interminable wastes of bog and rocky
+mountain, dotted at infrequent intervals with white cottages, single
+or in small clusters of three or four. After Major Pike's plantations,
+near the Sound, not a tree is visible all the way to Dugort, although
+at some points you can see for ten miles or more. Here and there where
+the turf has been cut away for fuel, great gnarled roots of oak and
+fir trees are visible, bleached by exposure to a ghastly white,
+showing against the jetty soil like the bones of extinct giants, which
+indeed they are. The inhabitants say that the island was once covered
+by a great forest, which perished by fire, and Misther Patrick Toolis,
+with that love of fine words which marks the Irish peasant, said that
+the charred interior of the scattered remains proves that the trees
+were "desthroyed intirely by a grate confiscation." The heather, of
+two kinds, is brilliantly purple, and the Royal fern grows everywhere
+in profusion, its terra-cotta bloom often towering six feet high. The
+mountains are effectively arranged, and imposing by their massiveness,
+height, and rugged grandeur. Some of the roads are tolerable, those
+made by Mr. Balfour being by far the best. Others are execrable and
+dangerous in the extreme, and in winter must be almost impassable.
+Sometimes they run along a narrow ridge which in its normal condition
+was of barely sufficient width to carry the car, and it often happens
+that part of this has fallen away, so that the gap must be passed by
+leading the horse while the car scrapes along with one wheel on the
+top and one clinging to the side of the abyss. The natives make light
+of such small inconveniences, and for the most part ride on horseback
+with saddles and crupper-bands of plaited rye-straw. Every householder
+has a horse or an ass, mostly a horse, and young girls career adown
+the mountain sides in what seems the maddest, most reckless way,
+guiding their half-broken, mustard-coloured steeds with a single rein
+of plaited straw, adjusted in an artful way which is beyond me to
+describe. Very quaint they look, on their yellow horses, which remind
+you of D'Artagnan's orange-coloured charger, immortalised by Dumas in
+the "Three Musketeers;" their red robes floating in the breeze, their
+bare feet hanging over the horse's right flank. When they fall off
+they simply get on again. They seldom or never are hurt. They are hard
+as nails and lissom as cats. Dr. Croly, of Dugort, saw a girl thrown
+heels over head, turning a complete somersault from the horse's back.
+She alighted on her feet, grabbed the rein, bounded up again, and
+gaily galloped away. During my hundred miles riding and walking over
+the island I saw many riderless horses, fully accoutred in the Achil
+style, plodding patiently along the moorland roads, climbing the steep
+mountain paths. At first I thought an accident had occurred, and spent
+some time in looking for the corpse. There was no occasion for fear.
+The Achil harvesters going to England and Scotland ride over to the
+Sound, where lie the fishing smacks which bear them to Westport, and
+then turn their horses loose. The faithful beasts go home, however
+long or devious the road, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, only
+staying a moment at the parting of the ways to bid each other
+good-bye, then going forward at a brisker pace to make up for lost
+time.
+
+The hamlet of Cashel, not to be confused with Cashel of the Rock, is
+the first sign of life after leaving the Sound. A ravine, with white
+cabins, green crops, and huge boulders, on one of which seven small
+children were sitting in a row, unwashed, unkempt, with little calico
+and no leather. Bunnacurragh has a post-office run by a pensioner who
+grows roses, and keeps his place like a picture, the straw ropes which
+secure the thatch against the western gales taut and trig, each loose
+end terminated by a loop holding a large stone. The stones are used in
+place of pegs, and very queer they look dangling all round over the
+eaves. Not far from here is an immense basin-like depression of dry
+bog. Then a monastery, in the precincts of which the ground is
+reclaimed and admirably tilled, the drainage being carried over
+ingenious turf conduits, the soil lacking firmness to hold stone or
+brick. The vast bulk of Slievemore soon looms full in front, and after
+a long stretch of smooth Balfour road and a sharp turn on the edge of
+a deep ravine on the right with a high ridge beyond it, the Great
+mountain on the left, Dugort, with Blacksod Bay, heaves in sight. A
+final spurt up the hilly road and the weary, jolted traveller, or what
+is left of him, may (metaphorically) fall into the arms of Mr. Robert
+Sheridan, of the Sea View Hotel, or of Mrs. Sheridan, if he likes it
+better.
+
+There are two Dugorts, or one Dugort divided against itself. The line
+of demarcation is sharp and decided. The two sections stand but a
+short distance apart, each on an opposite horn of the little bay, but
+the moral distance is great enough for forty thousand leagues. The
+Dugort under Slievemore is Protestant, the Dugort of the opposite
+cliff is intensely Roman Catholic. The one is the perfection of
+neatness, sweetness, cleanliness, prettiness, and order. The other is
+dirty, frowsy, disorderly, and of evil odour. The Papists deny the
+right of the Protestants to be in the island at all, speak of them
+with acerbity, call them the Colonists, the perverts, the Soupers, the
+Jumpers, the heretics; and look forward to the time when a Dublin
+Parliament will banish law and order, so that these interlopers may be
+for ever swept away, and their fields and houses become the property
+of the Faithful. They complain that the Protestants have all the best
+land, and that the Papist population were wrongfully driven from the
+ground now occupied by the colony. Like other Catholic poor all over
+Ireland they will tell you that they have been ground down, harried,
+oppressed, grievously ill-used, habitually ill-treated by the English
+Government, which has never given them a chance. They explain the
+prosperity of their Protestant neighbours by knowing winks and nods,
+and by plain intimations that all Irish Protestants are secretly
+subsidised by England, that they have privileges, that they are
+favoured, petted, kept in pocket money. To affect to doubt this is to
+prove yourself a dissembler, an impostor, a black-hearted enemy of the
+people. Your Achil friend will drop the conversation in disgust, and
+by round-about ways will call you a liar. He is sure of his facts, as
+sure as he is that a sprinkling of holy water will cure rheumatism,
+will keep away the fairies from the cow, will put a fine edge on his
+razor, will keep the donkey from being bewitched. He knows who has had
+money and how much, having reasoned out the matter by inference. He
+could sell himself to-morrow, but is incorruptible, and will remain a
+strong rock to the faith, will still buttress up the true hierarchy of
+heaven. He cannot be bought, and this is strange, for he never looks
+worth twopence.
+
+It was during a famine that one Mr. Nangle, a Protestant parson from
+the North, went to Achil and found the people in deepest distress.
+They were dying of starvation, and their priests had all fled. Mr.
+Nangle had no money, but he was prompt in action. He sent a thousand
+pounds' worth of meal to the island on his own responsibility, and
+weighed down by a sense of the debt he had incurred, went to London to
+beg the money. He was successful, and afterwards founded the Achil
+mission at Dugort, now called the Colony. Needless to say that all the
+land belonging to the mission was duly bought and paid for, and that
+the Protestants have been the benefactors of Achil. The stories of
+wrong-doing, robbery, and spoliation, which the peasantry repeat, are
+of course totally untrue. The example of a decently-housed community
+has produced no perceptible effect on the habits of the Achilese. The
+villages of Cabawn, Avon (also known by its Anglicised name of River),
+Ballyknock, Slievemore, and Ducanella are dirty beyond description.
+Some of the houses I saw in a drive which included the coastguard
+station of Bull's Mouth were mere heaps of stones, with turf sods for
+tiles, whereon was growing long grass which looked like a small
+instalment of the three acres and a cow. Some had no windows and no
+chimney, the turf reek filling the hovel, but partly escaping by a
+hole in the roof. The people who live in this look as it painted in
+umber by old Dutch masters. These huts are small, but there is always
+room for a pig or two, which stalk about or stretch themselves before
+the fire like privileged members of the family. This was very well for
+the Gintleman that paid the Rint. But he merits the title no longer.
+His occupation's gone.
+
+A sturdy Protestant said:--"Suppose Home Rule became law, then we must
+go away. We are only here on sufferance, and every person in the
+Colony knows it and feels it only too well. Our lives would not be
+endangered: those times are over, but we could not possibly stay in
+the island. Remove the direct support of England, and we should be
+subject to insult and wrong, for which we should have no earthly
+remedy. What could they do? Why, to begin with, they could pasture
+their cattle on our fields. If we turned them out they could be turned
+in again; if we sue them we have a day's journey to take to get the
+cause heard, and if we get the verdict we can recover nothing. Shoot a
+cow or two! Then we should ourselves be shot, or our children. No,
+there has been no landlord-shooting on the island. This kind of large
+game has always been very scarce on Achil. Just over the Sound we had
+a little sport--a really merry little turn it was--but the wrong man
+was shot.
+
+"A Mr. Smith came down to collect rents. The Land League was ruling
+the country, and its desperadoes were everywhere. It was decided to
+shoot Mr. Smith, after duly warning him to keep away. Smith was not to
+be deterred from what he thought his duty (he was a Black Protestant),
+and away he went, with his son, a neat strip of a lad about seventeen
+or so. When they got half-way to the house which Smith had appointed
+as a meeting-place a man in the bog which bordered the road called
+out, and waved a paper, which he then placed on a heap of turf. Young
+Smith went for it, and it read. YOU'LL NOT GO HOME ALIVE THIS NIGHT.
+'Drive on, Tom,' said the father. 'We'll do our work, whether we go
+home alive or dead.' Coming back the same evening the father was
+driving, the son, this young lad, sitting at the side of the car,
+which was furnished with a couple of repeating rifles and a revolver.
+Suddenly three men spring up from behind a fence and fire a volley at
+the two Smiths, but as they rose the horse shied and plunged forward,
+and hang me! if they didn't all miss. The elder Smith still struggled
+with the frightened horse, which the shooting had made ungovernable,
+but the boy slipped off the car, and, seizing one of the rifles,
+looked out for a shot in return. It was growing dusk, and the bog was
+full of trenches and ups and downs, of which the three fugitives
+cleverly availed themselves. Besides, to be shot at from a point-blank
+range of three or four yards, scrambling down afterwards from behind a
+frantic horse, is not the best Wimbledon method of steadying the
+nerves. The boy put the rifle to his shoulder, and bided his time.
+Presently up came one of the running heroes, and young Smith shot him
+through the heart, as neat a kill as ever you saw. The dead man was
+identified as a militiaman from Crossmolina, up Sligo way. The League
+always brought its marksmen from a distance, and it is known that most
+of them were persons who had received some military training. Then the
+youngster covered another, but missed, and was about to fire again when
+his father shouted, 'Hold hard, Tom, that's enough sport for one day.'"
+
+My friend was wrong. The second shot lacerated the man's shoulder, and
+laid him up for many a long week. I had the fact, which is now first
+recorded, on _undoubted authority_. Young Smith may be gratified to
+learn, for the first time, that his second bullet was not altogether
+thrown away. This may console him for the loss of the third reprobate,
+whom he had got "exactly between the shoulders," when the elder Smith
+ordered him to desist. The occurrence was such a lesson to the Land
+League assassins that they for ever after forswore Achil and its
+immediate surroundings. As Dennis Mulcahy remarked, "The ruffians only
+want shtandin' up to, an' they'll not come nixt or near ye." Mr.
+Morley would do well to apply this moral to the County Clare.
+
+The best authority in Achil said:--"The hat is always going round for
+the islanders, who are much better off than the poor of great English
+cities. They have the reputation of being in a state of chronic
+famine. This has no foundation in fact. They all have land, one, two,
+or three cows, and the sea to draw upon. For their land and houses
+they pay nothing, or next to nothing; for good land in some cases is
+to be had for a shilling an acre. The lakes also abound with fish.
+They glory in their poverty, and hail a partial failure of crops with
+delight. They know they will be cared for, and that provisions will be
+showered upon them from all sides. They say, 'Please God, we'll have a
+famine this year,' and when the contributions pour in they laugh and
+sing, and say, 'The distress for ever! Long live the famine!' The word
+goes round at stated intervals that they are to 'have a famine.' They
+jump at the suggestion, act well together, and carry out the idea
+perfectly. The Protestants never have any distress which calls for
+charitable aid. They live on the same soil, under the same laws, but
+they never beg. They pay their rents, too, much more regularly than
+the others, who of late years can hardly be got to pay either rent or
+anything else. The Protestants are all strong Unionists. The Catholics
+are all strong Home Rulers. Their notions of Home Rule are as
+follows:--No rent, no police, a poteen still at every door, and
+possession of the land now held by Protestants, which is so much
+better than their own because so much more labour has been expended on
+it, and for no other reason. Who tells them to 'have a famine'? Why,
+the same people who arouse and keep alive their enmity to the
+Protestants; the same people who tell them lies about the early
+history of the Colony--lies which the tellers know to be lies, such as
+the stories of oppression, spoliation, and of how the mission took the
+property of the islanders with the strong hand, aided by England, the
+home of robbery, tyranny, and heresy. The people would be friendly
+enough but for their priests. Yet they have marched in procession
+before our houses, blowing defiance by means of a drum and fife band,
+because we would not join one or other of their dishonest and illegal
+combinations. They opened a man's head with a stone, producing a
+dreadful scalp wound, and when Doctor Croly, the greatest favourite in
+the whole island, went to dress the wound, five or six of them stopped
+his horse, with the object of giving him a 'bating,' which would have
+ended nobody knows how. The doctor produced a revolver, and the heroes
+vanished like smoke."
+
+The good doctor is himself a Unionist, but more of a philanthropist
+than a politician. He is the parish doctor, with eight thousand people
+to look after, the whole being scattered over an immense area. I
+accompanied him on a twenty-mile drive to see a girl down with
+influenza, much of the road being almost impracticable. Some of his
+experiences, coming out incidentally, were strange and startling. He
+told me of a night when the storm was so wild that a man seeking him
+approached the surgery on all-fours, and once housed, would not again
+stir out, though the patient was his own wife. The doctor went alone
+and in the storm and blackness narrowly escaped drowning, emerging
+from the Jawun, usually called the Jordan, after an hour's struggle
+with the flood, to sit up all night in his wet clothes, tending the
+patient. On another occasion a mountain sheep frightened his horse
+just as the doctor was filling his pipe. The next passer-by found him
+insensible. Nobody might have passed for a month. A similar
+misadventure resulted in a broken leg. Then on a pitchy night he
+walked over the cliffs, and was caught near the brink by two rocks
+which held him wedged tightly until someone found him and pulled him
+up, with the bag of instruments, which he thinks had saved him. And it
+was as well to pause in his flight, for the Menawn Cliffs, with their
+thousand feet of clean drop, might have given the doctor an ugly fall.
+Two girls, whose male relations had gone to England, had not been seen
+for three days. Nobody would go near the house. The doctor found them
+both on the floor insensible, down with typhus fever, shut up with the
+pigs and cows, the room and its odour defying description. The
+neighbours kept strictly aloof. Dr. Croly swept and garnished, made
+fires, and pulled the patients through. "Sure, you couldn't expect us
+to go near whin 'twas the faver," said the neighbourly Achilese. Mr.
+Salt, the Brum-born mission agent, was obliged to remain all night on
+one of the neighbouring islands--islands are a drug hereabouts--and
+next morning he found an egg in his hat. Fowls are in nearly all the
+houses. Sometimes they have a roost on the ceiling, but they mostly
+perch on the family bed, when that full-flavoured Elysium is not on
+the floor. I saw an interior which contained one black cow, one black
+calf, some hens, some ducks, two black-and-white pigs, a mother, and
+eleven children. Where they all slept was a puzzle, as only one bed
+was visible. The hens went whir-r-r-up, and perched on the bedstead,
+when the lady smiled and wished me Good Evening. She looked strong and
+in good going order. The Achilese say Good Evening all day long. A
+young girl was grinning in the next doorway, a child of fourteen or
+fifteen she seemed. "Ye wouldn't think that was a married woman, would
+ye now," said a neighbour, with pardonable pride. "Aye, but she is,
+though, an' a foin lump iv a son ye have, haven't ye, Maureen." Mr.
+Peter Griffin, once a land commissioner, told me that a boy having
+applied for the fixing of a judicial rent, the commissioners expressed
+their surprise upon learning that he was married. "Arrah, now," said
+the applicant, "sure 'tis not for the sake of the bit that the crathur
+would ate that a boy need be widout one o' thim!"
+
+In Achil, as elsewhere, the better people are certain that the Home
+Rule Bill will never become law. From their point of view, the thing
+seems too absurd to be possible. They are face to face with a class of
+Irishmen, among whom civilisation seems to have made no perceptible
+progress for centuries, who scorn every improvement, and are so tied
+and bound down by aboriginal ignorance and superstition as to be
+insensible to everything but their ancient prejudices. It cannot be
+possible, they argue, that Ireland should be given over to the
+dominion of these people, who, after all, are in the matter of
+advancement and enlightenment fairly representative of the bulk of the
+voters for Home Rule all over the country. The civilised community of
+Achil are unable to realise the possibility of such a surrender. They
+do not discuss the measure, but rather laugh at it. An able business
+man said:--
+
+"We get the daily papers a little old, no doubt, but we follow them
+very closely, and we concur in believing that Mr. Gladstone will in
+the long run drop the bill. We think he will turn round and say,
+'There now. That's all I can do. Haven't I done my best? Haven't I
+kept my promise? Now, you can't blame me. The Irishmen see it coming,
+and they will get out of it as much dramatic effect as possible. The
+party organs are already urging them to open rupture with the
+Government. Compulsion is their game, and no doubt, with Gladstone, it
+is the most likely game to pay. But he might rebel. He might grow
+tired of eating Irish dirt; he might pluck up spirit enough to tell
+these bullies who are jockeying him, and through him the British
+Empire, to go to the Divil. Then we'd have a fine flare-up. Virtuous
+indignation and patriotic virtue to the fore! The Irish members will
+rush over to Ireland, and great demonstrations will be the order of
+the day. The Irish love demonstrations, or indeed anything else which
+gives a further excuse for laziness. The priests will orate, the
+members will prate, the ruffians elate will shoot or otherwise murder
+a few people, who will have Mr. Gladstone to thank for their death.
+For what we wanted was twenty years of resolute government, just as
+Lord Salisbury said, and if Mr. Balfour had been left to carry it out
+Ireland would have come her nearest possible to prosperity and
+contentment. But with steady rule one day, and vacillation, wobbling,
+and surrender the next, what can you expect? The Irish are very smart,
+cute people, and they soon know where they can take advantage of
+weakness. The way these poor Achil folks, those who have been to
+England, can reckon up Mr. Gladstone! They call him a traitor now. And
+yet he promises to let the Irish members arrange their own finance!
+'Here, my boys,' says he, 'take five millions and spend it your own
+way.' Will John Bull stand that? Will he pay for the rope that is to
+hang himself? Will he buy the razor to cut his own throat? Where are
+his wits? Why does he stand by to witness this unending farce, when he
+ought to be minding serious business? This Irish idiocy is stopping
+the progress of the Empire. Why does not Bull put his foot on it at
+once? He must do so in the end. Where are the working men of England?
+Surely they know enough to perceive that their own personal interests
+are involved.
+
+"In Achil we have practically peasant proprietary and nothing else.
+Eleven hundred men and women are at this moment in England and
+Scotland from Achil alone. They will return in October, each bringing
+back ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, on which they will live till next
+season. The Irish Legislature would begin by establishing peasant
+proprietary all over Ireland. The large farmers would disappear, and
+men without capital, unable to employ labour, would take their place.
+Instead of Mayo, you would have the unemployed of the whole thirty-two
+counties upon you. Ireland would be pauperised from end to end, for
+everybody who could leave it would do so--that is, every person of
+means--and as for capital and enterprise, what little we have would
+leave us. Which of the Irish Nationalist party would start factories,
+and what would they make? Can anybody tell me that?"
+
+I submitted that Mr. William O'Brien, the member for Cork, might open
+a concern for the making of breeches, or that Mr. Timothy Healy, the
+member for Louth, who was reared in a tripe shop, might embark his
+untold gold in the cowheel and trotter business, or might even prove a
+keen competitor with Walsall in the manufacture of horsewhips, a
+product of industry of which he has had an altogether exceptional
+experience. "Is not this true?" I enquired.
+
+My friend admitted the fact, but declined to believe in the factory.
+
+Dugort (Achil Island), June 22nd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 39.--IRISH UNFITNESS FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+There stands a city neither large nor small, Its air and situation
+sweet and pretty. It matters very little if at all. Whether its
+denizens are dull or witty. Whether the ladies there are short or
+tall, Brunettes or blondes--only there stands a city. Perhaps 'tis
+also requisite to minute, That there's a castle and a cobbler in it.
+It is not big enough to boast a barber. These indispensable adjuncts
+of civilisation exist in Connaught, but only at rare intervals.
+Roughly speaking, there is a space of about a hundred miles between
+them. From Athlone to Dugort, a hundred and thirty miles, there is
+only one, both towns inclusive. Castlereagh is a deadly-lively place
+for business, but keenly awake to politics. The distressful science
+absorbs the faculties of the people, who care for little else. Like
+all the Keltic Irish, they are great talkers, and, surely, if talking
+were working the Irish would be the richest nation in the world.
+"Words, words, words," and no deeds. The Castlereagh folks are growing
+despondent. The Irish Parliament that was to remit taxation, present
+every able-bodied man with a farm, do away with landlords and police,
+and reduce the necessity for work to a minimum, seems to them further
+off than ever. They complain that once again the people of Ireland
+have been betrayed. Mr. Gladstone has done it all. To be sure they
+never trusted him, but they thought him an instrument in the hands of
+Fate and the Irish Parliamentary party. Spite of all he is supposed to
+have done for the Irish, Mr. Gladstone is not popular in Ireland, and,
+as I pointed out months ago, they from the first declined to believe
+in his sincerity. They rightly regarded his action anent Home Rule as
+the result of compulsion, and, rightly or wrongly, believed that he
+would take the first opportunity of throwing over the whole scheme.
+That he should act thus treacherously (they say) is precisely what
+might be expected from an impartial review of his whole career, which
+presents an unequalled record of in-and-out running--consistent only
+in its inconsistency. Having apparently ridden straight for awhile, it
+is now time to expect some "pulling." His shameful concessions to the
+Unionist party may be taken as a clear indication of his congenital
+crookedness, and the refusal of the Nationalists at Killybegs, on the
+visit of Lord Houghton, the other day, to give a single shout for the
+Grand Old Man, bears out my previous statement as to the popular
+feeling. Amid the carefully organised show of enthusiasm and mock
+loyalty which greeted the visit of the Viceroy, not a cheer could be
+raised for Mr. Gladstone. The local wirepullers did their best, but
+the priests who for weeks have been arranging their automata, at the
+last moment found that the dummies would not work. There were rounds
+of cheering for this, that, and the other, and when the mob were in
+full cry, someone shouted, "Three cheers for Mr. Gladstone." Dead
+silence. The Gladstonian Viceroy and his following were left high and
+dry. The flood of enthusiasm instantly receded, and the beating of
+their own hearts was the only sound they heard. Mr. Morley's name
+would have obtained a like reception. The people were doubtless
+willing to obey their leaders, and to make some slight sacrifice to
+expediency, but every man left that particular cheer to his neighbour.
+Hence the fiasco for which the people have already been severely
+reprimanded. Someone should have called for cheers for Balfour. Anyone
+who knows the West of Ireland knows there would have been an outburst
+of hurrahs, hearty and spontaneous. The Irish are delightfully
+illogical.
+
+A respectable old Fenian had a poor opinion of the present Home Rule
+agitation. He said:--"I am of the school of Stephens and Mitchel. When
+a people or nation is radically discontented with its rulers it should
+throw them off by force. If the Irish could hold together long enough
+to maintain an armed insurrection for two weeks only, help would be
+forthcoming from all quarters. When a young man I cherished the hope
+that this would be accomplished, but I have long abandoned the notion
+that anything of the kind will be possible in my time. For individual
+Englishmen I have as much friendship as anybody, not being himself an
+Englishman, can entertain. What I dislike is English rule, and the
+present movement does not interest me, because its leaders profess
+allegiance--for the present, anyhow. No doubt the general idea is to
+obtain as much advantage as possible, and to gradually increase the
+strength of Ireland; but, in my opinion, the Fenian movement was the
+true and legitimate method, and the one best suited to the genius of
+the Irish nation. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written
+by English speakers and writers, the movement was worthy of honour,
+and had it been successful, would have received high praise and
+commendation from every country except England. To be respectable,
+revolutions or insurrections must be successful, or at any rate, must
+have a certain amount of success to commence with. The English people
+never properly understood the Fenian movement. To begin with, the name
+of Fenians was not assumed by the Irish body of conspirators. The
+Fenians proper were entirely confined to America, where they acted
+under the instructions of John O'Mahony, with Michael and Colonel
+Corcoran as lieutenants. The Colonel commanded the Irish brigade of
+the American army, and was pledged to bring over a strong contingent
+at the right moment. The Irish party in Ireland under Stephens was
+called the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, to which I am proud to say
+I belonged. That is all over now, and I am content to be loyal, under
+compulsion. There is nothing else for it. The young men are all gone
+to America, and the failure of the enterprise has damaged the prestige
+of the cause. The organisation was very good, and you might say that
+the able-bodied population belonged to it, almost to a man. England
+never knew, does not know even now, how universal was the movement.
+The escape of James Stephens, the great Number One, from Richmond
+Bridewell, was something of an eye-opener, but not half so astonishing
+as some things that would have happened if the general movement had
+been successful. It was Daniel Byrne and James Breslin, who let him
+out. Byrne was a turnkey, Breslin was hospital superintendent, and
+both held their posts on account of their well-known loyalty. Byrne
+was found out, or rather it was discovered that he was a Fenian, but
+they could not prove his guilt in the Stephens affair, and he never
+rounded on Breslin, who went on drawing his screw from the British
+Government for many a long day, until he took a trip to America, where
+his services to the cause landed him in a good situation. So he stayed
+there, and told everything, and that was the first the British
+Government knew about it, beyond suspicion of Byrne.
+
+"If Stephens had made up his mind for an outbreak the funeral of
+MacManus was the right occasion. He missed his tip then, and no
+mistake. There never was another chance like that. He said the
+arrangements were not complete, and from that moment the thing
+dwindled away, and we who were working it up in the rural districts
+began to think he did not really mean business. We were short of arms,
+but a small success would have improved our condition in that respect.
+Lots of the country organisers went to Dublin to see his funeral, and
+when we saw the crowds and the enthusiasm we all agreed that such a
+chance was not likely to occur again. MacManus had been a chief of the
+insurrectionary movement of 1848, and had been transported for life to
+Botany Bay, I think. He escaped to America, and died there in 1861.
+Mahony, the Fenian commander-in-chief, proposed to spend some of the
+revolutionary funds in bringing the body to Ireland, there to give it
+a public funeral. This was a great idea, and as the Government did not
+interfere, it turned out a greater success than anyone had
+anticipated. There were delegates from every city in America, and from
+every town in Ireland. It took about a month to lug MacManus from the
+Far West to Dublin, and the excitement increased every day. In my
+little place we collared all the timid fellows who had been holding
+back before, until there was not a single man of the peasant class
+outside the circle. MacManus was worth more dead than alive.
+
+"A hundred thousand men followed the hearse through the streets of
+Dublin. At the critical moment Number One held back. If the streets
+had been barricaded on the evening of the funeral the country would
+have stood an excellent chance of obtaining its independence. The
+moment was missed, and such chances never come twice. The French would
+have made a big thing of that affair. Stephens was great at
+organisation, but he had not the pluck to carry out the enterprise. He
+had not the military training required, nor the decision to act at the
+right moment. So here we are and here we shall remain, and I am your
+humble, obedient, loyal servant to command.
+
+"No, I do _not_ believe in the present leaders at all. I think they
+want to be paid big salaries as Irish statesmen, and that they are
+unfit to clean the boots of the men with whom I acted thirty years
+ago. The Fenians, or rather the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, had
+no wish to make money by their patriotism, and what is more, they were
+ready to risk their skins, whenever called upon to do so. They were
+willing to fight. These chaps do nothing but spout. The I.R.B. agreed
+among themselves, and obeyed orders. These fellows can't agree for
+five minutes together, and their principal subject of quarrel is--Who
+shall be master? Gladstone is fooling them now, and good enough for
+them. A pretty set of men to attempt to govern a country! They don't
+know what they want. We did. We swore every man to obedience to the
+Irish Republic. That was straightforward enough. The young 'uns round
+here have the same aspirations, but they dislike the idea of fighting.
+They expect to get round it some other way.
+
+"John Kennedy, of Westport, damaged the cause in Mayo more than any
+man in Ireland. He was a young fellow of about five-and-twenty, only a
+few years in the constabulary, but somehow he got into sworn meetings
+in disguise, and burst the whole thing up. The queerest feature about
+this business is the fact that although everybody knew the man not a
+shot was ever fired at him. That shows the fairness of the Fenians. A
+member of the Brotherhood would have been promptly dealt with, you
+bet. But Kennedy was an open enemy, and had a right to circumvent us
+if he could. Give us credit for some chivalrous feeling. We certainly
+deserved it, as this case amply proves.
+
+"The Land League? The Ruffian League, the Burglar League, the
+Pickpocket League, the Murder League--that's what I always called it.
+A hole-and-corner way of carrying on the fight, which had been begun
+by MEN, but which the latest fashion of Irishmen have not the courage
+to canduct as men. The Fenian conception was high-souled, and had some
+romance about it. We had a green flag with a rising sun on it, along
+with the harp of Erin. Our idea was an open fight against the British
+Empire. There's as much difference between the Fenians and their
+successors as between the ancient Romans and the Italian organ-grinders
+with monkeys. Good morning, Sir, and--God save the Queen."
+
+This was a jocosity if not a mockery, but it was the first time I had
+heard the words in Ireland. The tune is almost unknown, and the
+current issue of _United Ireland_ ridicules the notion that the Irish
+are going to learn it. The band of the Royal Irish Constabulary,
+playing in front of their barracks in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, on
+Friday evenings, sometimes include the tune in their programme, but
+when I heard them it was led up to and preceded by "St. Patrick's Day
+in the Mornin'," to which it was conjoined by one intervening chord. A
+Castlereagh Protestant said:--
+
+"The children here are taught to curse the Queen in their cradles.
+Don't know how it is, but hatred to England seems bred in the bone of
+the Catholic Irish. They make no secret of their hopes of vengeance.
+The Protestants will have to levant in double-quick time. The people
+here hate Protestants, whether English or Irish, likewise anybody who
+holds a Government appointment. Some few days ago I was at Westport,
+and while in the post office there, a beggar asked Mr. Hildebrand for
+alms. You know that every western town swarms with beggars. He said
+No, and this tramp immediately turned round and said:--
+
+"'We'll very soon have ye out o' that, _now_.'
+
+"A relative of mine, who holds a sub-office, has been told the same
+thing fifty times. There you have the spirit of the poorer people. And
+don't forget that the illiterates have the power in their hands. Just
+think what this means.
+
+"In England, with all your agricultural districts, with all your back
+slums of cities, there was only one person in each hundred and seventy
+who could not write his name, or at all events, one in a hundred and
+seventy who was unable to manage his voting paper.
+
+"In Ireland the figures were one in every five, and of the remainder
+two at least were barely able to perform so simple an operation as
+making a cross against the right name. Are these people fit to govern
+themselves?
+
+"There were two polling booths in Westport. There were three priests
+at each door. Tell the English people that, and see what they think of
+it.
+
+"A Scotch gentleman staying in Westport during the late 'mission' was
+stopped at the door of the Roman Catholic Church. He was not permitted
+to enter, because the priests are ashamed to show civilised people the
+credulity and crass ignorance of their congregation. At one of these
+services everybody held a lighted candle, and at a given signal, Puff!
+out went out the lights, and with them away went the sins of the
+people.
+
+"A priest was sent for in Achil. The case was urgent. A man was dying,
+and without Extreme Unction his chances in the next world were
+reckoned shady. The priest was enjoying himself in some festivity, and
+the man died before his salvation arrived. A relative declared he
+would tell the bishop. The priest reassured him with a scrap of paper,
+whereon were written these words, signed by himself, 'Saint Peter.
+Admit bearer.' 'Stick that in the dead man's fist,' said he. The man
+went away delighted. These are the intelligent voters whose influence
+is now paramount in the Parliament of England. It is by these poor
+untutored savages, manipulated by their priests, that the British
+Empire is now worked. The semi-civilised peasants of Connaught, with
+the ignorant herds of Leinster and Munster, at the bidding of their
+clergy have completely stopped the course of legislation, and left the
+long-suffering and industrious working men of England and Scotland to
+wait indefinitely for all the good things they want. The cry is,
+Ireland stops the way. Why doesn't England kick it out of the way?
+
+"Turn about is fair play. Let England have a turn now. Fair play is a
+jewel, and Ireland has fair play. Ireland has privileges of which
+neither England nor Scotland can boast. The Protestants of Ireland are
+everywhere prosperous and content. The Catholics of Ireland are
+everywhere impoverished and discontented. Wherever you go you find
+this an invariable rule. The two sects may hold their farms from the
+same landlord, on precisely similar terms, and you will find that the
+Protestants pay their rent, and get on, while the Catholics don't pay,
+and go from bad to worse."
+
+"Is this extraordinary difference the result of British rule?"
+
+Many a time I have asked Catholics this question. They cannot explain
+the marked difference on the ground of alien government, as both are
+subject to the same. They will say, 'Oh, Protestants are always well
+off,' as if the thing were a matter of course, and must be looked upon
+as inevitable. But why? I ask. That they can never tell.
+
+Stand on a big hill near Tipperary and you will see four Roman
+Catholic churches of modern build, costing nearly a hundred thousand
+pounds. Father Humphreys will tell you how the money was raised, will
+show you over Tipperary Cathedral, and will let you see the pig-styes
+in which the people are housed. That is the man of God who wrote to
+the papers and complained that it had been reported that the Catholic
+clergy of Tipperary had done all they could to stop boycotting. Father
+Humphreys said:--"I protest against this libel on me. _I am doing
+nothing to stop boycotting._"
+
+A neighbour of my friend spoke of many changes he had witnessed in the
+political opinions of people who had become resident in Ireland,
+having previously been Gladstonians in England. He said:--"When the
+Achil Sound viaduct was opened, chiefly by the efforts of a Northern
+Protestant who gave Ł1,500 towards the cost, a Scotchman named Cowan
+was chief engineer. He came over a rabid Home Ruler, and such a
+worshipper of Mr. Gladstone as cannot be found out of Scotland. In six
+months he was Unionist to the backbone, and not only Unionist but
+Conservative. The Achil folks, when once the bridge was built and
+given to them, decided to call it Michael Davitt Bridge. It had not
+cost them a penny, nor had they any part in it. At the priest's orders
+they rushed forward to christen it; it was all they were good for.
+They put up a big board with the name. Cowan went down alone, he could
+not get a soul with pluck to go with him, and chopped the thing down,
+the Achil Nationalists looking on. In the night they put up another
+board, a big affair on the trunk of a tree, all well secured. Cowan
+went down and felled it as before, watching it drift away with tide.
+Then they gave it up. They wouldn't go Three! Carnegie, the Customs
+man, came here a strong Home Ruler. Looking back, he says he cannot
+conceive how he could be such an ass. A very cute Scotchman, too. Some
+of the Gladstonians mean well. I don't condemn them wholesale, like
+father does. You should hear him drop on English Home Rulers. He
+understands the Irish agitator, but the English Separatist beats him.
+I have been in England, and several times in Birmingham, and I have
+heard them talk. Father is very peppery, but I moderate his
+transports. Speaking of the English Home Rulers he'll say--
+
+"'Pack o' rogues.'
+
+"'No, no,' says I, 'only fools.'
+
+"'Infernal idiots,' says he.
+
+"'No, no,' says I, 'only ignorant.'
+
+"As I said, I have been in England, and have heard them talk, so I
+know."
+
+He asked me if I had noticed the external difference between Irish
+communities which support Home Rule and those which support the Union.
+I said that a contrast so striking must impress the most casual
+observer, for that, on the one hand, Unionism is always coupled with
+cleanliness and decency, while on the other the intimate relationship
+apparently existing between Home Rule and dunghills is most suggestive
+and surprising.
+
+Unionism and order: Separatism and ordure--that is about the sum.
+
+Castlereagh, June 24th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 40.--OBJECT LESSONS IN IRISH SELF-GOVERNMENT.
+
+
+A small town with a great name, about one hundred miles west of
+Dublin. There is a ruined castle, and one or two ruined abbeys, but
+nothing else of interest, unless it be the herons which stalk about
+the streams in its environs, and the Royston crows with white or gray
+breast and back, which seem to be fairly numerous in these parts.
+Ireland is a wonderful country for crows and ravens, which hop about
+the village streets as tame as barndoor fowls. A King of Connaught is
+buried in Saint Coenan's Abbey, but dead kings are almost as common as
+crows, and Phelim O'Connor seems to have done nothing worthy of
+mention beyond dying in 1265. I had hardly landed when I met a very
+pronounced anti-Home Ruler, a grazier, apparently a smart business
+man, and seemingly well up in the controversy. He said:--"I have
+argued the question all over Ireland, and believe I have made as many
+converts as anybody. Many of my countrymen have been carried away by
+the popular cry, but when once they have the thing put to them from
+the other side, and have time to think, they begin to have their
+doubts. Naturally they first lean to the idea of an Irish Parliament.
+It flatters Irish feeling, and when men look around and see the
+country so poor and so backward they want to try some change or other.
+The agitators see their opportunity, and say, 'All this results from
+English interference. If we managed our own affairs we should be
+better off all round.' This sounds plausible, and agrees with the
+traditional distrust of England which the people have inherited from
+past ages. Men who are fairly intelligent, and fairly reasonable, will
+say, 'We can't be worse off than we are at present.' That is a stock
+argument all over the country. The people who use it think it settles
+the business. The general poverty of the people is the strength of the
+Home Rule position. The priests tell them that a Government composed
+of Irishmen would see them right, and would devote itself to looking
+after their interests; and really the people have nobody to tell them
+anything else. Nor are they likely to hear the other side, for they
+are only allowed to read certain papers, and if Englishmen of
+character and ability were to attempt to stump the country they would
+not get a hearing. The clergy would make it warm for anybody who dared
+to attend a Unionist meeting. So _that_ process is altogether out of
+the question. Isolated Roman Catholic Unionists like myself need to be
+in a very strong and independent position before they dare to express
+their views. Roman Catholics of position are nearly all Unionists at
+heart, but comparatively few of them dare avow their real convictions.
+To do so is to couple yourself with the obnoxious land question. The
+people, as a whole, detest landlords and England, and they think that
+an opponent of Home Rule is necessarily a sympathiser with British
+rule and landlordism, and therefore a foe to his country and a traitor
+to his countrymen. Few men have the moral courage to face this
+indictment. That is why the educated Catholic party, as a whole, hang
+back. And then, they dislike to put themselves in direct opposition to
+their clergy. Englishmen do not care one jot what the parson thinks of
+their political opinions, but in Ireland things are very different. I
+am against Home Rule because I am sure it would be bad for Ireland.
+The prosperity of the country is of some importance to me, and for my
+own sake and apart from sentimental considerations, and for the credit
+of Ireland, I am against Home Rule. We should be poorer than ever. I
+would not trust the present Irish party to manage anything that
+required management. They have not the training, nor the business
+capacity, nor sufficient consistency to work together for a single
+week. They cannot agree even at this critical moment, when by their
+own showing, the greatest harmony of action is required in the
+interests of Ireland. I say nothing about their honesty, for the most
+scrupulously honest men could not succeed without business ability and
+united action. They are a set of talkers, good for quibbling and
+squabbling and nothing more.
+
+"They are M.P.'s because they can talk. Paddy loves a glib talker, and
+a fellow with a good jaw on him would always beat the best business
+man, even if Paddy were allowed his own choice. Of course he has no
+choice--he votes as the priest tells him; but then the selected men
+were all good rattling talkers, not in the House, perhaps, but in
+their own country district in Ireland. Paddy thinks talking means
+ability, and when a fellow rattles off plenty of crack-jaw words and
+red-hot abuse of England, Paddy believes him able to regenerate the
+world. These men are not allowed to speak in the House. They only
+vote. But let me tell you they are kings in their own country.
+
+"Since Parnell ordered his followers to contest all the elective
+Boards in Ireland, the Nationalist party have almost monopolised the
+Poor Law Boards, with the result that nearly every one has been openly
+bankrupt, or else is in a state of present insolvency. Mr. Morley has
+been asked for particulars but has declined to give them. He knows
+that the list of insolvent Poor Law Boards in Ireland, if once given
+with particulars, to the British public, would show up the prospects
+of Home Rule in such a damaging way that 'the cause' would never
+survive the shock. Why does not the Unionist party bring about this
+exposure? Surely the information is obtainable, if not from Mr.
+Morley, then from some other source.
+
+"Why are they bankrupt? you ask. Partly through incompetence; partly
+through corruption. In every case of declared bankruptcy Government
+has sent down vice-Guardians receiving three hundred pounds to five
+hundred pounds a year, and notwithstanding this additional burden to
+the rates the vice-Guardians in every case have paid off all debts and
+left a balance in hand inside of two years. Then they retire, and the
+honorary Guardians come back to scuttle the ship again. Tell the
+English people that. Mr. Morley cannot deny it. You have told them?
+Then tell them again, and again.
+
+"In the Killarney Union the Nationalists ran up the rates from one
+thousand seven hundred pounds to three thousand six hundred pounds.
+More distress? Not a bit of it. But even admitting this, how would you
+account for the fact that the cost ran up from sixteen shillings a
+head to twenty-five shillings a head for every person relieved?
+
+"The Listowel Union was perhaps the biggest scandal in the country.
+The Unionist Guardians relieved the people at a cost of five shillings
+a head. The Nationalists got in and relieved them at a cost of fifteen
+shillings a head. And there wasn't a reduction on taking a quantity,
+for the Unionists only had two hundred on the books, while the
+Nationalists had two thousand or more.
+
+"At the same period exactly those Unions which remained under the old
+rule showed little or no increase in the rates. Kenmare remained
+Unionist, and when the great rise in poor-law expenses followed the
+election of Nationalist Guardians Kenmare spent less money than ever.
+
+"The Nationalist Guardians have been vising the poor rates to reward
+their friends and to punish the landlords. They have been fighting the
+landlords with money raised from the landlords by means of poor rates.
+Evicted tenants generally received a pound or twenty-five shillings a
+week out-door relief. This punishes the landlords, and saves the funds
+of the Land League, now called the National League. Ingenious, isn't
+it? These are the men who form the class furnishing the Irish
+Parliamentary party. These bankrupt, incompetent, and fraudulent
+Guardians are the men with whom English Gladstonians are closely
+allied. The Board meetings are usually blackguardly beyond
+description. You have no idea to what extremes they go. No Irishman
+who loves his country would trust her to the tender mercies of these
+fellows."
+
+I have not yet been present at any meeting of an Irish Poor Law Board,
+and probably, as my friend remarked, I "do not know to what extremes
+they go." The _Mayo News_ of a week or two ago reported an ordinary
+meeting of the Westport Board, and I noticed that one Guardian accused
+his colleagues of stealing the potatoes provided out of the rates for
+the paupers. This was reported in a Nationalist print edited by a
+gentleman who has had the honour of being imprisoned for Land League
+business. The report was evidently verbatim, and has not been
+contradicted. The Westport folks took no notice of the affair, which
+may therefore be assumed as representing the dead level of an Irish
+Poor Law debate. To what sublime altitudes they may occasionally rise,
+to "what extremes" they sometimes go, I know not. The College Green
+Parliament, manned by such members, would have a peculiar interest.
+The Speaker might be expected to complain that his umbrella (recently
+re-covered) had mysteriously disappeared. The Chancellor of the
+Exchequer might accuse the President of the Board of Trade of having
+appropriated the National stationery, and the Master of the Rolls
+might rise to declare that a sanguinary ruffian from Ulster had
+"pinched his wipe." The sane inhabitants of the Emerald Isle affirm
+that Home Rule would be ruinous to trade, but the vendors of
+shillelaghs and sticking-plaster would certainly have a high old time.
+
+An Englishman who has had exceptional opportunities of examining the
+matter said:--"I don't care so much for Irish interests as for English
+interests, and I am of opinion that no Englishman in a position to
+form a correct judgment would for one moment support the bill. The
+tension is off us now, because we feel that the danger to a great
+extent is over. The bill could not be expected to survive a public
+examination. The Gladstonians themselves must now see that the scheme
+was not only absurd and impossible, but iniquitous. Under a Home Rule
+Bill their native land would cut a sorry figure, such as would almost
+shame the milk-sop Radical party, 'friends of every country but their
+own.' A Government with a sufficient majority to carry a British
+measure might at any time be turned out of office by the eighty Irish
+members, who could at any time make their votes the price of some
+further concession. And you know the character of the men, how
+thoroughly unscrupulous they are. All are enemies of England, and yet
+we who know them and the feeling of their constituencies are asked to
+believe that they would never abuse their powers. Why give them the
+temptation? Then, whatever debts Ireland might incur England would
+have to pay, should Ireland repudiate them? The bill provides that
+England shall be ultimately responsible for three-quarters of a
+million annually for the servants of the Crown in Ireland, such
+servants being at the orders of the Irish Legislature. It is a divorce
+case, wherein the husband is to be responsible for the wife's debts
+incurred after separation. This is Mr. Gladstone's fine proposition.
+And then England will have no police under her control to make
+defaulters pay up. You can't make the people pay rent and taxes with
+all your present force. How are you going to collect the two or three
+millions of Ireland's share in Imperial expenditure without any force
+at all? The police will be at the orders of the Irish Parliament,
+which will be returned by the very men who will owe the money. 'Oh
+yes!' say Dillon, Healy, O'Brien, and all the rest of the No Rent and
+Land League men. 'We'll see that the money is paid.' The previous
+history of these men ought to be enough for Englishmen. But if Tim
+Healy and Co. wished the money to be paid, they would have no power.
+They must take their orders from the people. How would you collect the
+interest on the eighteen or twenty millions Ireland now owes? The
+police and civil officers would, under a Home Rule Bill, be the
+servants of the Irish Government, and would have no sympathy with
+England. A hitch would very soon arise between the two Parliaments
+either on the interpretation of this or that clause, or else because
+the Irish Parliament fell short of its duty in collecting the tribute.
+The Irish Government would stand firm, and would be supported by
+priests and people. The British Grenadiers would then come in, and
+where would be the Union of Hearts? Irishmen are fond of a catch-word.
+Like the French, they will go to death for a phrase. But the Union of
+Hearts never tickled them. The words never fell from Irish lips except
+in mockery.
+
+"Protection would be the great rallying cry of a Home Rule Government.
+The bill refuses power to impose protective duties, but Ireland would
+commence by conceding bounties to Irish manufacturers, who would there
+and then be able to undersell English traders. No use going further
+into the thing, there is not a good point in it for either country. No
+use flogging a dead horse. There never will be any Home Rule, and
+there's no use in discussing it. A liberal measure of Local
+Self-Government will be the upshot of this agitation, nothing more.
+And that will come from the Tory party, the only friends of poor
+Ireland."
+
+The Parnellites are strong in Roscommon, and to hear them revile the
+priests is both strange and sad. These are the only Catholics who
+resent clerical dictation. They seem in a quandary. Their action seems
+inconsistent with their expressed sentiments. They plainly see that
+Home Rule means Rome Rule, and, while deprecating priestly influence,
+they do their best to put the country into priestly hands. They speak
+of the Anti-Parnellites with contempt and aversion, calling them
+rogues and vagabonds, liars and traitors, outside the pale of
+civilisation, and yet they work for Home Rule, which would put their
+beloved Ireland in the power of the very men whose baseness and crass
+incompetence they cannot characterise in terms sufficiently strong.
+For the Anti-Parnellites outnumber the Parnellites by eight to one; so
+that the smaller party, although monopolising all virtue, grace and
+intellect, would have no show at all, unless, indeed, the Nationalists
+were further subdivided, on which contingency the Parnellites probably
+count with certainty. I interviewed a champagny little man whose views
+were very decided. He said:--
+
+"I think the seventy-three Federationists, as they want to be called,
+are not only traitors to the greatest Irishmen of the age, but also
+mean-spirited tools of the Catholic bishops. A man may have proper
+respect for his faith, and may yet resent the dictation of his family
+priest. I admit his superior knowledge of spiritual matters, but I
+think I know what politics suit me best, and I send him to the
+rightabout. Let him look after the world to come. That's his business.
+I'm going to look after this world for myself. The main difference
+between the Parnellites and the Anti-Parnellites is just this--the
+Parnellites keep themselves independent of any English party; the
+Anti-Parnellites have identified themselves with the English Liberals,
+and bargain with them. My view is this, that the English Radicals will
+use the Irish party for their own ends, that they want to utilise them
+in carrying out the Newcastle programme, and that having so used them
+the Irishmen may go and hang themselves. 'We give you Home Rule and
+you give us the Newcastle budget'--that's the present arrangement. But
+after that? What then? Ireland will want the Home Rule Bill amended.
+The first bill (if ever we get it) must be very imperfect, and will
+want no end of improvement. It is bound to be a small, mean affair,
+and will want expansion and breadth. Then the Radicals will chuck over
+the Anti-Parnellites, who will be equally shunted by the Tories, and
+we shall be left hanging in the air. The Parnellites aim at getting
+everything on its merits, and decline to identify themselves with any
+party. They wish to be called Independents. And they one and all
+decline to be managed by the priests. The seventy-three
+Anti-Parnellites are entirely managed by the Clerical party. They have
+no will of their own any more than the pasteboard men you see in the
+shop windows, whose legs and arms fly up and down, when you pull a
+string. They are just like Gladstonians in that respect."
+
+The Parnellites are hard up, and their organ asks America for cash.
+The dauntless nine want six thousand pounds for pocket-money and hotel
+expenses. The cause of Ireland demands this sacrifice. After so many
+contributions, surely America will not hold back at the supreme
+moment. The Anti-Parnellites are bitterly incensed. To act
+independently of their faction was of itself most damnable, but still
+it could be borne. To ask for money from America, to put in a claim
+for coppers which might have flowed into Anti-Parnellite pockets,
+shows a degradation, an unspeakable impudence for which the _Freeman_
+cannot find adequate adjectives. The priest-ridden journal speaks of
+its fellow patriots as caluminators and liars, tries to describe their
+"baseness," their "inconceivable insolence and inconceivable
+stupidity," and breaks down in the effort. A column and a half of
+space is devoted to calling the Parnellites ill names such as were
+formerly applied by Irish patriots to Mr. Gladstone. And all because
+they compete for the cents of Irish-American slaveys and bootblacks.
+The Parnellites are not to be deterred by mere idle clamour. Both
+parties are accustomed to be called liars and rogues, and both parties
+accept the appellations as a matter of course. Nothing can stop them
+when on the trail of cash. Is Irish sentiment to be again disappointed
+for a paltry six thousand pounds? Is the Sisyphean stone of Home Rule,
+so laboriously rolled uphill, to again roll down, crushing in its fall
+the faithful rollers? Will not some American millionaire come forward
+with noble philanthropy _and_ six thousand pounds to rescue and to
+save the most beautiful, the most unfortunate country in the world
+from further disappointment? Only six thousand pounds now required for
+the great ultimate, or penultimate, or antepenultimate effort. Another
+twopence and up goes the donkey!
+
+Roscommon, June 27th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 41.--THE CHANGED SPIRIT OF THE CAPITAL.
+
+
+The Dubliners have quite given up the bill. The Unionist party have
+regained their calm, and the Nationalists are resigned to the
+position. Nobody, of whatever political colour, or however sanguine,
+now expects the measure to become law. The Separatist rank and file
+never hoped for so much luck, and their disappointment is therefore
+anything but unbearable. My first letter indicated this lack of faith
+and also its cause. The Dublin folks never really believed a British
+Parliament would so stultify itself. The old lady who, on my arrival,
+said "We'll get Home Rule when a pair of white wings grows out o' me
+shoulders, an' I fly away like a big blackburd," finds her pendant in
+the jarvey, who this morning said, "If we'd got the bill I would have
+been as much surprised as if one o' me childhren got the moon by
+roarin' for it." Distrust of Mr. Gladstone is more prevalent than
+ever, and the prophets who all along credited that pious statesman
+with rank insincerity are now saying "I towld ye so." The
+Lord-Lieutenant is making his Viceregal progress in an ominous
+silence. The Limerick people let him go without a cheer. At Foynes
+something like a procession was formed, with the parish priest at its
+head; but the address read by his Rivirince reads very like a
+scolding. It points out that "our rivers are at present without
+shipping, our mills and factories are idle, and it is a sad sight to
+see our beautiful Shannon, where all her Majesty's fleet could safely
+ride on the estuary of its waters, without almost a ship of
+merchandise on its surface on account of the general decay of our
+trade and commerce." The address further shows that "we enjoy a
+combination of natural advantages in the shape of a secure, sheltered
+anchorage, together with railway and telegraph in immediate proximity
+to the harbour and the pier, and postal service twice daily, both
+inwards and outwards, and a first-class quality of pure water laid on
+to the pier. The facility for landing or embarking troops, or for
+discharging or loading goods or stores is as near perfection as
+possible, and having a range of depth of water of twenty-five feet at
+low-water spring tide, the harbour can accommodate ships of deep
+draught at any state of the tide." These advantages, mostly owing to
+British rule, with others, such as the "unique combination of mountain
+and river scenery," were not enumerated as subjects for thankfulness,
+but rather by way of reproach, the effect of the whole address being a
+veiled indictment of British rule. No doubt Lord Houghton's first
+impulse would be to exclaim, "Then why on earth don't you use your
+advantages? With good quays, piers, storehouses, and a broad deep
+river, opening on the Atlantic, why don't you do some business?" But
+he promised to do his best to send them a guard-ship, in order that
+the crew might spend some money in the district. The Galway folks
+asked him to do something for them. My previous letters have shown the
+incapacity of the Galwegians to do anything for themselves, and how,
+being left to their own devices--having, in fact, a full enjoyment of
+local Home Rule--their incompetence has saddled the city with a debt
+of fifty thousand pounds for which they have practically nothing to
+show, except an additional debt of one thousand pounds decreed against
+them for knocking the bottom out of a coaling vessel during their
+"improving" operations, which sum they never expect to pay, as the
+harbour tolls are collected by the Board of Works, which thus
+endeavours to indemnify itself for having lent them the "improvement"
+funds. The Killybegs folks showed the poor Viceroy their bay and told
+him what wonderful things they could do if they only had a pier, or a
+quay, or something. The Achil folks formerly said the same thing. Two
+piers were built but no man ever goes near them. The Mulranney folks
+pointed out that while Clew Bay, and particularly the nook of it
+called Mulranney Bay, was literally alive with fish, the starving
+peasants of the neighbourhood could do nothing for want of a pier. The
+brutal Saxon built one at once--a fine handsome structure, at once a
+pier, a breakwater, and a harbour, with boat-slips and three stages
+with steps, so that boats could be used at any tide. I stepped this
+massive and costly piece of masonry, and judged it to be a hundred
+yards long. There were six great mooring posts, but not a boat in
+sight, nor any trace of fishing operations. A broad new road to the
+pier was cut and metalled, but no one uses it. The fishing village of
+Mulranney, with its perfect appointments, would not in twelve months
+furnish you with one poor herring. The pier of Killybegs would
+probably be just as useful to the neighbourhood.
+
+The Dublin Nationalist prints make some show of fight, but the people
+heed them not. They know too well that their inward conviction that
+Home Rule is for the present defunct is founded on rock. In vain the
+party writers use the whip. Your Irishman is cute enough to know when
+he is beaten. The new-born regard of the Irish press for Parliamentary
+purity is comical enough. Obstruction is the thing they hate.
+Ungentlemanly conduct in the House stinks in their nostrils. Fair play
+is their delight, and underhand dealing they particularly abhor. Mr.
+Gladstone is too lenient, and although his failings lean to virtue's
+side, his action is too oily altogether. He is old and weak, and
+lubricates too much. They in effect accuse him of fatty degeneration
+of the brain. Something heroic must be done. Those low-bred ruffians,
+the Unionists, must be swept from the path of Erin, while her eloquent
+sons, actuated by patriotism and six pounds a week, and spurred on by
+the hope of even a larger salary, obtain after seven centuries some
+show of justice to Ireland. The Irish wire-pullers demand decisive
+action. They declare that they will no longer submit to the
+"happy-go-lucky policy of the gentlemen who survey life from the
+Ministerial benches." They must "put themselves in fighting form and
+show their supporters that they mean business." "Unless the Ministry
+mean to throw up the sponge they had better begin the fighting at
+once." The Irish party "are looking for the action of the Government
+which is to make it evident to the Opposition that the majority mean
+to rule in the House of Commons, for unless this be done Parliamentary
+government becomes a farce." If Mr. Gladstone continues the policy of
+hesitation and waiting on Providence, the fate of Home Rule, and with
+it the fate of the Liberal party, are sealed. "Obstruction" (says the
+Parnellite paper) cannot be permitted!" It is the revelation of the
+impotency of Parliament, and Parliamentary procedure must be replaced
+by some quicker means of effecting reform. Mr. Gladstone's feebleness
+is an incitement to revolution. The Dublin press would manage these
+things better. An autumn session must not be adventured. If the House
+should rise before the bill has passed the Commons such a confession
+of weakness would fatally damage the Government prestige. The House
+must "be kept in permanent session, and not kept too long," which
+sounds like a bull, but the next sentence is plain enough.
+
+"The obvious policy is to at once take the Opposition by the throat.
+That will excite enthusiasm, and convince the people that a Liberal
+Government is good for something."
+
+The Nationalist prints are assuming the office of candid friend, a
+part which suits them admirably, and in the performance of which they
+make wonderful guesses at truth. The Gladstonian Ministry "are
+helpless and impotent in the hands of their opponents. The reforms so
+ardently desired by the people are seen to be mere mirages, called up
+to win the votes of the people for men who, once in office, make no
+real effort to enforce the mandate given to them by the country." The
+Liberal Ministry will be "swept out of existence because the people
+will come to recognise that their promises and programmes are so many
+hollow phrases, incapable of ministering to the needs or satisfying
+the aspirations of the multitude." "The real tug of war," says this
+Home Rule sheet, "will come in the next election." If Irish
+Separatists talk like this, what do Irish Unionists say?
+
+Very little, indeed. They are disposed to rest and be thankful. They
+only want to be let alone. They are quiet and reserved, and thank
+their stars that the worst is over. The nervousness, the high-strung
+tension of three months ago, is conspicuous by its absence. They
+feared that the thing would be rushed, and that Mr. Bull would stamp
+the measure without looking at it, would be glad to get rid of it at
+any price, would say to Ireland, "Take it, get out of my sight, and be
+hanged to ye!" Thanks to the Unionist leaders, whose ability and
+devotion are here warmly recognised, the Dubliners know no fear. The
+ridiculous abortion has been dragged into the sunlight, and ruthlessly
+dissected. John's commonsense can be trusted, once he examines for
+himself, and worthy Irishmen lie down in peace. The graver Dubliners
+prefer to speak of something else. The young bloods still make fun of
+the "patriots," and conjure up illimitable vistas of absurd
+possibilities under an Irish Government. They invariably place the
+hypothetic Cabinet under the direct orders of Archbishop Walsh, and
+continue to make fun of that great hierarch's famous malediction on
+Freemasonry. The good Archbishop, they say, takes a large size in
+curses. They declare that his curse on the Masonic bazaar for orphans
+was a marvel of comprehensive detail; that it cursed the
+stall-holders, the purchasers, the tea-pot cosies and fender-stools,
+the five-o'clock tea-tables and antimacassars, the china ornaments,
+and embroidered slippers, with every individual bead; the dolls, both
+large and small; the bran that stuffed the dolls, and the very squeaks
+which resulted from a squeeze on the doll's ribs. Never was heard such
+a terrible curse. But what gave rise to no little surprise, nobody
+seemed one penny the worse. These scoffers propose to discontinue the
+habit of swearing. When the Archbishop produces no effect, what's the
+good of a plain layman's cursing? They declare that the dentists of
+Dublin are all Home Rulers, and that the selfishness of their
+political faith is disgustingly obvious. These mocking Unionists
+discuss probable points of etiquette likely to arise in the
+Legislature of College Green, and dispute as to whether members will
+be allowed to attend with decidedly black eyes, or whether they will
+be excluded until the skin around their orbs has arrived at the pale
+yellow stage. Some are of opinion that no Cabinet Minister should be
+allowed to sit while wearing raw beefsteak, and a story is going the
+rounds to the effect that some of the Irish members recently wished to
+cross the Channel for half-a-crown each, and to that end called on a
+boat agent, a Tory, who knew them, when the following conversation
+took place:--
+
+"Can we go across for half-a-crown each?"
+
+"No, ye can't, thin."
+
+"An' why not?"
+
+"Because 'tis a cattle boat."
+
+"Never mind that, sure we're not particular."
+
+"No, but the cattle are."
+
+There was a great rush for Dynamitard Daly's letter, and some of his
+sentences were made subjects of leading articles in the Nationalist
+press. One paragraph seems to have been neglected. He writes--"Friend
+Jack, you amazed me when you mentioned the names of ex-felons now
+honourable members of the Imperial Parliament. And so they seem to
+forget the days when _they_ were felons? Ah, well, thank God, the
+people did not forget them in their hour of need, and though some of
+them may try to palm off their own selfish ambitions on the people to
+whom they owe everything as genuine patriotism--oh, it won't do!" John
+Daly holds the same opinion of his fellow patriots as is expressed in
+a remarkable letter to the Separatist _Dublin Evening Herald_, wherein
+the writer says that his party is "disgusted with the duplicity of Mr.
+Gladstone," and goes on to say that "No one now believes that the bill
+will pass, and almost everyone believes it was never intended to pass.
+I have not yet met anybody who expressed themselves as even remotely
+satisfied with it. Peace to its ashes." I quote this as proving two
+points I have always endeavoured to urge--first, that the Irish
+distrust Mr. Gladstone, and are not grateful to him or his party; and,
+second, that no bill short of complete independence will ever satisfy
+the Irish people. It is what they expect and look forward to as the
+direct outcome of Home Rule, which they only want as a stepping-stone.
+This cannot fail to impress itself on any unbiassed person who rubs
+against them for long. The teaching of the priests is eminently
+disloyal, and although the utmost care is taken to prevent their
+disloyalty becoming public, instances are not lacking to show the
+general trend. Father Sheehy, an especial friend of the Archbishop
+Walsh aforesaid, thus delivered himself anent a proposed visit of the
+Prince and Princess of Wales to Ireland:--"There is no need for a
+foreign prince to come to Ireland. The Irish people have nothing to
+say to the Prince of Wales. He has no connection with Ireland except
+that link of the Crown that has been formed for the country, which is
+the symbol of Ireland's slavery." This priest said he hated
+landgrabbers; all except one. "There is but one landgrabber I like,
+and that is the Tsar of Russia, who threatens to take territory on the
+Afghan border from England." Father Arthur Ryan, of Thurles, the seat
+of Archbishop Croke, has printed a manifesto, in which he
+says:--"Ever since the Union the best and most honourable of Irishmen
+have looked on rebellion as a sacred duty, provided there were a
+reasonable chance of success. It has never occurred to me to consider
+acquiescence to the Government of England as a moral obligation or as
+other than a dire necessity. We have never, thank God, lied to our
+oppressors by saying we were loyal to them. And when we have condemned
+the rebels whose heroism and self-sacrifice we have loved and wept
+over, we condemned not their want of loyalty, but their want of
+prudence. We thought it wrong to plunge the land into the horrors of
+war with no hope of success."
+
+So much for our trusty and well-beloved fellow-subjects of this realm
+of England. Father Ryan is candid, truthful, and outspoken, and
+commands respect. Better an open enemy than a false friend. His
+summing-up of Irish feeling to England is both concise and accurate,
+but one of his sentences is hardly up to date. He thanks God that the
+Irish have never lied by saying they were loyal. How many Irish
+members can make this their boast? Compared with them, the Ribbonmen
+were heroes. The glorious prototypes of the modern member murdered
+their foes themselves, did their slaughtering in person, and took the
+risk like men. They hated Englishmen, _qua_ Englishmen, and made no
+secret of it. The modern method is easier and more convenient. To
+murder by proxy, to have your hints carried out without danger to
+yourself, and to draw pay for your hinting, is a triumph of
+nineteenth-century ingenuity. To pose as loyal subjects and to disarm
+suspicion by protestations of friendship and brotherly love may be a
+more effective means of attaining your end, but it smacks too much of
+the serpent. The Ribbonmen were rough and rugged, but comparatively
+respectable. The Irish Separatists are just as disloyal, and
+infinitely more treacherous. The parchment "loyalty to Her Most
+Gracious Majesty the Queen," which Lord Houghton is in some places
+receiving, is revolting to all who know the truth. The snake has
+succeeded the tiger, and most people hate sliminess. Nationalist
+Ireland is intensely disloyal from side to side, and from end to end.
+Disloyal and inimical she has been from the first, and disloyal and
+inimical she remains, and no concessions can change her character. She
+is religious with a medićval faith, and she follows her spiritual
+guides, whose sole aim is religious ascendancy. So long as the Roman
+Catholic Church is not predominant so long the Irish people will
+complain. You may give them the land for nothing; you may stock their
+farms--they will expect it; you may indemnify them for the seven
+hundred years of robbery by the English people--they say they ought to
+be indemnified; you may furnish every yeoman with a gun and
+ammunition, with _carte blanche_ as to their use with litigious
+neighbours; you may lay on whiskey in pipes, like gas and water, but
+without any whiskey rate; you may compel the Queen to do Archbishop
+Walsh's washing, and the Prince of Wales to black his sacred boots,
+while the English nobility look after the pigs of the foinest pisintry
+in the wuruld, and still the Irish would be malcontents. The Church
+wants absolute predominance, and she won't be happy till she gets it.
+Parnell was Protestant and something of a Pope. Tim Healy tried to
+wear the leader's boots, but Bishop Walsh reduced him to a pulp. This
+good man rules Dublin, and through Dublin, Ireland. You cannot walk
+far without running against his consecrated name. At present the city
+is labelled as follows:--
+
+"By direction of his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, the annual
+collections for our Holy Father the Pope will take place on July the
+second." The National League and Our Holy Father the Pope between them
+cut very close. No wonder that poor Paddy has hardly a feather left to
+fly with.
+
+"An ardent Nationalist" thus expresses himself in the Separatist
+_Herald_:--"I fear we must reluctantly abandon hope of a Home
+Parliament for a few more years. For the present we will have to
+content ourselves with Local Government, an ample measure of which
+will be given by the _Conservatives_. On the whole, ardent Nationalist
+as I am, I do not look on this as an unmixed evil. What kind of
+Government would be possible under six or seven factions?" This should
+be a staggerer for the English Home Rule party. The italics are in the
+original, and the writer goes on to say, "It is open to doubt that we
+should be able to at once manage our own affairs without some
+preliminary training." The whole letter is a substantial repetition of
+the sentiments emanating from a Home Ruler of Tralee, recounted in my
+letter from that town of Kerry.
+
+Parnell is still worshipped in Dublin. He looks big beside his
+successors. His grave in the splendid cemetery of Glasnevin is well
+worth a visit, although there is no monument beyond a cast-iron Irish
+cross painted green, which serves to hang flowers upon. The grave is
+in a rope-enclosed circle, some twenty yards in diameter, and most of
+the space is occupied by big glass shades, with flowers and other
+tributes of respect and affection. I counted more than a hundred, many
+of them elaborate. The Corkmen send the biggest, a small greenhouse
+with two brown Irish harps and the legend DONE TO DEATH. An Irish harp
+worked in embroidery lies sodden on the earth. Green shamrock leaves
+of tin, with the names of all the donors--this is important--obtrude
+themselves here and there. A six-foot cross of white flowers, like a
+badge of purity, lies on the grave, labelled Katherine Parnell, in a
+lady's hand. The place is swamped with Irish harps, and it occurs to
+me that the badge would not be so popular if the patriots knew that
+the harp was imposed as an emblem of Ireland by English Henry the
+Second. The name PARNELL in iron letters is on the turf, flowers
+growing through them, a poetical idea. As I walk past they vibrate
+with a metallic jingle, which reminds me of the shirt of mail the
+living man wore to preserve himself from his fellow-patriots. Tay
+Pay's life of the dead leader proves that his sole secret of success
+was inflexible purpose, and that his notion of party management was to
+treat the patriot members as dirt. Parnell was an authority in Irish
+matters, and his example should be useful to Messrs. Gladstone,
+Morley, and Co. An eminent Irishmen to-day said:--"With your
+wibble-wobble and your shilly-shally, your pooh-pooh and your pah-pah,
+you are ruining the country. Put down your foot and tell the Irish
+people that they will not now nor at any future time get Home Rule,
+and not a word will come out of them." A word (to the wise) is enough.
+
+Dublin, June 29th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 42.--AT A NATIONALIST MEETING.
+
+
+The most remarkable feature of Dundalk life is the fact that the
+people are doing something. Not much, perhaps, but still something.
+The port is handy for Liverpool and Glasgow, and a steam packet
+company gives a little life to the quays. The barracks, not far from
+the shore, indicate one large source of custom, for wherever you find
+a British regiment you find the people better off. The Athlone folks
+say that but for the soldiers the place would be dead and buried, and
+the Galway people are complaining that the garrison, the hated English
+garrison, has been withdrawn. This inconsistency at first surprises
+you, but you soon grow familiarised with the strange inconsistencies
+of this wonderful island. Dundalk has vastly improved during the three
+dozen years which have elapsed since first I visited the town. There
+is a Catholic church for every hundred yards of street, and on
+Thursday last one of them at least was full to overflowing. It was the
+festival of Saints Peter and Paul, and England was being solemnly
+dedicated to Rome. There was no getting inside to witness the
+operation, for the kneeling crowds extended into the street and
+flopped down on their marrow-bones on the side walks. The men with the
+collection plates could hardly hold their ground in the portals, and
+many worshippers were sent empty away, raising their hats as they
+reluctantly turned from the sacred precincts. This was between eleven
+and twelve in the forenoon, so that the day's work was hopelessly
+broken. Ireland has endless customs demanding cessation of labour, but
+none demanding the pious to go to work. The Methodist and Presbyterian
+churches were closed, and possibly their adherents were stealing a
+march on the Catholics in the matter of business. The Church of
+Ireland has a bright green spire, which at first puzzles the
+unlearned. Its hoisting of the national colour is due to the fact that
+the whole structure is covered with copper, which in its turn is
+covered with verdigris. The surroundings of the town are pleasant,
+and, although thatched cottages abound, they are very superior to the
+dirty dens of Tipperary. Nearly all have the half-doors so convenient
+for gossiping, and the female population of these cabins spend much
+of their time in leaning over the lower half. The superiority of
+Dundalk is by most people attributed to the strong mixture of
+Northerners there resident, and the favourable position of the port.
+Earnest Unionists are by no means scarce, and, as usual, they are the
+pick of the population. The Parnellites are also present in strong
+force, and this may account for the fact that Mr. Timothy Healy, the
+respected member for North Louth, is unable to visit the chief town of
+his constituency without a guard of two hundred policemen, paid and
+commanded by his life-long foe--the base and brutal Saxon. A prominent
+citizen said:--
+
+"We have a number of Englishmen coming over here, and most of them are
+Unionists. But a few birds of passage I have seen have vexed me with
+their confident ignorance, and caused me to believe that English
+Gladstonians are the densest donkeys under the sun. They are so
+self-opiniated, and so full of self-satisfaction, that it is hard to
+be patient with them. Not a few say simply that they are content to
+leave the matter in the hands of Mr. Gladstone, and that as they
+followed him so far, they will follow him to the end. They decline to
+examine for themselves, although facilities are offered on the spot.
+This must be the ruling temper of the English Home Rule party, for if
+they stopped to examine for themselves, or even to hear the evidence
+submitted by men of position and integrity they could never tolerate
+the insane proposition of an Irish Parliament for a day. They
+sometimes say that Irishmen should govern their own land, and that no
+one could venture to dispute this proposition. This is their principal
+argument, and some are led away by its show of reason. But what is the
+truth?
+
+"Irishmen _do_ govern Ireland. Listen. Is England governed by
+Englishmen? Now Ireland has a far greater number of members in
+proportion to her population than England has. These men have far more
+power in the English Parliament than England herself, for they hold
+the balance of parties. In every question, Irish or English, they have
+the casting vote. So that they can almost always decide what is to
+become law.
+
+"Dundalk is at this moment placarded with a request that all men
+should join in the glorious struggle for freedom. Unless the Irish
+people were constantly told they were slaves, they would never know
+it. They are fed on lies from their infancy. The current issue of
+_United Ireland_ states in a leader that the prison authorities have
+three times tried to get rid of John Daly, the dynamitard, by
+poisoning him in prison. As if they could not do it if they liked! And
+a few weeks ago, at an amnesty meeting at Drumicondra, a speaker
+stated, in the presence of two or three members of Parliament, that
+five of the thirteen political prisoners still locked up had been
+driven mad by horrible tortures. What freedom do the Irish want? Have
+they not precisely the same freedom as that enjoyed by England, the
+freest country in the world? Have they not the same laws, except where
+those laws have been relaxed in favour of Ireland? Have they not
+religious equality, free trade, a free press, and vote by ballot? And
+with all this they are told at every turn that they are the most
+down-trodden nation of slaves on earth. Supposed they groaned under
+conscription like France and Germany, what then?
+
+"The English people have seen the results of the influence exercised
+by the present Irish leaders. One would think that sensible Britons
+would decline to entrust such men with power. Did they not bring about
+the rule of the Land League, with its stories of foul murder which
+sound like a horrible dream of the tyranny of the Middle Ages? Are
+these men not hand and glove with the clerical party, which hates
+England as heretic and excommunicate? It is not proposed by Home Rule
+to put in office men who are the mere tools of the Catholic church,
+the most unyielding and intolerant system in the world!"
+
+I remembered the leader in the _Irish Catholic_, which sings a pćan of
+triumph over alleged successes against the Freemasons of Italy.
+British Masons may be interested to learn that this authority couples
+them with Atheists, Fenians, and Ribbonmen, and holds up the craft to
+contumely and scorn. The acceptance by Mr. Gladstone of the principle
+of Home Rule seems to rejoice the Papist heart. "Never was it more
+clear than it now is that the indestructible Papacy exercises an
+authority over the hearts and minds of humanity which nothing, neither
+fraud, nor oppression, nor misrepresentation, can weaken or destroy.
+How near may be the day of its inevitable triumph no man can say,
+while that its coming is as certain as the rising of the morning sun
+... none will doubt or deny. That in the moment when the Vicar of
+Christ is vindicated before the nations, and the reign of right and
+truth and justice re-established throughout Christendom, Ireland can
+claim to have been faithful when others were untrue, will be the
+proudest trophy of an affection which no temptation and no tyranny was
+ever able to weaken or destroy." The Freemasons are expressly stated
+to lie under "the terrible penalty of excommunication," but they are
+afterwards lightly dealt with. They are regarded with an amused
+tolerance by Irish Catholics, who only laugh to see them "hung with a
+number of trumpery glass and Brummagem metal trinkets about their
+persons, and generally indulging in an amount of fantastic and
+childish adornment which would turn the King of the Cannibal Islands
+green with envy." Their profanation of God's holy name and their
+sacrilegious oaths are regretted, but they will never do much harm in
+Ireland, where the people laugh at their "fantastic tomfoolery." A
+parallel column advises the public to join in the present pilgrimage
+to Saint Patrick's Purgatory, where the saint saw, by special favour
+of God, the purgatorial fires. Another column advertises prayers at
+fixed prices--a reduction on taking a quantity. The men who hold these
+beliefs and opinions are the sole governors of Irish action, the sole
+creators of Irish opinion. For the lay agitators who from time to time
+have dared to oppose the clerics have been mostly suppressed, and the
+few still in existence will probably disappear before long. Colonel
+Nolan must hold this opinion, for when canvassing in Headford, the
+parish priest came up and cut his head open with a bludgeon. The
+gallant militarian submitted to this, and would fain have passed the
+affair in silence. How many Englishmen would have stood it? This
+incident, properly considered, should enlighten Britons on the
+dominant influences of Irish Parliamentary action.
+
+On the way to Dundalk I met Major Studdert, of Corofin, County Clare.
+He spoke of the disturbed state of the district, and thought the
+present condition of things scandalous and intolerable. He mentioned
+the case of Mr. J. Blood, who has been four times fired at for
+dismissing a herdsman. He said:--"Mr. Blood is universally admitted to
+be one of the most amiable and benevolent of men. His herdsman had a
+son who would not work, and who was reckoned one of the greatest
+blackguards in the county, which is saying a good deal in County
+Clare. Mr. Blood told him to send away this son, or he himself must
+leave his situation. He refused, and Mr. Blood discharged his
+herdsman, but with an extraordinary liberality gave him one hundred
+pounds as consolation money. Since then Mr. Blood is everywhere
+protected by four policemen. One of the bullets aimed at him passed
+between his back and the back of the chair he was sitting in."
+
+"I have only one argument for the country folks who talk of Home Rule.
+I challenge them to show me a single industrious man in the whole
+country who is not well off. They can't do it. What Ireland wants is
+not Home Rule but industry. When they are at work they do not go at it
+like Englishmen. I go over to Cheshire every year for the hunting
+season, and it is a treat to see the English grooms looking after the
+horses. They pull off their coats and roll up their sleeves in a way
+that would astonish Irishmen. It is worth all they get to see them at
+work. They get twice as much as Irish grooms, and they are worth the
+difference. The people around me, the working people, do not perform
+five months' work in a year."
+
+And these are the people who are surprised at their own poverty, and
+who monopolise the attention of the British Parliament, which toils in
+vain to give them an Act which will improve their worldly position.
+The Irish farmer is petted and spoiled, and a victim of
+over-legislation. Do what you will you can never please him. Mr.
+Walter Gibbons, of South Mall, Westport, told me of a case which came
+under his own observation, as follows:--Rent, five pounds a year.
+_None_ paid for seven years. Tenant refused possession. Landlord paid
+tenant twenty pounds in cash, and formally remitted all the rent,
+thirty-five pounds to wit.
+
+"I saw the money paid," said Mr. Gibbons, a fine specimen of the
+British sailor, present in the Cornwallis at the bombardment of
+Sebastopol.
+
+"And was the landlord shot?" I inquired.
+
+"Not that I know of," said the old sailor.
+
+Most people will agree that if ever a landlord deserved shooting this
+was the very man.
+
+The walls of Dundalk were placarded with a flaming incitement to
+Irishmen to meet in the Labourers' Hall at eight o'clock, to "join in
+the onward march to freedom." The meeting was to be held under the
+auspices of the Irish National Federation--Featheration, as the
+Parnellites call it and most of its members pronounce it--and
+therefore it was likely to be a big thing, especially considering the
+Parliamentary tension existing at the present moment. I determined to
+be present, To beard the lion in his den, The Douglas in his hall; to
+see the labouring Irish in their thousands marching onward to Freedom.
+A friend attempted to dissuade me from the project. "You'll be spotted
+in a moment, and as you are very obnoxious to the priests, to be
+recognised at such a meeting might be unpleasant." A public official
+who pointed out the place followed me up with advice. "Unless you are
+connected with the party, it would be better to keep away. These
+people are very suspicious." These were fine preliminaries of a public
+meeting. The building is poor, but not squalid, and seems to have been
+built within the last few years. A gateway leads to the yard and the
+Hall blocks the way. All the rooms are small, and I looked in vain for
+anything like an assembly chamber. Two roughish-looking men, who
+nevertheless had about them a refreshing air of real work, stood at
+the gateway, and from them I learned that the meeting would take place
+upstairs. Twenty-four steps outside the building almost gave me pause.
+At the top was an open landing, whence the Saxon intruder might be
+projected with painful results. Trusting in my luck, I entered a
+narrow corridor, some fifteen feet long, with doors on each side, and
+one at the opposite end. That must open on the assembly room. No, it
+only led to another flight of outside steps, and here it was
+comforting to observe that the drop might be into the soft soil of a
+garden, instead of a bricked yard. But where was the great meeting?
+
+Once more I left the Hall and spoke my rugged friends. Yes, it was
+after eight, but the people wanted a bit of margin. Half-past eight
+was the time intended. Half-an-hour's march around, and back again.
+The crowd was swelled from two to three persons. Fifteen minutes more,
+and further inquiry.
+
+"When will the meeting begin."
+
+"When the people comes."
+
+"But they're an hour late already."
+
+"Sure ye can't hurry thim."
+
+At 9.15 I went again.
+
+"Meeting begun yet?" I asked.
+
+"Just startin' now. The praste's afther goin' in."
+
+"You're rather unpunctual."
+
+"Arrah, how would we begin widout his Rivirince!" This was
+unanswerable. Once more into the breach, up the lonely shivery steps.
+This time I heard voices, and opening a door found a narrow room with
+about twenty people therein. The show was just agoing to begin, for,
+as I entered, somebody proposed that the Priest should take the chair.
+A short, stout, red faced man, with black coat and white choker,
+seemed to expect no less, and moved into the one-and-ninepenny Windsor
+with alacrity. He spoke with the vilest, boggiest kind of brogue, and
+the hideous accent of vulgar Ulster; calling who "hu" with a French u,
+should "shoed," and pronouncing every word beginning with un as if
+beginning with on--ontil, onless, ondhersthand, ondhertake. "Ye'll
+excuse me makin' a spache, fur av I did I'd make a varry bad one,"
+said the holy man, and the audience seemed to believe him. Enrolment
+was the order of the day, and the thousands were requested to come
+forward. A man next me went to the front and paid a shilling,
+receiving in return a green ticket, with Ireland a Nation printed at
+the top. He twirled it round and round, and seemed disappointed to
+find there was nothing on the other side. The secretary encouraged the
+meeting by the official statement that the local Featheration now
+numbered nearly sixty members, whereat there was great rejoicing, the
+masses (to the number of twenty) working off their emotion by thumping
+their heels on the floor. The meeting, after this exultant outburst,
+got slower and slower, and threatened to expire of inanition. Divil a
+mother's son could be got to shpake a single wurud. Some malevolent
+influence overhung the masses. His Rivirince sent down a messenger to
+me with the request that I would say a few wuruds. Declined, with
+thanks, as being no speaker. Uncertainty as to my colour and object
+still prevailed; and silence, not loud, but deep, succeeded this
+artful feeler. Father O'Murtagh (or words to that effect) to the
+rescue! The Rivirind Gintleman arose and delivered a bitter attack on
+Parnell, whom he characterised as mean, base, untruthful, treacherous,
+and contemptible. The foinest pisintry in the wuruld could not be
+soiled by contact with anybody like Parnell, and therefore the
+Catholic bishops had been compelled to give him up, and to say, Get
+thee behind me, Satanas. The dear Father did not tell the meeting why
+the bishops waited sixteen days after the verdict of the Court, and
+until Mr. Gladstone had delivered judgment, before deciding to cut
+Parnell adrift. Father O'Murtagh (I think that was the name) made some
+allusion to the present crisis of public affairs--(he called it
+cresses)--and assured his masses that the Tories were about to be for
+ever plucked from the pedestal on which they had long been planted by
+ascendency and greed! This was not so racy as the mixed metaphor of a
+Galway paper, which assures its readers that "the Unionist party will
+soon be compelled to disgorge the favouritism which for so long has
+been centred in their hands;" but it might pass. His Rivirince made
+some feeble jokes, and the audience tried to laugh, but failed. "They
+say that whin we luck at ourselves in the lucking lass, we see nothin'
+but Whigs," said the funny Father, and the audience sniggered. This
+was his masterpiece. He finished with "It's wondherful what a spache
+ye can make whin ye have nothin' to say;" and the masses sniggered
+again. Ten minutes more of silence broken only by whispered
+confabulations of the secretary and chairman, and I grew tired of
+obstructing the march to Freedom. I left the chair, the only one at my
+end of the room, with considerable regret. Part of the back, one
+upright, was still remaining, and although the thing had evidently
+been used in argument at some previous meeting, it hung together, and
+good work might still have been done with the legs. A gentleman with a
+complexion like a blast furnace, and a facial expression which looked
+like a wholesale infraction of the Ten Commandments, was smoking
+moodily on the steps.
+
+"Did ye injy the matein?" he inquired.
+
+"Thought it rather dead," I replied.
+
+"Faix, 'twas yerself that kilt it."
+
+I feared as much. What happened after I left no man will tell, though
+doubtless the resolutions adopted by the twenty men sitting on the
+forrums of ellum would vibrate through the Empire, and shake the
+British monarchy to its iniquitous base. Irish meetings must be taken
+with a grain of salt. A Westport man long drew fees for reports of
+mass meetings which never took place. Three or four Nationalists met
+in a back parlour, and their speeches, reported verbatim, rang through
+Ireland. Gallant Mayo was praised as heading the charge of Connaught,
+and Westport was lauded for its public spirit. And all the while the
+Westport folks knew nothing about it. The Dundalk folks will doubtless
+be equally astonished to learn that the cause is advancing so
+powerfully in their midst. This hole-and-corner meeting, waiting for
+the priest, addressed by the priest, bossed by the priest, is a fair
+sample of the humbug which seems inseparable from the Irish question.
+A very short acquaintance with the country and its people is
+sufficient to convince any reasonable person that the whole movement
+is based on humbug, sustained by humbug, and is itself a humbug from
+beginning to end. To see the English Parliament managed and exploited
+by these groups of low-bred and ignorant peasants, nose-led by
+ignorant and illiterate priests, is enough to make you ashamed of
+being an Englishman. The country has come to something when Britons
+can be worked like puppets by mean-looking animals such as I saw in
+the Dundalk Labourers' Hall, where the only respectable thing was an
+iron safe bearing the stamp of Turner, of Dudley. And this meeting, in
+status, numbers, and enthusiasm, was quite representative of
+Nationalist meetings all over Ireland. The English people are waiting
+for their turn while Papal behests are executed. John Bull stands hat
+in hand, taking his orders from Father O'Baithershin. The Irish say
+that England is in the first stage of her decadence, and they say it
+with some reason. England, the land of heroes, sages, statesmen, is
+the mere registrar of the parish priest and his poor, benighted dupes.
+Raleigh, Cromwell, Burleigh, Pitt, Palmerston, are succeeded by Healy,
+Morley, Sexton, Harcourt, Gladstone. England is Ireland's lackey, and
+must wait till her betters are served, must toil and moil in her
+service, receiving in return more kicks than halfpence. Britannia is
+the humble, obedient servant of Papal Hibernia. To what base uses we
+may return!
+
+Dundalk, July 1st.
+
+
+
+
+No. 43.--IN THE PROSPEROUS NORTH.
+
+
+This is a blessed change from dirt and poverty to tidiness and
+comfort. After the West of Ireland the North looks like another world.
+After the bareheaded, barelegged, and barefooted women and children of
+Mayo and Galway, the smartly-dressed people of Newry come as a
+surprise. You can hardly realise that they belong to the same country.
+There are no mud cabins here, no pigs under the bed, no cows tethered
+in the living room, no hens roosting on the family bedstead. The
+people do not follow the inquiring stranger about, as in Ennis or
+Tuam, where they seem to have nothing better to do. The Newry folks
+are minding their own business, and they have some business to mind.
+Three extensive flax spinning mills, two linen weaving factories, and
+an apron factory, give large employment to girls. There are several
+flour mills, some of them possessing immense power, and having the
+most modern machinery. Two iron foundries of long-established
+reputation, two mineral water factories, salt works, stone polishing
+mills, seven tanneries, cabinet furniture manufactories, and
+coachbuilding works cater for the town and surrounding district.
+Granite quarries of high repute, such as the Rostrevor green granite,
+exist in the vicinity, and are worked energetically, the products
+forming a valuable addition to the exports. The town is beautifully
+situated on a continuation of Carlingford Lough, the choicest bit of
+sea around Great Britain. Thackeray says that if England possessed
+this beautiful inlet it would be reckoned a world's wonder. Twenty
+miles of winding sea running inland like a league-wide river,
+mountains on both sides, many of them wooded to the furthest height.
+Rostrevor is a bijou watering place such as only France here and there
+can boast. You walk on the cliff side, steep verdurous heights above
+and below, looking through tree-tops on the shimmering sea and the
+purple mountains beyond, for ten miles at a stretch, wondering why
+nobody else is there. Newry is encompassed by mountains, one range
+above another. Even as the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so stand
+the hills about Newry. A big trade is done with Liverpool and Glasgow
+by means of the Dundalk and Newry Packet Company's fine service of
+boats. For this inland place has been made into a thriving seaport,
+and these Northerners make the water hum. At low tide the artificial
+cutting of the navigation works looks unpromising enough, but the
+people of these parts would be doing business if they had to float
+the boats on mud. The hills are cultivated to the topmost peak, or
+planted with trees where tillage is impossible. The people seem to
+have made the most of everything. They are digging, hammering,
+chopping, excavating, building, mining, and generally bustling around.
+They break up the mountains piece-meal, and sell the fragments in
+other lands. To make you buy they show you how it looks when polished,
+and they are ready to earn an extra profit by polishing all you want
+by steam power. The streets are clean, well-paved, kept in perfect
+order. The houses are well-built and far superior to the English
+average. A little cockney from 'Ackney, who has sailed the six hundred
+and seventeen miles between London and Cork and has explored most of
+the South and West, is quite knocked over by Newry. Leaning on the
+"halpenstock" with which he was about to tackle Cloughmore, he
+confessed that Newry hupset his hideas of Hireland and the Hirish.
+"The folks round 'ere," he said, "are hexactly like hus." He would
+have accorded higher praise, had he known any.
+
+Why this great difference? Look around the shop-keepers' signs in
+Tipperary or Tuam and note the names. Ruane, Magrath, Maguire,
+O'Doherty, O'Brien, O'Flanagan, O'Shaughnessy, and so _in sćcula
+sćculorum_. In Newry you see a striking change. Duncan, Boyd, Wylie,
+MacAlister, Campbell, McClelland, McAteer, and so on, greet you in all
+directions. You are in one of the colonies. The breed is different.
+You are among the men who make railways, construct bridges, invent
+engines, bore tunnels, make canals, build ships, and sail them over
+unknown seas. You are among a people who have the instincts of
+achievement, of enterprise, of invention, of command, who depend upon
+themselves, who shift for themselves, and believe in self-help rather
+than in querulous complaint. The Newry folk belong to Ulster, where as
+a whole the people can take care of themselves. A careful perusal of
+the addresses presented to Lord Houghton on his current Viceregal tour
+accentuates the difference in the Irish breeds. The aborigines all
+want to know what is going to be done for them. We want a pier, we
+want a quay, we want a garrison or a gunboat to spend some money in
+the district. Will your Excellency use your influence with the powers
+that be to get us something for nothing? And let it be something to
+enrich us, or at least to keep us alive without work. We can't be
+expected to do anything while groaning 'neath the cruel English yoke.
+The Newry folks, and all of their breed, abstain from whining and
+cadging. The Westport people have endless quarries of hard blue
+marble, which they are too lazy, or too ignorant, or both, to cut. The
+Ulster breed would have quarried, polished, exported a mountain or two
+long since. The universal verdict of employers of labour proves that a
+northern Irishman is worth two from any other point of the compass,
+will actually perform double the amount of work, and is, besides,
+incomparably superior in brains and general reliability. The worthless
+hordes who approach the Viceroy with snuffling petitions are
+invariably headed by Father Somebody, without whose permission they
+would not be there, and without whose leave they dare not raise the
+feeble and intermittent cheers which here and there have greeted the
+Queen's representative. The lying expressions of loyalty referred to
+in a previous letter are severely censured by the Nationalist papers.
+One of the leading lights says: "Judging from a sentence in the
+address presented by the Mullingar Town Commissioners to the
+Lord-Lieutenant on Thursday last, it would appear that these gentlemen
+are looking forward eagerly to the day when they can write themselves
+down West Britons. This is what they said: 'In your presence as the
+representative in this island of her Most Gracious Majesty Queen
+Victoria, we wish to give expression to our fealty to the throne,
+convinced as we are that the day will soon be at hand when we can with
+less restraint, and in a more marked manner, testify our admiration
+for the Sovereignty of the British Isles.'" The more sincere newspaper
+which falls foul of these expressions goes on to say:--
+
+"It is true that Ireland is described in the map made by Englishmen as
+one of the British Isles, but it is not so written in the true
+Irishman's heart, _and never will be_, in spite of the toadyism of
+gentlemen like the Town Commissioners of Mullingar."
+
+This pronouncement embodies the sentiments of every Nationalist
+Irishman. The Union of Hearts is not expected to succeed the Home
+Rule, or any other bill, and to do Irishmen justice, they never use
+the phrase, neither do they profess to look forward to friendliness
+with England. I have conversed with hundreds of Home Rulers, and all
+looked upon the bill as a means of paying off old scores. The tone of
+the Nationalist press should be enough for sensible Englishmen. Nobody
+who regularly reads the leading Irish Separatist papers can ever
+believe in the friendship supposed to be the inevitable result of the
+proposed concession. Once the present agitation is crowned with
+success, a tenfold more powerful agitation will at once arise. The
+Irish people will have more grievances than ever. Already they are
+complaining of insult and betrayal. And their reproaches are directed
+against the G.O.M. and his accomplices, or rather against Mr.
+Gladstone and Mr. Morley, for they know as well as Englishmen know
+that the rest count for nothing; that, in fact, they resemble the
+faithful and unsophisticated baa-baa of whom we heard in our early
+infancy. "Mary had a little lamb, Whose fleece was white as snow, And
+everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go." This is the
+attitude of the English Gladstonian party, and the Irish people know
+it. A Home Ruler I met to-day disavowed loyalty except to Ireland, and
+asked what was the Queen and the rest of the British Royal pauper
+party to him or to Ireland that he should be loyal? He said:--
+
+"All interest is over here, whether among Nationalists or Unionist.
+The fate of the bill affects us no longer. The new financial proposals
+are the last straw that breaks the camel's back. Where is the
+managing of our own affairs? Where does the Nationalism come in? And
+Gladstone, in allowing himself to make in the first proposal a mistake
+of one thousand pounds a day, damaged his prestige as the framer of
+the bill, and fatally damaged the bill itself. Anybody can now say
+that if he was so grossly mistaken in an ascertainable matter like
+revenue and figures he stands to be equally wrong (at least) in
+matters which are not demonstrable, but which are at present only
+matters of opinion and argument. I am not sure that he ever intended
+to give us any Home Rule at all. We are being fooled because we have
+no leader. The bill, as it stood at first, would never have been
+prepared for a man like Parnell. Gladstone dare not have done it. The
+whole bill is a series of insults. As a reasonable, fair-minded man
+you will not deny that. It purports to come from friends who confide
+in us, and yet every line bristles with distrust and suspicion. There
+is not one spark of generosity in the whole thing from beginning to
+end. Better have no bill at all. For as a business man, I foresee that
+the passing of any such bill would lead to a complete upset of trade.
+We should have a most tremendous row. The safeguards would only invite
+to rebellion. Tell a man he must not have something, must not do
+something, and that is the very thing he wants to do. He might not
+have thought of it if you had not mentioned it; but the moment you
+point it out, and particularise the forbidden fruit, from that very
+moment he is inspired with a very particular wish for that above all
+things. So with a nation. We want our independence. We want to do as
+we like. Otherwise, why ask for a Parliament? Gladstone says, Yes, my
+pretty dear, it shall have its ickety-pickety Parliament; it shall
+have its plaything. And it shall ridy-pidy in the coachy-poachy too;
+all round the parky-warky with the cock-a-doodle-doo. But it mustn't
+touch! Or if it touches it mustn't be rough, for its plaything will
+break so easily. We don't want this tomfoolery, nor to be treated like
+children. We want a real Parliament, and not one that can be pulled up
+every five minutes by London. For if the English Parliament have the
+power to veto our wishes, where's the difference? We might have just
+as well stayed as we were. That's perfectly clear.
+
+"So that I for one will be glad when the farce is over. The present
+bill at best was but a fraud, a tampering with the national sentiment.
+And I am beginning to think that we have no chance of a National
+Legislature until the coming of the next great Irishman. I am not so
+disappointed or broken-hearted as you might suppose. For the prospect
+of an Irish Parliament under present auspices is not very enticing.
+The country might be made to look ridiculous, and the thing, by
+bursting up in some absurd way, might make a repetition of the attempt
+impossible for a century. I would rather wait for a better bill, and
+also for better men to work it. We are not proud of the Irish members.
+But we didn't want Tories, and all the propertied men are Tories. What
+were we to do? We know the want of standing and breeding which marks
+most of our men, but we did the best we could, and came within an ace
+of succeeding. Let me tell you the exact feeling of the respectable
+Home Rule party of Ireland at this moment.
+
+"Having exerted ourselves with enthusiasm, and having undergone
+considerable pecuniary sacrifice with good chances of success, we now
+see clearly that all our efforts are for the present thrown away. It
+is the fortune of war. The fates were against us, and we rest content
+with the hope that we have furthered the ultimate success of the
+movement. For the moment, we make our bow, and hope to call on Mr.
+Bull at a more propitious season. Of course we expect to win in the
+end."
+
+The next politician whose opinions I noted was a horse of quite a
+different colour. He bore a Scottish name, and had the incisive,
+argumentative style of the typical Ulsterman, who unites the cold
+common-sense and calculating power of the Scot with the warmth and
+impulse of the Irish nature. He said:--
+
+"The bare existence of Belfast is, or should be, enough to negative
+all arguments in favour of Home Rule. The agitators say that Ireland
+is decaying from political causes, while all the while this Ulster
+town is getting richer and more powerful and influential. While the
+people of Cork are begging the Viceroy to please to do something for
+their port, to please to be so kind as to ask Mr. Bull to favour the
+city with his patronage, the Belfast people, with a far inferior
+harbour, an inferior climate, an incomparably inferior position,
+surrounded by far worse land, are knocking out the Clyde for
+shipbuilding, and running the Continent very close in linen-weaving.
+Belfast is actually the third in order of the Customs ports in the
+United Kingdom. The Belfast people flourish without Home Rule, and
+what is more, they know their neighbours. They've reckoned these
+gentry up.
+
+"How is it that the Catholic population, as a rule, are merely the
+hewers of wood and drawers of water? They have precisely the same
+opportunities as their Protestant countrymen. Where-ever you go you
+will find the Protestants coming to the top. Cork is a very bigoted
+Catholic city, and the huge majority of the population are Catholics.
+How is it that most of the leading merchants are Protestants? Why do
+heretics flourish where the faithful starve? Transfer the populations
+of Cork to Belfast and _vice versâ_, and, as everybody knows perfectly
+well, Belfast would at once begin to decay, while Cork would at once
+begin to prosper. Therefore it is absurd to say that Home Rule would
+cure the poverty existing in Catholic districts. Yes, there is a party
+of ascendency. The Protestants are distinctly the party of ascendency.
+They have the ascendency which ability and education and industry will
+always have over incapacity and ignorance and laziness. Now, I know
+something about the linen trade, and also something about the growth
+and preparation of flax.
+
+"Linen has made the North, and flax is grown in the North. But it
+would grow much better in the South. If they would grow it we would be
+very glad to buy it. But they won't. And why not? Because it needs
+care and skill, and a lot of watching and management. The beggars are
+too lazy to grow anything that wants tending from day to day. It would
+pay them splendidly, and the advantages of flax growing and dressing
+have over and over again been drummed into them without effect. The
+climate and soil of Southern Ireland are far more suitable for flax
+growing than the North, and as about three-quarters of all the flax
+woven in Belfast is grown on the Continent, it is clear that the
+market is waiting for the stuff. The Belfast merchants have done all
+that in them lay to bring about flax cultivation in the South. They
+have sent out lecturers and instructors, they have planted patches and
+grown the stuff, and shown the pecuniary results, and with what
+effect? Absolutely none. The people won't do anything their
+grandfathers didn't do. They won't be bothered with flax, which wants
+no end of attention. Why, if they grew flax, they'd have to work
+almost every day! And nobody who knows Irishmen, real Keltic Irishmen,
+ever expects them to do that, or anything like it. I've been in India,
+and I deliberately say that I prefer the Hindoo to the Southern
+Irishman for industry and reliability.
+
+"These people, who are too lazy to wash themselves, expect their
+condition to be improved by a Home Rule Parliament. Can anything be
+more unreasonable or more unlikely? And because there are more of
+them, their wishes are to be taken into account, and the opinions and
+wishes of men of whom each one is worth a hundred are to be
+disregarded. Where is the English sense of the eternal fitness of
+things?
+
+"What the Irish really seek is some effective substitute for work.
+They have no idea of developing the resources which lie nearest to
+them. Carlyle says a country belongs to the people who can make the
+best use of it, and not the people who happen to be found there.
+Ireland for the Irish is a favourite cry. Why? Is not England for the
+Irish, America, Australia, New Zealand? My ancestors came here in the
+time of Henry the Second, and I am told that I have no business in the
+country. Wherever English and Scots settlers have been located, there
+the country is well worked and the people are thriving. If we can
+thrive, why can't they thrive? If we can get on without Home Rule, why
+can't they get on without Home Rule? If it were going to be a good
+thing for the country we'd all be on it like a shot. If it were good
+for them, it ought to be good for us. We have shown by our success
+that our judgment is sound. Their failure in everything they
+undertake, their dirt, their general habits and character, should
+cause their statements and opinions to be looked upon with very great
+suspicion. Does it stand to reason that merely by Home Rule, by the
+exercise of the privilege of making Irish laws by Irishmen in Dublin,
+that these people would gain all we have attained by hard and honest
+labour? That is what they expect up here.
+
+"The Catholics are our servants, and in selecting them we seldom ask
+their religion. Our employés in most cases expect by the bill to take
+the place of their masters. That is their conception of Home Rule.
+They have been told from infancy that the British Government keeps
+them down because of their religion. They know that the British
+Government is Protestant, and they believe that in some occult way the
+superior position held by the Protestants in Ireland is due to
+favouritism. Under a Home Rule Parliament, that is, a Catholic
+Parliament, this condition of things will be reversed, and they will
+at once, and by their own innate force, as faithful believers, spring
+to the top of the tree, and exchange positions with their former
+masters and mistresses."
+
+The general effect of my friend's discourse was well summed up by Mr.
+James Mack, of Galway, who said:--
+
+"When I see that the Belfast men who would make fortunes out of river
+mud, and who would skin a flea for his hide and tallow, turn their
+backs on Home Rule, and declare they will have nothing to do with it,
+I feel sure it can be no good. Then my own experience and observation
+assure me that, instead of a settlement, it will only be the beginning
+of trouble for both countries. Firmness is wanted, and equal laws for
+all. At present everything is in favour of Ireland." _United Ireland_
+says:--"It would be better to go on for twenty years in the old
+miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting
+agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims.
+And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by
+a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission for a day."
+
+Nobody who knows the Irish people ever expected anything else.
+Agitators who live by agitation will always agitate, and only a few
+namby-pamby Radicals ever thought otherwise. Those who would fain have
+sold their souls for the Newcastle Programme also stand to be taken
+in. This Home Rule Bill will not do. Another must be brought forward
+immediately. Where is this dreary business going to end? When will Mr.
+Gladstone consider that England has eaten dirt enough?
+
+Newry, July 4th
+
+
+
+
+No. 44.--THE PROSPEROUS NORTH.
+
+
+This famous historical city must be eminently offensive to Irish
+Nationalists. It is so clean and sweet and neat and tidy that you can
+at once see the hopelessness of expecting Home Rule patriotism from
+the place. There are no dunghills for it to grow in, and my somewhat
+extensive experiences have long ago taught me that Home Rule and
+Nationalist patriotism will not flourish in Ireland without manure,
+and plenty of it. Anyhow, it is mostly associated with heaps of refuse
+and pungent odours arising from decomposing matter, and in the south
+and west is scarcely ever found flourishing side by side with modern
+sanitation. Home Rule not only, like pumpkins and vegetable marrows,
+requires a feculent soil, but like them, and indeed like all watery
+and vaporous vegetables, it needs the forcing-frame. Left to its own
+devices the movement would die at once. There is nothing spontaneous
+about it. It is a weedy sort of exotic, thriving only by filth and
+forcing. It cannot live an hour in the climate of Armagh. The cold,
+keen air of these regions nips it in the bud. The peculative patriots
+who are now monopolising Westminster have from time to time made
+descents on the district, to sow the good seed, as it were, by the
+wayside. But next day came a frost, a killing frost. The Northerners
+are too mathematical. They have taken Lord Bacon's advice. They "weigh
+and consider." They want logic, and will not be content with mere
+rhetoric. They require demonstrations, and have opinions of their own.
+Before accepting a theory they turn it round and round, and test it
+with the square, the level, and the line. They care nothing for
+oratory unless there is sense at the back of it. They know that fine
+words butter no parsnips, and they know the antecedents of the
+patriotic orators. They do not believe that a paid Parliament-man is
+necessarily a self-sacrificing patriot, and they note that Nationalist
+members are making their patriotism much more profitable than their
+original and legitimate pursuits, if any. The Armagh folks believe in
+work, and in keeping things in order. The Scots element is dominant.
+Not so much in numbers, as in influence. The Kelts are easily
+traceable, but the races are partly amalgamated, and the genuine Irish
+are greatly improved. I paraded the streets for many hours, but I saw
+no dirt, rags, wretchedness. It was market day, and the country people
+came streaming in from all sides, everyone well dressed and
+respectable, and in every way equal to the farmers and their wives who
+on market days drive into Lichfield or Worcester. It was a pleasure to
+see them, and my Cockney friend, quoted in the Newry letter, might
+have been tempted to discard his affected superiority, and drawing
+himself proudly up, to smite himself on the chest, and to say "And hi,
+too, ham a Hirishman."
+
+The country between Newry and Armagh is very beautiful from a pastoral
+point of view. After the savage deserts of the West it "Comes o'er my
+soul like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets." Every
+yard of ground is going at its best pace. The valleys stand so thick
+with corn that they laugh and sing. Immense vistas of highly
+cultivated country unroll themselves in every direction. The land is
+richly timbered, and tall green hedges spring up everywhere. You are
+reminded of Dorsetshire, of Cheshire, of Normandy, of Rhineland. The
+people at the wayside stations are all well-dressed and well-shod.
+Achil Island seems to be at an immeasurable distance. The semi-savages
+who in Mayo demand autonomy have no supporters here. The Ulster folks
+eschew them and all their works, and would no more associate with them
+than with Hottentots. I use the term because the Irish people have ten
+thousand times been told, and told untruthfully, that Lord Salisbury
+had applied the term to the nation at large. The people of Mayo and
+some other parts of Connaught are for the most part worthy of the
+name, if, indeed, it be not a libel on the Africans. The disgusting
+savagery of their funeral customs is of itself sufficient to stamp
+them as lowest barbarians. I am prepared to prove this to the hilt.
+Let their defenders come forward if they dare.
+
+And so it happens that the inhabitants of Armagh city are mostly
+Conservatives. They ought to be religious, too, for they have not only
+two cathedrals and an archbishop, but also a cardinal archbishop, Dr.
+Logue, to wit. I saw this distinguished ecclesiastic at Newry. He wore
+the scarlet robe, the extraordinary hat, the immensely thick gold ring
+of the cardinalate, in a railway carriage. An ordinary sort of man,
+with the round face and mean features of the typical Keltic farmer. He
+holds that the people should take their political faith from their
+priests, but the Northerners hardly agree, and are not so proud of
+their cardinal as they should be, seeing that he has been raised from
+the ranks, his father (so they say) having been Lord Leitrim's
+coachman, and the coachman who was driving when Lord Leitrim was shot.
+The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Armagh has an imposing position on the
+summit of a steep hill. The portal is approached by sixty or seventy
+steps in flights of five and ten with steep terraces between,
+extending over a great space, so that the flights of steps, seen from
+the bottom of the hill, seem continuous, and have a fine Gustave Doré
+effect of vastness and majesty. On a neighbouring steep stands the
+Protestant Cathedral, with its sturdy square tower, memorial of remote
+antiquity. The city is piled up between the two cathedrals, but mostly
+around the heretic structure, and away from the Papist pile, which
+stands among the fields. The Presbyterians have a very beautiful
+church, apparently of the Armagh marble of which the city is built,
+the perennial whiteness of the stone making the old place appear
+eternally young. The market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the
+steep slope to the Protestant Cathedral, was very busy indeed. Market
+gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for
+sale. Home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural
+makers. Wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements
+were there galore. Crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical
+corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise to the fore. None of
+these features are visible in the Western markets. A vendor of
+second-hand clothing stood on a cart well loaded with unconsidered
+trifles, and this gentleman was especially interesting. A number of
+poor women stood around while the salesman, who knew his clientčle to
+their smallest tricks, displayed his wares and recklessly endeavoured
+to ruin himself for the good of the country. Holding up an article, he
+would turn it round and round, expatiating on its excellent
+qualities, and then, after naming the very lowest price consistent
+with common business principles, would run down the figure to
+one-tenth or less, with a pause or two here and there for critical
+comment on his audience, of which he professed to entertain the most
+unfavourable opinion. Then with a final thump, punching the article
+contemptuously, he would offer it, regardless of consequences, for
+half his previous offer. Sometimes he refused to accept the money
+because the customer was not quick enough. Neither might the people
+examine his goods. He was master, and more, and found his account in
+it. He took up a frowsy old gown. "There ye are. Ten shillin's worth
+of stuff in that. An' ten for the makin'. An' that's twinty. I'll take
+ten, an' I couldn't afford to take a penny less. Will ye have it?
+Don't all spake at once. Ye won't. But I'll make ye. I'll take five
+shillin', four, three, two, one, I'll take sixpence. (Thump.) Take it
+away. Here! Have it for thruppence. Ye won't? Sweet bad luck to the
+one of ye is worth thruppence. Ye wouldn't raise tuppence in the crowd
+of ye. Ye want me to clothe ye for nothin'. An' thin ye'd want me to
+give ye lodgin' and washin'. 'Twas a black day on me whin I come among
+such a ruinatin' lot. Here now, sure this ought to timpt ye. A lady's
+jacket, an' a large, big, roomy jacket at that--fit for a lady that
+can ate a stone of praties at a male. Thurty shillin's ye'll be
+offerin' me, but I won't take it. Ye can give me ten, av ye're only
+quick enough. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two
+shillin's. Eighteenpence. (Thump.) Take it for a shillin'! Ye won't?
+Ye didn't sell yer ducks well. Ye didn't get the money for yer eggs.
+Will I lind ye a trifle? What d'ye take me for? Am I to stand rammin'
+me bargains down yer throats like wagon wheels? Do yez iver buy any
+clothes at all, or do yez beg them? Me heart's bruk to pieces wid
+blayguardin' and bullyraggin. Luk at this. A boy's coat. An it's lined
+wid woollen linin'; that's the only fault wid it. An' here's a bonnet.
+A fortin to any young woman. Will ye be plazed to take what ye want
+for nothin'? Tis charity ye want, ye poor misguided crathurs. 'Tis a
+pack of paupers I'm discoorsin', God help me."
+
+The Armagh shopkeepers are prosperous and content. "No Home Rule,"
+they say. They are no longer angry with the Nationalists. The snake is
+scotched, if not killed outright, they think. The whole absurdity has
+received such a damning exposure that it cannot be revived for another
+generation. The Separatist party will be perforce compelled to wait
+until the people have forgotten what Home Rule really means.
+Therefore, to work again! Useless to waste more time. Ulster will
+sleep with one eye open, bearing in mind the favourite Northern saying
+which advises men to put their trust in Providence, but to keep their
+powder dry. For, like the Achilese, they believe that prayer is
+effective in shaving, only the Ulstermen prefer to pray over a keen
+razor. A genial citizen of Armagh said:--
+
+"We would be as ready for Home Rule as any other Irishmen if it meant
+what we are asked to believe it means. But we know better. We are
+convinced that it will bring, not prosperity and peace, but bankruptcy
+and war, intolerance and social retrogression, robbery and spoliation,
+not only of the landlord but also of everybody else who has anything.
+The propertied Roman Catholics are just as dead against Home Rule as
+any Protestants. Only they dare not say so.
+
+"England ought to have sense enough to see that instead of freedom
+from Irish difficulties, the old grievances will be intensified, and
+any bill whatever will at once generate a fresh series of
+complications, so that the English Parliament will be crippled in
+perpetuity, to the detriment of British interests. The Empire, as a
+whole, must be weakened, because the Irish masses are most unfriendly,
+and the more England concedes the more unfriendly Ireland becomes. For
+Ireland regards all concessions as being wrung from England by
+superior force and skill, and as being, in short, the fruits of
+compulsion. Therefore, the more Ireland gets the more exacting she
+will always become. Ask any Englishman or Scotsman resident in Ireland
+if the Irish masses are friendly, and everyone will laugh at you. The
+English Home Rule party say, 'Just so. Let us cure this. This is the
+principal argument for Home Rule.' They think this sounds very fine.
+Just as if in private life, a man to whom you have given his due, and
+more than his due, should continue to abuse you, while you strain
+every nerve to satisfy him, and go out of your way to obtain peace and
+quietness, he all the time becoming more and more exacting and more
+and more discontented. And then as if you were to say, 'I must
+continue my concessions, my efforts, my sacrifices. I _must_ contrive
+to satisfy this amiable person.' What a fool any man would be to adopt
+such a course. A sensible man would say 'You have your due, and you'll
+get no more.' Treat Ireland so, and all will be well. Be firm and the
+trouble will amount to nothing. Paddy will soon drop shouting when he
+sees it has no effect. The agitators will soon dry up, or waste their
+sweetness on the desert air. But so long as there is a prospect of
+success, so long as you have a weak-kneed old lunatic in power, so
+long as Paddy sees a prospect of obtaining substantial advantages,
+such as reduction of rent or rent-free farms, so long the row will be
+kept up. If Englishmen could only realize that, the whole movement
+would cease. For Gladstonian Englishmen mistakenly think that they can
+settle the thing by further concession and get to their own business.
+Few of them care for Home Rule on its own merits. They want Ireland
+out of the way. They are going the wrong way about it. To give this is
+to give everything. And let me tell you something new. Once the bill
+becomes law, and the exactions of a Home Rule Government were enforced
+by England a great part of Ulster would in pure self-protection, being
+no longer bound to England by the ties of loyalty, sympathy, and
+mutual dependence--a great part, practically the whole of Ulster,
+would box the compass and go in for complete independence, as the best
+thing possible under the circumstances. England would then feel
+something in her vitals, something serious and something astonishing.
+The only rebellion that ever gave England any trouble was worked by
+Ulstermen. The most effective agitators have nearly always been
+renegade Protestants. Let England think what she is about before she,
+at the bidding of a foolish old man, turns her back on her faithful
+friends to throw herself into the arms of her sworn enemies."
+
+Another Conservative, for I met none other in Armagh, said:--"Surely
+the minority are worth some consideration. There are one million two
+hundred thousand loyal Protestants, and certainly many thousand Roman
+Catholics, who are against the Bill. As Sir George Trevelyan said, 'We
+must never forget that there are two Irelands,' and as John Bright
+said, 'There are more loyal men and women in Ireland than the whole
+population of men and women in Wales.' Yet Mr. Gladstone is so very
+considerate of Wales. Ireland can point to fully one-third of the
+entire population, who view with abhorrence the very name of Home
+Rule, and are pledged to resist it to the last. These people have been
+and are the friends of England, and England can be proud of them as
+having flourished under her rule. They have been and are the English
+garrison in Ireland, and England sorely needs a garrison here. Mr.
+Gladstone cares nothing for their opinions. On the other hand, he
+spends his life in pandering to disloyal Ireland, led by men who have
+openly avowed and gloried in their hatred of England, and who have
+hundreds of times publicly declared their determination to secure
+complete independence; men who have broken the law of the land, and
+have incited others to break it; men who turned a peaceful country
+into a perfect hell, and have for ever upset the people's notions of
+honesty. Parnellites and anti-Parnellites have only one end and aim,
+and only one sentiment. They hate British rule and British loyalists,
+and aim at the ultimate repeal of the Union, and the absolute
+separation of the two countries. And they would always be unfriendly.
+The party of lawlessness, outrage, and rebellion would never hold
+amicable relations with a law-abiding and peaceful commercial country.
+There would be no peace for Ireland either. The factions of the Irish
+party are yearly becoming more and more numerous. In all except hatred
+to England they are bitterly opposed. All very well to set up Ulster
+as being the ugly duckling, as being the one dissentient particle of a
+united Ireland. If every Protestant left the country Ireland would
+still be divided, and hopelessly divided. Personal reviling, riot, and
+blackguardism are already common between the factions, united though
+they try to appear, so far as is necessary to deceive the stupid
+Saxon. And if the Saxon cannot see the result of trusting the low
+blackguards who form the working plant of the Nationalist party he is
+stupid indeed, and deserves all that will happen to him.
+
+"Have you noticed how the Irish people are gulled?"
+
+Yes, I have noticed it. The _Freeman's Journal_, as the representative
+paper of the party and the chosen organ of the Church, is run on a
+pabulum of falsehood. Englishmen would hardly believe such lying
+possible, but the _Freeman_, as a liar, has, by constant practice,
+attained virtuosity. What Rubinstein is on the piano, what Blondin was
+on the tight-rope, what the Bohee Brothers are on the banjo, what Sims
+Reeves was in the ballad world, what Irving is in histrionic art, what
+Spurgeon was as a preacher, what Patti is in opera, what Gladstone is
+as a word-spinner, what Tim Healy is as a whipping-post, what the
+Irish peasant is as a lazybones, what Harcourt is as a humbug, what
+the member for Kilanyplace is as a blackguard, so is the _Freeman's
+Journal_ as a liar. When quoting great masters examples of their work
+are always interesting.
+
+The late Chamberlain-Dillon episode is fresh in the minds of all
+newspaper readers. Dillon wanted the date. The date was given him. He
+promised to answer the charge, but anybody can see that no answer was
+possible. He failed to come up to time. Being lugged to the front by
+the scurf of the neck, he explained that he _had_ used the words,
+namely, that when the Irish party got power they would remember their
+enemies, but--much virtue in But--he used the words under the
+influence of exasperation arising from the Mitchelstown affair--which
+took place a year later!
+
+Mr. Chamberlain pointed this out, and referring to this incident the
+_Freeman_ says:--
+
+"Mr. Chamberlain literally grew pale under the succession of
+exposures, and wriggled in his seat, while he attempted to meet them,
+now by wriggling equivocations, now by reckless denial." "Mr. Goschen,
+prompted by Mr. Bolton," horrified the _Freeman's_ delicate taste by
+"jocose allusions to watertight compartments and to the vessel's
+toppling over, which grated horribly on the members of the House, with
+the memory of the recent terrible calamity fresh in their minds." I
+was in Dublin when the news of the Victoria disaster arrived, and I
+heard a typical Nationalist express a wish that the whole fleet had
+perished. Such sentiments are the natural result of the lying
+literature provided by the "patriot" press of Dublin and the
+provinces. Well may Home Rule opinion in Ireland be rotten through and
+through! Mirabeau said of a very fat man that his only use was to show
+how far the skin would stretch without bursting. The _Freeman_ exists
+to show to what lengths human fatuity can go. Lying and slander and
+all uncleanness, envy and hatred and malice and all uncharitableness,
+are its daily bread. With Home Rule in Ireland, this sheet would be
+the ruling power. To support Home Rule is for the _Freeman_ to breathe
+its native air. Under an Irish Parliament, nutriment "thick and slab"
+would abound, and the patriot print would wax in strength and stature
+day by day. Enlighten the popular mind, and the _Freeman's_ hours are
+numbered. It would vanish as a dream, forgotten by all except some
+old diver into the history of the past, who having read its pages,
+will shake his head sadly when he hears of Liars, and remembering its
+Parliamentary notes will say--
+
+"There were Giants in those days."
+
+Armagh, July 6th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 45.--A PICTURE OF ROMISH "TOLERATION."
+
+
+The country from Armagh to Monaghan is a very garden of Eden,
+undulating, well wooded, well watered, and in a high state of
+cultivation. The intervening towns and villages are neat and sweet,
+and the people seem to be hard workers. Monaghan itself, during the
+last generation, has wonderfully improved. It suffers by reason of its
+position on an almost inaccessible branch line, and the complete
+absence of manufactories, but it has no appearance of poverty. The
+Diamond is a well-built square, and the whole town, mostly built of
+stone, some of the streets on terraces, many of them thickly planted
+with trees, has a shady and sylvan look. The gaol, an enormous
+building crowning a steep hill, looks like the capitol of a fortress,
+and appears to have exercised a salutary effect on the neighbourhood,
+for it has long been disused. The district did not furnish malefactors
+enough to make the establishment pay. The gaol officials stood about
+with folded hands wishing for something to do, and probably locked up
+each other in turn by way of keeping up a pretence of work. The
+governor had nothing to govern, and the turnkeys sighed as they
+thought of old times. The thing was growing scandalous, and the
+ever-diminishing output of convicts marked the decadence of the
+country. Day by day the officials climbed to the topmost battlement in
+the hope that rural crime-hunters might be descried bringing in some
+turnip-stealer, some poacher, some blacker of his neighbour's eye, and
+day by day these faithful prison-keepers sadly descended to renew the
+weary round of mutual incarceration, so necessary if they wished to
+keep their hands in, and to apply somebody's patent rust-preventer to
+the darling locks, which formerly in better times they had snapped
+with honest pride. At last the authorities intervened, discharged the
+turnkeys, and locked up the place. It was a case of _Ichabod_. The
+fine gold had become dim and the weapons of war had perished. The
+officials departed in peace, each vowing that the country was going to
+the Divil, and each convinced that such a state of things would never
+come to pass under Home Rule. All became earnest Nationalists in the
+sure and certain hope that under an Irish Parliament business would
+revive, that the old place would be re-opened, that its venerable
+walls would again re-echo the songs of happy criminals, that the
+oakum-picking industry would revive and flourish, and that the
+treadwheel (which they identify with the weal of the country) would
+continuously revolve. Meanwhile, Armagh extends hospitality to stray
+wrong-doers and Monaghan boards them out to the manifest injury of the
+local turnkey industry.
+
+The new Roman Catholic Cathedral is said to be the finest in Ireland.
+It was over thirty years in building, and although the stone of the
+main fabric cost nothing, the structure cost more than a hundred
+thousand pounds. The interior is more gorgeous than beautiful, and the
+money seems to have been expended with execrable taste. The marble
+mosaic of the chancel floor is beautifully done, the work having been
+entrusted to Italian workmen, who were engaged on it for several
+years. The numerous statues of Carrara marble are well executed, and
+other items are also of the best. But the effect of the whole is
+inharmonious, and the great lines are obscured by over-ornamentation.
+You are reminded of an over-dressed woman. The pulpit, surmounted by a
+lofty conical canopy richly gilt, is supported on four lofty pillars
+of coffee-coloured marble highly polished. The baldacchino is a
+glittering affair, forty or fifty feet high, and big enough for a
+mission church. This also rests on marble columns. The sacristy,
+chapter-house and other offices are splendidly furnished, and the
+furniture of the doors, brass branches spreading all over them,
+massive as medićval work, were remindful of Birmingham. The oak
+drawers of the robing room contain sacerdotal raiment to the tune of
+two thousand pounds, and the banners, many in number, and of richest
+work, must also represent a small fortune. Beautiful oil paintings
+from Italy hang around, and the bishop's throne is a marvel of gold
+lace and luxury. A queer-looking utensil, like a low seat, but with
+round brass bosses at each corner, proved to be merely a sort of
+crinoline whereon the bishop might extend his robes, so as to look
+inflated and imposing. So does the noble turkey-cock extend himself
+when bent on conquest of his trustful mate, gobbling the while
+strange-sounding incantations. To describe in detail would require a
+book. The confessionals are snug, with rich external carving. Plenty
+of accommodation for penitents here. Amid such surroundings to be a
+miserable sinner must be indeed a pleasure. The spire is two hundred
+and fifty feet high. I mounted and saw the great bell, over three tons
+in weight. I also saw the bishop's robes of wondrous richness and
+penetrative virtue, the consecrated slippers which the acolytes wear,
+with their scarlet robes, remindful of Egyptian flamens and African
+flamingoes; the blessed candle-box and the seven-times blessed
+candles, which at once drop tallow on the holder's clothes and benison
+on his sin-struck soul. All this expense in poor Ireland, all these
+advantages for poor Ireland. And still the Irish are not happy. With
+Roman Catholic cathedrals on every hand, with monasteries, nunneries,
+seminaries, confraternities, colleges, convents, Carmelites, Christian
+brothers, and collections whichever way they turn, the Irish people
+should be content. What could they wish for more?
+
+The principal shopkeepers of Monaghan have unpatriotic names.
+Crawford, Jenkins, Henry, Campbell, Kerr, McEntee, Macdonald, and
+their like must in some way be accountable for the smartness of the
+town and for the emptiness of the prison on the hill. And you soon see
+that the Cathedral was needed, for besides the Protestant church, the
+town is polluted by two Presbyterian churches, to say nothing of a
+schism-shop used by the Wesleyan Methodists. A Monaghan man said:--
+
+"The respectable people are nearly all Protestants, and all the
+Protestants, and most of the respectable Catholics, if not all, are
+Unionists. In point of numbers the Catholics have the pull, and in the
+event of a Home Rule Parliament, which, God forbid, our position as
+Protestants would be no longer tenable. We should have to knock under,
+and to become persons of no consideration. The small farmers among the
+Protestant population would have an especially hard time of it. They
+mostly held aloof from the Land League and such-like associations; and
+when the other party get the upper hand they will have to smart for
+it. What Mr. Dillon said about remembering in the day of their power
+who had been their enemies, is always present to the minds of the
+lower classes of the Irish people. It is that they may have the power
+of punishing all sympathisers with England that some of them say they
+want Home Rule. No doubt they have other temptations, but certainly
+that is one great incentive. So keenly are they bent on getting power
+that they in some cases quite disregard any possible disadvantages
+accruing from the success of the movement. 'Let us get the power,'
+they say, 'never mind the money.' I have heard the remark made more
+than once, and it represents the dominant feeling in the minds of
+many. Rubbish about struggling for equal rights. Where are the
+disabilities of Irish Catholics?
+
+"Ascendency is their game. Would they be tolerant? Why ask such a
+question? When was Roman Catholicism tolerant, and where? Is not the
+whole system of Popery based on intolerance, on infallibility, on
+strict exclusiveness? Let me give you a few local facts to show their
+'tolerance.'
+
+"In the old times the Monaghan Town Commissioners were a mixed body.
+Catholics and Protestants met together in friendly converse, and the
+voting went anyhow, both religions on both sides, according to each
+man's opinion of the business. Nowadays, wherever in Ireland the two
+sects are represented the thing is worked differently, and you may
+know the voting beforehand by reference to the members' religion. We
+are not troubled with this in Monaghan, and for the very best of
+reasons--all the members but one are Roman Catholics, and the solitary
+Protestant is a lawyer who has always been identified with them, and
+has always managed their legal business. He is practically one of
+themselves, having always acted with them.
+
+"When the modern political agitation became rife, the Romans of
+Monaghan, under the orders of their priests, at once ousted all
+Protestants, except the one I have mentioned, who does not count, and
+monopolised the Town Council ever since. They forgot something--Lord
+Rossmore has a claim on the market-tolls and other similar payments
+which amount to about three hundred pounds a year, but so long as the
+Town Council was worked by a mixed body of Catholics and Protestants
+he consented to forego this claim, and made the town a present of the
+money, which was expended in various improvements. Three hundred a
+year is a large sum in a small country town where labour is cheap, and
+in fifty years this sum, carefully laid out in ornamental and sanitary
+arrangements, quite changed the aspect of the place. When, however,
+the priests came on the scene and determined to have things
+exclusively in their own hands, Lord Rossmore did not quite see why he
+should any longer give the money to the town. And let it be understood
+that his agent had always been a prominent figure on the Monaghan Town
+Council, which was very right, having regard to the three hundred
+pounds given by Lord Rossmore, and to the agent's superior knowledge
+and business experience. He had been kicked out with the rest, and so
+it was made known that in future my lord would keep the money in his
+own pocket. They were astonished and suddenly cast down. 'Fear came
+upon them, and sorrow even as upon a woman,' &c.--you know the text.
+They said the money belonged to them, and really they had had it so
+long that they might be excused for believing this. Lord Rossmore was
+firm. They fought the thing out; but where was the good? They were
+beaten at every point. They had no case. So the town is three hundred
+pounds a year worse off, and Lord Rossmore three hundred pounds
+better. And still they will not allow a Protestant on the Council,
+although nearly all the best business men are of that persuasion.
+How's that for tolerance? And if such a thing be done in the green
+tree what will be done in the dry? If they flog us now with whips,
+won't they flog us then with scorpions?"
+
+Another thraitor to his counthry's cause, said:--"A great idea with
+the priests is this--to get hold of the education of the country. They
+do not like the present system of National education. They do not
+approve of their youthful adherents growing up side by side with
+Protestant children. At first the Catholic bishops welcomed the scheme
+of National education, but now they are averse to it. They have seen
+how it works. It goes against them. It has been weighed in the balance
+and found wanting. The Catholic children grew up in amity with their
+neighbours, and got dangerously liberal ideas on the subject of
+religion. They were getting to believe that it mattered little whether
+Catholic or Protestant so long as a man's life was right. I went to
+school with Catholics, grew up with them, was always friendly with
+them, and we keep up the friendship to this day. The Catholic bishops
+disapprove of this. They want the line of cleavage sharp and distinct.
+Fifty years ago mixed marriages were common enough. Such a thing never
+happens now-a-days. It is most stringently forbidden by the Catholic
+Church. A priest told me that emigrants to America, such as had been
+educated in Irish National schools, along with Protestant children,
+were very apt to drop their Romanism when once separated from their
+native parish, and to become Protestants. I suppose he meant to say
+that long familiarity with the unclean thing had undermined the
+wholesome dislike of heresy which every Catholic should feel, and that
+therefore such familiarity should be, if possible, avoided. Years ago
+the priest would be friendly with his Protestant neighbours. We all
+lived together pretty comfortably. Of late a great change has taken
+place. The clergy as far as possible leave us, and cause us to be
+left, out in the cold. The question of Home Rule is entirely a
+religious question. Parnell was actuated by what might fairly be
+called patriotism; that is, comparatively speaking. The clergy saw in
+his fall a grand opportunity to use the movement he had created for
+the furtherance of their own ends. Home Rule is a purely Roman
+Catholic movement, and has had the most regrettable results on the
+amity of neighbours everywhere. Formerly the question of religion
+never arose. Now nothing else is considered. The Papists are almost
+unbearable, while they as yet have only the hope of power. What they
+would become if once they grasped the reality God only knows. I am not
+prepared to stand it, whatever it be. My arrangements to leave the
+country have long been made. At my age it will be a great grief, but I
+have always lived in a free country, and I will die in a free country.
+I was born in the town, and hoped to end my days at my birthplace. But
+I shall go, if it almost broke my heart, rather than see myself and
+the worthy men who have made the place domineered over and patronised
+by Maynooth priests. _Ubi bene, ibi patria._ Where I'm most happy,
+that will be my country."
+
+The road to Kilmore is through a beautiful park-like country heavily
+timbered with oak, ash, beech, chestnut, and fir. Tall hedgerows
+twenty feet high line most of the way, which in many parts is
+completely overhung with trees in green arches impervious to rain. The
+country is undulating, with sharp descents and long clumps of beeches
+and imposing pine woods, bosky entrances to country seats and grassy
+hills, covered with thriving kine. From the church itself an extensive
+landscape is seen on every side. A deep valley intervenes between the
+church and a pretty farmhouse. I find a narrow lane with high hedges,
+covered with honeysuckles, which seems to lead thitherward. A man is
+toiling in a field hard by, digging for dear life, bare-armed and
+swarthy. I mount the gate and make for him. He remains unconscious,
+and goes on digging like mad. His brow is wet with honest sweat, and
+he seems bent on earning whate'er he can. Perhaps he wishes to look
+the whole world in the face, having an ambition to owe no rent to any
+man. I woke him and asked why the flags were flying on Kilmore
+steeple.
+
+"To the pious, glorious, and immortal memory of William of Orange, who
+gave us an open Bible, and delivered us from Popery brass money, and
+wooden shoes. We put them up on the first of July and fly them till
+the twelfth, when we walk in procession through Monaghan."
+
+"An Orangeman, and a black Protestant, I fear?"
+
+He laughed merrily, and said he was proud and thankful to be both. "If
+we didn't hold together, and associate in some way, we might quit the
+country at once. By banding together we hold our ground, and we will
+do so until Home Rule comes on us. Then we'll have to give in, about
+here. We're in a minority."
+
+"Don't you think the Papists would be tolerant?"
+
+"Aye, aye! Toleration indeed. As tolerant as a cat to a mouse. As
+tolerant as I am to this thistle, bad scran to it," said my friend,
+fetching up the obnoxious weed with a vigorous stroke, and chopping it
+to pieces with the spade, after which he shovelled it to the bottom of
+the trench. "Why, sir, the Papists are beginning to assume mastership
+already. Before this Government had been a fortnight in office the
+dirty scum began to give themselves airs. I mean, of course, the
+lowest of them. They were not so civil as before. Tolerant, ye say!
+Sure anybody that heard ye say the like of that would know ye were a
+stranger in the counthry."
+
+The farm house was a model of cleanliness and neatness, James Hanna a
+model of a hard-working, debt-paying, honourable farmer. The living
+rooms had every accommodation required for the decent bringing-up of a
+family; and the parlour, with its carpets, knick-knacks, and
+highly-polished solid furniture, showed both taste and luxury. Mrs.
+Hanna, a buxom lady of middle age, was hard at work, but for all that,
+the picture of comeliness and neatness. The children were just coming
+in from school, well clad and good-looking, the boys ruddy and strong,
+the girls modest and lady-like. Mr. Hanna was hard at it in some
+contiguous field, but he came round and told me that he held twenty
+acres of land, that the rent was Ł24 10s., that his father had the
+farm for more than fifty years, that he was a Protestant, a Unionist,
+and a strong opponent of Home Rule. I have visited two other farms of
+the same size in Mayo and Achil, both held by Catholic Home Rulers.
+The rent of the Achil farm described by its holder, Mr. McGreal, as
+"very good land," was seventeen-and-sixpence for the whole twenty
+acres. McGreal was very poor, and looked it. His house was of the type
+described in my previous letters. Mr. James Hanna pays more for each
+acre than McGreal for his whole farm, and yet the Kilmore man is
+prosperous, his house, his family, all his belongings suggestive of
+the most enviable lot. A gun was hanging over the fire-place, which
+was a grate, not a turf-stone. I asked him if he used the
+shooting-iron to keep his landlord in order. He said No, he was no
+hunter of big game. I may be accused of too favourable an account of
+this farmhouse and its inmates, but I have (perhaps somewhat
+indiscreetly) given the name and address, and Monaghan people will
+agree with me. A more delightful picture of Arcadia I certainly never
+saw. Cannot Englishmen reckon up the Home Rule agitation from such
+facts as these, the accuracy of which is easily ascertainable by
+anybody? Everywhere the same thing in endless repetition. Everywhere
+laziness, ignorance, uncleanliness, dishonesty, disloyalty, ask for
+Home Rule. Everywhere industry, intelligence, cleanliness, honesty,
+loyalty, declare that to sanction Home Rule is to open the floodgates
+to an inrush of barbarism, to put back the clock for centuries, to put
+a premium on fetichism, superstition, crime of all kinds, to say
+nothing of roguery and rank laziness. What are Englishmen going to do?
+Which party will they prefer to believe? When will John Bull put on
+his biggest boots and kick the rascal faction to the moon?
+
+Monaghan, July 8th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 46.--A BIT OF FOREIGN OPINION.
+
+
+The military call and spell the name Inniskilling, which corruption is
+probably due to the proverbial stupidity of the brutal Saxon, and is
+undoubtedly another injustice to Ireland. The Inniskilling Dragoons
+have won their fame on many a stricken field, and to them the town
+owes any celebrity it may possess. From a tourist's point of view it
+deserves to be better known. It is a veritable town amidst the waters,
+and almost encircled by the meandering channels that connect Upper and
+Lower Lough Erne. It consists almost entirely of one long, irregular,
+but tolerably-built street, at both ends of which you cross the river
+Erne. A wooded knoll, crowned by a monument to Sir Lowry Cole, who did
+good service under Wellington, is a conspicuous object, and through
+openings purposely cut through the trees, affords some very pleasing
+views. A hundred steps lead to the top, and the ascent repays the
+climb. The Cuilgach range, source of the Shannon, the Blue Stack
+mountains of Donegal, the ancient church and round tower of Devenish,
+an island in the Great Lough Erne, and due west the Benbulben hills,
+are easily visible. Devenish island is about two miles away, and,
+although without a tree, is very interesting. Some of the Priory still
+remains, and I have found a Latin inscription in Lombardic characters
+which, being interpreted, reads Mathew O'Dughagan built this,
+Bartholomew O'Flauragan being Prior, A.D. 1449. There is a graveyard
+next the ruins, and a restored Round Tower, eighty-five feet high, not
+far away, the door of which is ten feet from the ground. These towers
+are sprinkled all over the country, and in nearly all the door is
+eight feet to twenty feet from the ground. The process of eviction
+seems to have been present to the minds of the builders. The sheriffs'
+officers of a thousand years ago must have been absolutely powerless
+in presence of a No Rent manifesto. Steamers are running on the Lower
+Lough from Enniskillen to Belleek, about twenty-two miles. You can
+sail there and back for eighteen-pence. The Upper Lough is said to be
+still more beautiful, the tourist agents have recently been trying to
+open up this lovely island-studded lake. The beauties of Ireland are
+as unspeakable as they are unknown. The strip of sea holds some
+tourists back, and others seek the prestige of holiday on the
+Continong. A German traveller, hight Bröcker, declares that Ireland
+beats his previous record, and that the awful grandeur of the Antrim
+coast has not its equal in Europe, while the wild west with its heavy
+Atlantic seas, is finer far than Switzerland. Germans are everywhere.
+The Westenra Arms of Monaghan boasted a waiter from the Lake of
+Constanz, and I met a German philologist at Enniskillen who had his
+own notions about Irish politics. He ridiculed the attitude of
+England, or rather of Gladstonian England, and rated Home Rulers
+generally in good set terms.
+
+"The business of England is to rule Ireland. Justly, of course, but to
+rule. That is if England has any regard for her own reputation. A
+colonel must rule his regiment, a teacher must rule his class, the
+captain must rule his crew, or disorder and damage to all parties will
+be the inevitable result. England stands to her acquisitions, whether
+conquered or peacefully colonised, in the relationship of head of the
+family. She has one member who is troublesome. There is always one
+black sheep in the flock. There was a Judas among the twelve. England
+has one, only one, at present, of her numerous family who gives
+extraordinary anxiety. And why?
+
+"Difference of race and difference of religion. The double difference
+is too much. The races would amalgamate but for the religious
+difference. They would intermarry, and in time a sufficient mixture
+would take place; would have taken place long since but for the action
+of Rome. Rome keeps open the old wound, Rome irritates the old sores.
+Rome holds the two nations apart. We in Germany see all this quite
+plainly. We have no interests at stake, and then, you know, lookers-on
+see better than players. Rome keeps Ireland in hand as a drag on the
+most influential disseminator of Protestantism in the world. Ireland
+suits her purpose as a backward nation. We have quite snuffed out the
+Pope in Germany. Education is fatal to the political power of Rome.
+Ireland is not educated, and suits her purpose admirably. You will not
+succeed in satisfying Ireland, because Rome will not allow the Irish
+to remain quiescent. Rome will not permit Ireland to rest and be
+thankful, to fraternise with England, to take the hand of friendship,
+and to work together for good. This would not do for the Church. Any
+Romish priest will tell you that his Church is destined to overspread
+and conquer every country in the world, and that of all possible
+events that is a thousand times the most desirable. An independent
+Ireland, whose resources would be in the hands of the Romish Clergy,
+and whose strategetical position would be the means of aiding some
+Catholic power to crush the prestige of England--that is not a
+possibility too remote for the imagination of Romish wirepullers. Are
+Englishmen acquainted with the history of Papal Rome? Have they
+adequate knowledge of the subtlety, the craft, the dissimulation, the
+foresight of this most wonderful religious system? I think not, or
+they would be more on their guard against her Jesuitical advances. The
+idea of your Gladstone going to your Parliament to hand over this
+country to Rome under the specious pretence of remedying Irish
+grievances, is too ridiculous. I ask myself where is the English
+commonsense of which we have heard so much in Germany?
+
+"England must be master. Not with tyranny; of that there is no danger,
+but with a judicial firmness. Your system of party government has good
+points, but it has weak points, and the Irish make you feel them. You
+pay too much attention to Irish clamour. I have been partly living in
+England for twenty-two years, and I have seen your Gladstone 'finally'
+contenting the Irish three or four times. Now, if he understood the
+subject at all, he ought to know that for the reason I have stated
+satisfaction is impossible. No use healing and dressing a wound which
+is constantly re-opened. No use in dressing a sore which is
+deliberately irritated. Rome will keep England going. With your Home
+Rule Bills, your Irish Church Bills, your successive Land Bills, how
+much have you done? How far have you succeeded in pacifying Ireland?
+Are you any nearer success now than ever you were? On the other hand,
+does not appetite grow with what it feeds on? The more you give, the
+more they want. They are far more discontented than they were before
+the passage of the three Land Bills, by each of which your Gladstone,
+your amusing Gladstone, declared he would pacify and content the
+Irish. And now your Gladstone is at it again. Funny fellow! He is like
+the Auctioneer with his Last time, for the Last time, for the very
+Last time, for the very _very_ Last time. And the grave English nation
+allows itself to be made a sport. It is mocked, derided, by a number
+of lawyers' clerks and nonentities from third-rate Irish towns. It is
+bullied by a handful of professional politicians, paid by your
+American enemies, and governed by the flabby-looking priests you see
+skulking about the Irish railway stations and parks and pleasure
+resorts. As I said before, England must be master, as the captain is
+of his crew, as the tutor of his class, as the colonel of his
+regiment; or she will go down, and down, and down, until she has no
+place nor influence among the nations. And she will deserve none, for
+she knew not how to rule.
+
+"England is at present like a ship's captain, who in his futile
+endeavours to please one of his crew first neglects the management of
+the ship, and, then (if she grants Home Rule) allows the discontented
+person to steer the course. And all to please one silly old man, who
+should long ago have retired from public life. What man at eighty-four
+would be reckoned competent to manage a complicated business
+enterprise such as a bank, or an insurance business, or a big
+manufacturing affair, or a newspaper office? Yet you allow Gladstone
+to manage an Empire! Where, I ask is the English sense, of which we
+hear so much in Germany? You want a Bismarck to make short work of
+these Popish preachers of sedition. You want a Bismarck to rid your
+country of the Irish vermin that torment her. The best Irishmen are
+the most brilliant, polite, scholarly men I ever met. None of them are
+Home Rulers. That should be enough for England without further
+argument. Your House of Lords has sense. That will be your salvation
+against Gladstone and Rome."
+
+At the _Imperial_ was a warm discussion anent the propriety of keeping
+alive the memory of the Battle of the Boyne, which the Orangemen
+celebrate with great pomp on July 12. "The counthry's heart-sick of
+Orange William an' his black-mouths," said a dark-visaged farmer. By
+black-mouths he meant Protestants.
+
+"The blayguards are not allowed to shout To Hell wid the Pope
+now-a-days. In Belfast they'd be fined forty shillin's. An' they know
+that, and they daren't shout To Hell wid the Pope, so they roar To
+Hell wid the Forty Shillin's. That's what I call a colourable evasion.
+But the law favours them."
+
+A man of mighty beard looked on the speaker with contempt. "Sure, 'tis
+as raisonable to celebrate King William, who _did_ live as a Saint
+like Patrick, Phadrig as ye call him, who never existed at all. At
+laste, that's what some of them say. Ye mix the life an' work of
+half-a-dozen men, an' ye say 'twas all Saint Patrick. Sure, most of
+him is a myth, a sort of a fog, jist. Ye can't agree among yerselves
+as to whin he was born." Turning to me, the bearded man said, "Did ye
+ever hear the pome about Saint Patrick's birthday?"
+
+I regretfully admitted that the masterpiece in question had escaped my
+research, but pleaded in extenuation that I came from England, where
+the rudiments of polite larnin' and the iliments of Oirish litherature
+have not yet permeated the barbarian population. Barbatus then recited
+as follows:--
+
+    "On the eighth day iv March, as sum people say,
+    St. Patrick at midnight he furst saw the day.
+    While others declare on the ninth he was born,
+    Sure, 'tis all a mistake between midnight and morn!
+    Now, the furst faction fight in Oireland, they say,
+    Was all on account of St. Patrick's birthday.
+    Some fought for the eighth, for the ninth more would die--
+    Who didn't say right, they would blacken his eye.
+    At length both the parties so positive grew,
+    They each kept a birthday, so Patrick got two.
+    Till Father Mulcahy (who showed them their sins)
+    Said, No man can have two birthdays (barrin' he was twins).
+    An' boys, don't be fightin' for eight or for nine;
+    Don't be always disputin', but sumtimes combine.
+    Combine eight wid nine, seventeen is the mark,
+    Let that be his birthday." "AMEN," said the clerk.
+    "Tho' he wasn't a twin, as history does show--
+    Yet he's worth any other two saints that we know.
+    So they all got blind drunk, which complated their bliss,
+    An' they kept up the custom from that day to this."
+
+"An' why wouldn't we remimber King William? An' why wouldn't we
+remimber that the Enniskillen Protestants went out an' smashed up the
+Papists under Lord Mountcashel, at Newtownbutler, on August 1, 1689?
+The very day of the relief of Derry--so it was. An' more than ever now
+we need to keep our heads above wather. Ye've an old fule over there
+that's thryin' to upset the counthry wid his fulery an' his Home Rule.
+But we'll not have it! Never will we bow the neck to Rome. In the name
+of God, we'll resist to the last moment. Every man will stand to his
+arms. Leave us to settle with the Papists, and we'd hunt them like
+flies. Thim an' their Army of Independence! 'Twas an' Army of
+Independence they levied to help the French invasion. The poor
+parleyvoos landed at Killala (ye can see where they entrenched their
+camp), and marched with the Irish Army of Independence to Castlebar,
+where the English smashed them up, the Irish Catholic levies bolting
+at first fire or before it." Four or five nameless stones mark the
+graves of French officers killed in this engagement. I saw them on my
+way from Castlebar to Turlough's Tower. My Orange friend went
+on:--"We'll send a hundred Orangemen to fight their Army of
+Independence. They shall be armed with dog-whips, to bring the brutes
+to heel. No, we'll not send a hundred, either. We'll send thirty-two,
+one for each county of Ireland. 'Twould be a trate to see the Army of
+Independence hidin' thimsilves in the bogs, an' callin' on the rocks
+an' hills to fall down an' cover thim, an' the airth to swallow them
+up."
+
+A political tradesman recommended to me as a perfect encyclopćdia of
+argument on the Home Rule question, said:--"The great difficulty is to
+get the English people to understand the duplicity of this sacerdotal
+movement. Of course, you understand that the agitation is really
+religious, and not, strictly speaking, political at all. In England
+the Romish priests are a better class of men, and no doubt they are
+loyal enough for practical purposes. And then they have neither
+numbers nor influence. You look upon the Catholic laity of England
+very much as we look upon the Plymouth Brethren of Ireland--that is,
+as a well-meaning, well-conducted body of people with whom you don't
+agree. The Catholic laity of Ireland would be all right if they were
+left alone, if they were allowed to follow the dictates of their
+natural humanity. My Catholic neighbours were very good, none better,
+until this accursed agitation began. Left to themselves the Irish
+people would agree better and better every year. But that would not
+suit Rome. The Church, which is very astute, too much so for England,
+sees in agrarian agitation a means of influence and the acquisition of
+power; and once an Irish Parliament became dominant, intolerance would
+make itself felt. Not as of old by the fires and tortures of the
+Inquisition, for nineteenth-century public opinion would not stand
+that; and not by manifestly illegal means either, but by boycotting,
+by every species of rascality. How can you expect tolerance from a
+church the very essence of whose doctrine is intolerance? When
+everybody outside the pale of that Church is outside the pale of
+salvation, condemned beforehand to eternal damnation, anything and
+everything is permissible to compel them to come in. That is their
+doctrine, and they, of course, call it benevolence.
+
+"Mr. Gladstone has said,--'My firm belief is that the influence of
+Great Britain in every Irish difficulty is not a domineering and
+tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were
+Ireland detached from her political connection with this country and
+left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of
+parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror
+through the land.' There is the passage, in my scrap-book. The speech
+was made in the House. The English Home Rulers believe that their
+troubles will be over when once Irishmen rule from College Green, and
+they trust the Irish Catholic members, who from childhood have been
+taught that it is not necessary to keep faith with heretics. That is a
+fundamental tenet of the Church of Rome. Still, England will have no
+excuse for being so grossly deceived, for these men have at one time
+or other been pretty candid. William O'Brien said that the country
+would in the end 'own no flag but the Green Flag of an independent
+Irish nation,' and J.E. Redmond in March last said that it was the
+utmost folly to talk of finality in connection with the Home Rule
+Bill. Then you must remember what Parnell said about taking off his
+coat. He would not have done it for anything short of independence.
+Mr. Gladstone himself saw through this, and with all other Liberals
+consistently and determinedly opposed every demand for Home Rule until
+his desire for power compelled him to surrender unconditionally to
+Parnell. At Aberdeen the G.O.M. said,--'Can any sensible man, can any
+rational man, suppose that at this time of day we are going to
+disintegrate the great capital institutions of the country for the
+purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of all mankind?' No
+sane man ever supposed it, no honest man ever believed that Mr.
+Gladstone would ever sell himself to Irish traitors for a short period
+of power. The thing was incredible. In another speech Mr. Gladstone
+said he would never consent to give Ireland any principle which could
+not be given on equal terms to Scotland or any other part of the
+Kingdom. So we may expect Scotch and Welsh Home Rule bills after this,
+and then a separate Parliament for every country that wants it.
+There's the speech, you can copy the reference.
+
+"England is like an old-established business with a shop over the way
+which only just pays, and is an awful lot of trouble; in fact, more
+trouble than it's worth. You might say, let it go then. But if you let
+it go somebody else will take it, and run in opposition. Home Rule
+means the immediate return of the Irish-American ruffians who were
+here during the Fenian agitation, or their successors. Home Rule means
+that armed rebellion can be organised with much more reasonable
+chances of success. The police will be under the control of traitors,
+and it took you all your time to keep the country in order when the
+police were in your own hands. Whatever happens to John Bull will be
+the proper reward of his asinine stupidity. He'll have his hands full,
+with an Irish Parliament against him. And if he gets a big quarrel on
+his hands with Russia or France, or any other powerful military
+nation, that is the time he'll feel it. Are you going to put into the
+hands of your enemies the power to ruin you merely by biding their
+time?"
+
+I saw several other Enniskilleners, but they added nothing to the
+disquisitions of those already quoted. A feeling of deep disgust was
+the prevailing sentiment. Encamped in the enemy's country, from
+childhood conversant with the tortuous windings of Papal policy, and
+the windy hollowness of the popular cries, they stand amazed that
+Englishmen can be deceived by such obvious imposture, that they will
+listen to such self-convicted charlatans, that they will repose
+confidence in such ten-times-exposed deceivers. The history of the
+Home Rule movement will in future ages be quoted as the most
+extraordinary combination of knavery, slavery, and credulity the world
+has ever seen. And yet some Englishmen believe in it. After all, this
+is not so wonderful. There were people who believed in Cagliostro,
+Mormon Smith, Joanna Southcote of Exeter, Mrs. Girling, the Tichborne
+Claimant, General Boulanger, electric sugar, the South Sea Bubble, and
+a thousand other exploded humbugs. No doctrine could be invented too
+absurd for human belief. No impostor would fail to attract adherents,
+except through lack of audacity. Thousands of people believe in the
+winking virgin of Loretto, and tens of thousands, a few months ago,
+went to worship the holy coat of Tičves. So people are found who vote
+for Home Rule as a means of settling the Irish Question, and rendering
+justice to Ireland. _Populus decipi vult._ Doubtless the pleasure is
+as great, In being cheated as to cheat.
+
+Enniskillen, July 11th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 47.--THE LOYALISTS AND THE LAWLESS.
+
+
+Clones, which must be pronounced as a dissyllable, is a city set upon
+a hill which cannot be hid. Viewed from the railway the clustered
+houses surround the church spire like an enormous beehive. Like other
+ancient Irish towns, it possesses the ancient cross, the ancient round
+tower, and the ancient abbey, without which none is genuine. It has
+not the sylvan, terraced, Cheltenham-cum-Bath appearance of its
+neighbour Monaghan, though it somewhat resembles Bath in its general
+outline. The ruins want tidying up, and no doubt they will be looked
+after when the demand is greater. Ruins are a drug in Ireland, and as
+Mark Twain would say--most of them are dreadfully out of repair. The
+Irish have no notion of making them attractive, of exploiting them, of
+turning an honest penny by their exhibition. The inhabitants of any
+given neighbourhood can never give information as to their date, use,
+decay, general history, beyond the stereotyped "They were built by the
+owld ancient folks long ago." The Clones people are no exception to
+the general rule. The town is on the main line from Dublin to
+Londonderry, but is little troubled by tourists. The place is quiet
+and tidy enough, and like many other Irish country towns seems to live
+on the surrounding country, which sends in a strong contingent on
+market days. The people are also quiet, civil, and decent, and the
+land in the neighbourhood seems fertile and well cultivated. Industry
+is evident on every side. Everybody has something to do. A farmer
+living just outside the town said he experienced the greatest
+difficulty in getting extra hands for harvest time. In his opinion the
+people were incomparably better off than in the days of his youth,
+some thirty years ago. He said "The labouring classes are far better
+housed, better clothed, and better fed, than in old times. They live
+far better than the well-to-do farmers of a generation ago. And the
+queerest thing about it is the fact that the better off they are, the
+more discontented they seem; and during the last few months they are
+becoming unbearable. They are giving themselves airs in advance. And
+no wonder, when they see the British Parliament entirely occupied with
+their affairs, to the exclusion of all English business. They may well
+feel important. They boast that they have compelled this attention,
+and that they shortly will have their own way in everything. Last
+Sunday a drunken fellow was making a row near my house. I told him to
+go away, and he said, 'Before long you'll have to go away and every
+Blackface in the country. We'll be masters in another month.' He was
+alluding to Mr. Gladstone's gagging motion, which the poor folks here
+in their ignorance believe to mean that Home Rule will set in about
+the beginning of August. They are acting accordingly, and they expect
+to have the land which the Protestant farmers now hold--at once. It is
+to be divided amongst them by ballot. We feel very anxious about here,
+for we feel that we are only staying on sufferance, and we have no
+confidence in the support of the present Government. We have expended
+our labour and our substance on the land, and if we lose these we lose
+all. You may say there is no fear of that, as such a piece of iniquity
+would never be tolerated by the English people. But when I see them
+tolerating so much, I think we have good reason to feel uneasy and
+unsettled. For my part, I have no heart for hard work, when I feel
+that somebody else may reap the reward. And with a Catholic Parliament
+in Dublin we should very soon have to give up. They can get at the
+farming class in so many ways. We Protestants are pretty strong about
+here, and all the way to Monaghan, but still we are in a considerable
+minority. The mountain folks are Catholics, every one, and that is
+where we are outnumbered. We could hold our own if the country were
+like the town. We should be bound under Home Rule to suffer a large
+increase of taxation, because all grants from Imperial sources are to
+cease upon the passing of the bill. Then the country will be more
+disturbed than over, because the bill is only valued as a
+stepping-stone to an Irish Republic, and the success of the agitators
+in obtaining the bill will encourage them and their supporters to
+persevere. Instead of the end of the trouble it would only be the
+beginning. It is a black look-out for both Ireland and England.
+
+"Most of the Protestant farmers think that land purchase would be
+stopped. If that could go steadily on, there would be in time
+prosperity and contentment. The people would like this well enough,
+and would be quiet enough, if they were let alone. But where is the
+money to come from to purchase land? Who would lend money on Irish
+securities? Who would trust an Irish Parliament with millions? Then
+the better classes, who have money to spend, would leave the country,
+and we should be poorer all round.
+
+"The loyal party in an Irish Parliament would always be in a minority,
+and for any good they could do, might as well stay away. For no matter
+how the Nationalist factions might quarrel among themselves, the
+priestly party would always have the pull. The English Protestants
+ought to believe that we know the reality of the danger that threatens
+us better than they can possibly do. There are nearly three thousand
+Protestant ministers in Ireland, and only six or seven are in favour
+of Home Rule. Are these men all infatuated? Are they all liars? Are
+they in a position to know the facts? Of course they are truthful men,
+and they understand if anybody does. Then why not take their advice?
+The Meath election petitions ought to have settled Home Rule.
+Englishmen cannot have read the reports of these trials. Mr. Gladstone
+is fooling the people on both sides the water. He is satisfying
+nobody, whether Home Rulers or not. The Nationalists round here say
+the bill is an insult, but that they will take it as an instalment.
+The end will be that both loyalists and traitors will be more
+discontented than ever--a poor result after so much fuss and waste of
+precious time."
+
+If my friend had known of it he might have quoted Mr. William Heath,
+an Englishman resident for six months in Tyrone. He arrived in Ireland
+a bigoted Home Ruler, but six months in the country knocked his
+nonsense out of him. He said:--"I have seen enough of Romanism to
+convince me that Protestantism would be crushed if Home Rule became
+law. I have seen the men who demand it, and I have seen the men who
+are determined to oppose Home Rule--the one set idle, dissolute,
+poverty-stricken, disloyal, and priest-ridden; the other industrious,
+thrifty, comfortable, and loyal to England. I go back to England a
+Unionist, and will do all I can to spread the light on the true state
+of affairs in this unhappy country. If the people of England and
+Scotland saw Nationalists as I have seen them they would not force
+Home Rule on the Loyalists of Ulster so as to leave them at the mercy
+of such a party." A Primitive Methodist Minister, the Rev. J.
+Angliss, who came to Ireland a faithful follower of Mr. Gladstone,
+changed his mind when acquainted with the facts, and confessed himself
+a convert to Unionism. He said that he had used his influence against
+the return of Sir Richard Webster, the late Attorney-General, but
+since his visit to Ireland he had come to the conclusion that the Bill
+would be a tremendous evil. He was "prepared to go back to the very
+platform in the Isle of Wight from which he had supported Home Rule
+and to tell the people he was converted. English people who come here
+to investigate for themselves must be forced to the conclusion that
+the Bill means confiscation and robbery."
+
+A thriving tradesman of Clones said:--"I am surprised that any
+Englishmen can be found to pin their faith to Mr. Gladstone, or to any
+man with such an extraordinary record of change. Mr. Bright used to
+say he could not turn his back on himself, but Mr. Gladstone spins
+round and round like a teetotum. I should think that such an instance
+has never been known since that good old parson who sung, 'Whatsoever
+king may reign, Still I'll be Vicar of Bray, Sir.' Downing Street is
+the Grand Old Man's vicarage, and he endeavours to cling to it at all
+costs. In 1886 he said, 'I will not be a party to giving Ireland a
+legislative body to manage Irish concerns and at the same time have
+Irish members in London acting and voting on English and Scottish
+concerns.' In seven years and one month he insists on that very thing,
+and votes for it, with his crowd of noughts behind him. For I reckon
+all his Parliamentary supporters as noughts, to which a value is given
+by the figure 1 at their head. Isn't that true? What would the rest be
+without him? The bulk of his adherents are precisely the kind of men
+nobody ever pays any attention to. There's Morley, a good writer, but
+not a man of business. Then there's Harcourt. How can Englishmen stand
+such a hollow humbug? He'll say anything, any blessed thing. I prefer
+Tim Healy, even, to Harcourt. Tim was roughly brought up, and, as he
+gets his living by politics, he is to some extent excusable. The way
+that Harcourt attacked the Irish party, so long as Mr. Gladstone
+attacked them! The things he said, the strong language he used so long
+as that course pleased Mr. Gladstone! Now he turns round and calls
+them beauties; and for that matter so they are. It's what I mostly
+call them myself. Beauties.
+
+"The arrangement to keep the Irish Nationalists at Westminster is
+something for Englishmen to consider. If they can swallow that they
+can swallow anything. They can have no pride about them, or else they
+are taking no further interest in their own affairs. To give the Irish
+members power to vote on all questions coming before the Imperial
+Parliament, while conceding to them the privilege of managing their
+own affairs without interference, is indeed an eye-opener. The British
+Parliament had sunk low enough when it began to heed the clamour of a
+set of American-paid blackguards such as the bulk of the Irish members
+are, by their own supporters, admitted to be. But how much lower has
+England sunk when she accepts the dictation of these men, and says,
+'You can manage your own affairs and direct my business too.' These
+fellows are to be masters of Ireland _and_ masters of England. For of
+course, they can always exert a preponderating influence in British
+affairs, holding as they do the balance of voting power. And
+Englishmen will submit to this; and will let their members be gagged
+and the clauses shoved through the House by hydraulic power.
+Englishmen are so fond of boasting of their Freedom and Independence.
+Why, they are being treated like fools and slaves. And by such a low
+set of fellows. Some of the Nationalist members wipe their noses on
+the tails of their coats, and when those are worn out they use their
+coat-sleeves. One of them was staying in an hotel where I was, and I
+saw him eat eggs. He cut off the top, and worked up the yolk with the
+handle of his spoon, mixing pepper and mustard. Then he cut his bacon
+into dice, and dipped each square in the egg before stoking himself.
+That is a sample of the class now working the British Parliament.
+There was an Irish patriot M.P.
+
+"Dillon is comparatively respectable, and if you knew Dillon you
+wouldn't think that meant much. Chamberlain showed him up, but why
+stop at one quotation? I see the judge is now in Tipperary. That was
+the place Dillon, along with O'Brien, got to conspire against the law
+with such frightful results. You remember they were sentenced to six
+months' imprisonment, but breaking their bail they both ran away,
+while the poor men who had got into trouble, without funds to bolt
+with, went to hard labour. Dillon once said that if certain people had
+cattle on land '_the cattle wouldn't prosper very much_,' and sure
+enough a number of cattle near Tipperary have had their tails cut off.
+Dillon, I say, is reckoned one of the most respectable. That does not
+say much for the others. You are giving these men power. Will they use
+that power to wring further concessions? They have often declared that
+they will. The English Home Rulers say that they won't, that Irishmen
+will be too grateful. They know not what they say. You'll have a
+hostile Government at your very doors. What did Parnell say? 'When
+England is at war and beaten to her knees, the idea of the Irish
+Nationalists may be realised.' And Sexton, this very Sexton who is now
+so much to the front, said that the 'one prevailing and unchangeable
+passion between Ireland and England is the passion of hate.' Then what
+hope is there of friendship in a Home Rule Bill which will infinitely
+increase the number of points of dispute? And these men don't mean to
+be pleased, either. They don't mean to try to be content. It wouldn't
+pay them. They have their living to get. Well, they have shown
+themselves clever. They can work England."
+
+A friend has furnished me with a few gems from the orations of the
+Dillon aforesaid, whose threat of what would be done to loyalists
+under an Irish Parliament has recently attracted so much notice. He
+tried to show that this was said in a moment of warmth, in a fit of
+exasperation at the "Mitchelstown massacre," which took place a year
+afterwards. What had annoyed him when at Limerick he said that any man
+who stood aside from the national movement was "a dastard and a
+coward, and he and his children after him would be remembered in the
+days that are near at hand, when Ireland was a free nation?"--Date
+September 20th, 1887. Dillon delights in dates. Again, what had
+ruffled the patriot soul, when at Maryborough he spoke of dissentients
+in the following terms:--"When the struggle is ended and the people of
+this country have obtained that control over their own affairs which
+must come very soon, he will be pointed out to his neighbours as a
+coward and a traitor?"--January 15th, 1889. It was on November 1st,
+1887, at Limerick, that the same friend of England said "let the
+people of Ireland get arms in their hands," and promised to "manage
+Ulster." It was at Dublin on August 23rd, 1887, that Mr. Dillon
+said:--"If there is a man in Ireland base enough to back down, to turn
+his back on the fight, I will denounce him from public platforms _by
+name_, and I pledge myself to the Government that, let that man be who
+he may, his life will not be a happy one, either in Ireland or across
+the seas." All this, be it observed, was after the promulgation of the
+Union of Hearts. Well might Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Mr. Dillon, who
+is now one of his closest allies, say in the House of Commons:--
+
+"The honourable gentleman comes here as the apostle of a creed which
+is a creed of force, which is a creed of oppression, which is a creed
+of the destruction of all liberty, and of the erection of a despotism
+against it, and on its ruins, different from every other despotism
+only in this,--that it is more absolutely detached from all law, from
+all tradition, and from all restraint." Sir William Harcourt also
+referring to Mr. Dillon in the House once said, "The doctrine of the
+Land League, expounded by the man who has authority to explain it, is
+the doctrine of treason and assassination;" and in addition to this
+strong pronouncement Sir William called it "a vile conspiracy." Both
+Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt are now hand-and-glove with the
+men of whom Mr. Gladstone said at Leeds:--"They are not ashamed to
+point out in the press which they maintain how the ships of her
+majesty's navy ought to be blown into the air, and how gentlemen they
+are pleased to select ought to be the object of the knife of the
+assassin and deprived of life because they do not conform to the new
+Irish Gospel." Mr. Chamberlain's exposure of Dillon has brought down
+the thunders of the Nationalist press. Did he ever say anything
+stronger than this? One Nationalist paper, speaking of the member for
+West Birmingham, says:--"There was something devilish in the
+exultation of the strident voice and pale malignant face." The Home
+Rule penmen are always describing him as "livid with impotent rage,"
+"trembling with ill-concealed vindictive passion," "hurrying from the
+House to escape the mocking laughter of the amused Senate." The
+member for Bordesley is dealt with more lightly. "Mr. Jesse Collings
+occupied some minutes with his usual amusing inanity" and so forth.
+According to these writers the House rapidly empties when Mr. Balfour
+or Mr. Chamberlain would fain hold forth, and fills to suffocation to
+hear the noble periods of Dillon, Sexton, and Healy. Mr. Deasy, M.P.
+for West Mayo, has recently been before the public rather prominently,
+and his opinion of the Irish question may be interesting at the
+present juncture. I heard much of this gentleman at Westport, where he
+is well known. He is disgusted with the show of loyalty to which his
+colleagues have treated Mr. Gladstone, who boasts of their
+"satisfactory assurances." He knew that the Nationalist members,
+speaking in England, made use of amicable expressions which no Irish
+Nationalist audience would tolerate, and speaking of this he said:--"I
+have never said on an English platform what I would not say here this
+night. I have not been saying that we all want to be part and parcel
+of the British Empire--with the lie on the top of my tongue, I am not
+going to disgrace my constituency by going over to England and
+uttering falsehoods there, and coming back and saying that I was
+deceiving England at the time." This speech was made in 1891, only two
+years ago. Is not this big print enough? Surely no reasonable person
+will any longer believe in the loyal friendship of Nationalist
+Ireland. To do so is to violate common sense. Only the fatuous
+Gladstonians, Whose eyes will scarcely serve at most To guard their
+wearers 'gainst a post, can be expected to take it in.
+
+It is hard to find a decent person in favour of the bill. Its
+supporters are eminently unsatisfactory, inasmuch as they furnish no
+readable matter, and content themselves with saying that Ireland will
+have her freedom, and that prosperity will follow, as the night the
+day, in the wake of the bill. But they can never indicate wherein is
+their want of freedom, nor can they ever say _how_ the bill will bring
+about prosperity. Then, as a rule, the voters for the bill are persons
+whose opinion no sane person would act upon in the most unimportant
+matter. They never know the population of their own town, nor the
+distance to the next. They are mostly sunk fathoms deep in blackest
+ignorance, and characterised by most cantankerous perversity, now
+rapidly merging, as the bill proceeds, into insolent bumptiousness.
+The Lord-Lieutenant has returned to Dublin after having endured such
+snubs and slights as Mr. Balfour never encountered. And yet Lord
+Houghton waved the olive-branch. Everybody seems to have asked him for
+a pier. I have given many instances of useless piers on the Western
+Irish Coast. The parish priests who met the Viceroy asked for more,
+and again more. Mr. Morley has been asked in the House what is going
+to be done about the piers the priests have asked for. Let him appoint
+a Commission to inquire into the history of Western Irish piers. The
+report will be startling, and also instructive. A Glengariff man
+admitted to me that the people of that famous town would make no use
+of the pier if they had it. "But," said he, "the building of it would
+bring a thousand pounds into the village." The English people are said
+to dearly love a lord. The Irish people dearly love a pier.
+
+Clones, July 13th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 48.--A SEARCH FOR "ORANGE ROWDYISM."
+
+
+Belfast is still of the same mind. Its citizens will not have Home
+Rule. They are more than ever determined that the fruits of their
+industry shall not be placed at the mercy of men who have consistently
+advocated the doctrine of plunder. The law-abiding men of Belfast will
+never submit to the rule of law-breakers, many of whom have expiated
+their offences in the convict's cell. This debt-paying community will
+not consent to be under the thumb of men whose most successful
+doctrine has been the repudiation of legal contracts. The famous
+merchants and manufacturers of the true capital of Ireland decline to
+place their future fortunes in the hands of the unscrupulous and
+beggarly adventurers who would form the bulk of a College Green
+Parliament. The hard-working artizans of Belfast are firm in their
+determination to resist the imposition of a legislature which will
+drive capital from the country, diminish the sources of employment,
+strangle all beneficial enterprise, and by destroying security
+undermine and wreck all Irish industry. They know how the agitation
+originates, and by whom it is directed. They have the results of Papal
+influence before their eyes. While Belfast as a whole is clean, open,
+airy, with splendid streets and magnificent buildings, the Catholic
+portions of the city are as much like the pestilent dens of Tuam and
+Tipperary as the authorities will permit. The uninstructed stranger
+can pick out the Home Rule streets. In Belfast as elsewhere,
+sweetness, light, and loyalty are inseparably conjoined, while evil
+smells and dinginess are the invariable concomitants of disloyalty and
+separatism. Fortunately for the Ulster city, the loyalists number
+three to one, which fact accounts for its general cleanliness, the
+thriving aspect of its commercial concerns, the decency and order of
+its well-kept thoroughfares. And whatever Belfasters want they pay for
+themselves. Belfast receives no Government grants for any municipal
+purpose, while disloyal Dublin, screaming for equality of treatment,
+is largely subsidised from Imperial sources. The Belfast people
+entirely support their hospitals. The Dublin hospitals are largely
+supported out of the public revenues. The Belfast Botanic Gardens are
+kept going by Belfast. The Dublin Botanical Gardens are wholly
+supported by Government. Further examples are needless, the facts
+being simple as they are undeniable. Dublin gets everything. Belfast
+gets absolutely nothing. Disloyalty is at a premium. Motley's the only
+wear. The screamers are always getting something to stop their
+mouths, a sop, not a gag. Steady, quiet, hard-working folks are of no
+account. The Belfast men ask for nothing, and get it. They want no
+pecuniary aid, being used to self-help, and liking it best. Stiff in
+opinion, they know their own minds, and are accustomed to victory.
+They do not in turn threaten and complain and cringe and curse and
+fawn. They keep a level course and run on an even keel. They are bad
+to beat, and can do with much letting alone. They are pious in their
+way, and talk like Cromwell's Puritans. They abhor Popery, judging the
+tree by its fruits, a test recommended by their chiefest classic. They
+believe that Protestantism is daylight, that Popery is darkness, and
+that the sun is rising. They believe with Carlyle that "Popery cannot
+come back any more than paganism, which also lingers in some
+countries." They also believe with the sage that "there is a perennial
+nobleness and even sacredness in Work. Were he never so benighted,
+forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man who
+actually and earnestly works; in Idleness alone is there perpetual
+despair." So they work every day and all the day, save on rare
+occasions, and for these holidays they make up by overtime. They think
+Home Rule is useless at best, and not only useless, but dangerous.
+They declare it would affect their liberties, and this notion is
+ineradicable. Touch them in their freedom and the secold Northerners
+become aflame. And while the Irish Kelts burn like straw--a flame and
+a puff of smoke, and there an end--these Scots settlers are like oaken
+logs, slow to take fire, but hard to extinguish. They prosper under
+the Union, and therefore, say they, the Union is good. What the poor
+Irish need is industry, not Acts of Parliament. The land is rich, the
+laws are just, the judges are honest, and industry is encouraged. The
+fault is in the people themselves, and in their pastors and masters.
+The convergence of Ulster opinion reminds me of an old line, which
+fitly illustrates the position of the Irish malcontent party--
+
+_Heu mihi! quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo._ Quaint old
+Thomas Fuller (as I remember) has rendered this--
+
+    My starveling bull,
+      Ah, woe is me,
+    In pasture full
+      How lean is he!
+
+I am almost disposed to believe that Horace anticipated the case; or
+that, like Mr. John Dillon, he had the gift of remembering occurrences
+before they took place.
+
+Much has been spoken and written in England concerning "Orange
+rowdyism." I saw the twenty thousand Orangemen who walked through
+Belfast to Knocknagoney on Wednesday last. They had nearly five miles
+to march on a hot day before they reached the meeting-place, some
+hours to stand there listening to speeches, and then the long march
+back again. Large numbers went to the Orange Halls, there to conclude
+the day. I followed them thither, heard their speeches, noted their
+modes of enjoyment, watched them unnoticed and unknown, save in one
+instance, until they finally dispersed. Next day I went to Scarva,
+forty miles away, to see the great sham fight which annually takes
+place there between representatives of King James and King William of
+Orange. There were sixty-four special trains, at cheap fares, running
+to Scarva, besides the ordinary service, and let it be remembered that
+Scarva is on the main line from Dublin to Belfast. Now let me state
+precisely what I saw.
+
+The Belfast procession was very like the tail of the Belfast Balfour
+demonstration, and with good reason, for both consisted of twenty
+thousand Orangemen. But on Wednesday the Orangemen, instead of being
+preceded by a hundred thousand citizens of Ulster, had it all to
+themselves. The authorities know the character of Orangemen. They know
+that scorching weather and long dusty marches are apt to lead to
+copious libations, especially in holiday time. They know that
+political feeling runs high, and that the present moment is one of
+undue excitement. They know that the Papist party have taunted
+Orangemen with the supposed progress of the bill, and that the same
+people say daily that Orangeism will be at once abolished, and that
+this year sees the last Orange procession in Belfast. "This is yer
+last kick before we kick ye to hell," said a broken-nosed gentleman at
+the corner of Carrick Hill. The authorities knew all these things, and
+taking into account the known character of Orangeism, with the special
+exasperation of the moment, and remembering their own responsibility
+in the matter of order, how many extra policemen were drafted into the
+city?
+
+Not one. The men who really know Orangemen knew that no precautions
+were needed.
+
+There were brass bands, drum and fife bands, and bands of bagpipes.
+The drums were something tremendous. The Belfast drumming is a thing
+apart, like a Plymouth Brother. We have nothing like it in England.
+The big drums run in couples, borne by stout fellows of infinite
+muscle, and tireless energy. The kettle-drums hunt in packs, like
+beagles. The big drums are the biggest the climate will grow, and the
+drummers lash them into fury with thin canes, having no knob, no
+wrapper of felt, no softening or mitigating influence whatever. The
+bands played "God save the Queen," "Rule Britannia," "The Boyne
+Water," and "The Death of Nelson." The fifes screamed shrilly, the
+brass tubes blared, and every drummer drummed as if he had the Pope
+himself under his especial care. The vigour and verve of these
+marching musicians is very surprising. You cannot tire them out. The
+tenth mile ended as fresh as the first, though every performer had
+worked like a horse. There is a reason for this. Their hearts are in
+the work. To them it means something. The scarves and busbies and
+uniforms and desperate paroxysms of drumming are somewhat comical to
+strangers, but the people looked earnest, and as if engaged in serious
+business. Thousands of well-dressed people walked with the procession,
+or looked gravely on. There was no horse-play, and no noise other
+than the music. No bare feet, no bare heads, no rags, no dirt, no
+disorder. A Papist sprang from his lair in a side street and tried to
+snatch the scarf from a young man, who promptly drove him back to his
+den. Nothing else happened. At midnight there were for the whole city
+twenty police cases against thirty-nine for last year's twelfth. So
+much for Orange rowdies in the streets. Let us look upon their private
+orgies.
+
+At seven o'clock I went to the Orange Hall, Clifton Street, the
+headquarters of the body. The various lodges were dispersed in several
+rooms, where they seemed to be taking tea with their sisters and their
+cousins and their aunts. A turn outside landed me opposite Saint
+Patrick's Roman Catholic Church, and here was a strong guard of
+police. The neighbouring streets of Carrick Hill, North Street, and
+another, literally swarmed with filthy, bare-footed women, wearing the
+hooded shawl of Limerick, of Tuam, of Tipperary. The men had a
+dangerous look. Many were drunk, and some had bandaged heads. More
+policemen half-way down Carrick Hill, and more still at the end. The
+people who pay no taxes cost most to keep in order. I have somewhere
+seen a body of returns showing that while the Unionist population
+requires only ten or twelve policemen to every ten thousand people,
+the Home Rule provinces take from forty-eight to fifty-two to manage
+the same number. Returning to the Orange Hall a number of dirty,
+bare-footed children walked in procession past the door singing
+vociferously. They sung with great spirit to the tune of "Tramp,
+tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," and seemed to enjoy it
+amazingly. I did not catch the words. They stopped as I came up, but a
+young fellow on guard at the hall said, "They grind up the children in
+songs of a party nature, and send them here to annoy us. Of course, we
+can't notice little children."
+
+This time I dropped in the thick of the entertainment. A mild, mild
+man occupied the chair, young men and maidens, old men and children
+sitting around. They were inebriating on ginger beer and biscuits, and
+their wildest revelry was the singing of "The Old Folks at Home" by a
+young lady in white. Mr. E.J. Fullwood, of Birmingham, who was there
+as a visitor, made a rattling speech, and received a great ovation. A
+quiet gentleman, by special request, made a few remarks on the
+political situation. He said:--"We will resist a Home Rule Parliament
+at any cost and at every cost. We will not have it. Our faith is
+plighted, and we are not the men to go back of our word." His manner
+was very subdued, and the audience also kept very quiet. What these
+men say they say in their sober senses, and not by reason of
+excitement. Another room was livelier. An English gentleman was
+holding forth. Then the band played "No surrender," after which a lady
+sang "Killarney's hills and vales." In a third room a brother was
+calling on the brethren to give three cheers for "our beloved Queen,"
+under whose benignant reign blessings had been shed upon the British
+Empire, "to which we belong, and to which we still belong, so long as
+they will have us." In a fourth room the listening Orangemen sat under
+a discourse on the efficacy of prayer, which they were urged to make a
+living part of their everyday life. All this was very disappointing,
+and when in Royal Avenue the helmeted watchman of the night assured me
+that nothing had happened, and that nothing was likely to happen, I
+abandoned all hope of Orange rowdyism.
+
+Next day at ten, I went to Scarva, or, as the natives spell it,
+Scarvagh. A neat little place full of Black Protestants. The houses
+are clean and tidy, and the people have a well-to-do look. There was a
+great crowd at the station, and a band of drummers were laying on with
+such thundering effect that my very coat sleeves vibrated with the
+concussion. A big arch of orange lilies bore the one word WELCOME, and
+the roadside was lined with stalls selling provisions and ginger beer.
+The church on the hill flew the Orange flag with the Union Jack. The
+Presbyterian meeting-house and a Methodist Chapel complete the tale of
+worship-houses. The place is without rags, dirt, beggars, or any other
+symptoms of Home Rule patriotism. Neither is there a Roman Catholic
+Chapel. The signboards bore Scots and English names. Mr. J. Hawthorne
+stood at his door, big-boned and burly, with a handsome good-humoured
+face. "Ye'll gang up the brae, till ye see an avenue with lots of folk
+intil it," said this "Irishman," whose ancestors have lived at Scarva
+from time immemorial.
+
+"Yes, we pit up the airch o' lilies to welcome our friends. They come
+every year, and a gude mony o' them too, so we pit up that bit thing
+oot o' friendship like."
+
+I told him this was to be the last occasion, as Mr. Dillon was
+determined to manage Ulster. He laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"Mon alive, d'ye tell me that any mon said sic a fuleish speech? Mon,
+its borne in on me that we'll tak a dooms lot of managin'. These chaps
+dinna ken ower weel what they're talkin' aboot. An' they maun say
+somethin' to please the fellows that keep them in siller. These things
+hae gane on in Scarva sin' auld lang syne, an' nothin' e'er stappit
+them. They went on when the Party Processions Act was law, an' tho'
+the sojers ance cam frae Dublin to stop the demonstration, the
+Orangemen mustered in sic force that they never interfered aifter all.
+An' in Ulster we'll hauld our own, d'ye mind that? We've tauld them
+oor mind, an' that we wunna hae Home Rule. We've tauld them that, an'
+we'll stand by it. They've gotten oor ultimatum, an' they can mak a
+kirk or a mill o' it."
+
+I gangit up the brae through dense crowds constantly increasing as the
+sixty-four specials gradually came in. The way was sylvan and pretty,
+big beech trees and elms meeting overhead, the road running along the
+side of a steep hill sloping down to a small river, the slope
+carefully tilled, and showing good husbandry. Then a beautifully
+wooded and extensive demesne, and a mile of avenue, with many
+thousands of well-dressed orderly people, the ladies forming about
+half the company. Then a large low, brown mansion with a gravelled
+quadrangle, around which marched fife and drum bands playing "No
+Surrender" and "The Boyne Water." And everywhere incessant drumming
+and drinking of ginger beer. Banners were there of every size, shape,
+and colour, many with painted devices, more or less well done. The
+Lurgan Temperance Lodge exhibited Moses in the wilderness, holding up
+the brazen serpent. "Three-fourths of the Orange Lodges are based on
+temperance principles," said an Orange authority standing by, "and
+what is more, they don't allow smoking. We Orange rowdies are to a
+great extent temperance men." I remembered that the three meetings of
+the night before were smokeless concerts, and that the fourth
+resembled a Methodist love-feast, with an old brother telling his
+experiences. Also that Captain Milligen, a leading Plymouth Brother of
+Warrenpoint, had told me that he had been present at a Scarva meeting,
+and that from beginning to end he never heard a bad word, nor saw
+anything objectionable. The sham fight took place on a hill hard by.
+Two fine young fellows fenced with old cavalry swords, and King James,
+with green coat and plumes, succumbed to King William with orange coat
+and plumes, while their respective armies to the number of about
+thirty, fifteen on each side, fired in the air. I noticed that while a
+few had ancient brass-bound muskets, which looked as if converted from
+flint locks, most were armed with Snider rifles of army pattern. The
+drums excelled themselves, and the fifers shrieked martial airs. The
+people waved their hats and cheered, and that was the whole of it.
+Returning to the station, a good young man gave me a tract, wherein I
+found myself addressed as a Dear Unsaved Reader, and later as a
+Hell-deserving Sinner. Then a Salvation Army man telling a crowd to
+Escape for their lives, which I was just doing, and that once he had
+loved pleasure, which seemed likely enough. Then a big banner whereon
+was depicted David in the act of beheading Goliath with a yeomanry
+sword, the Wicklow mountains in the distance. Then an old man on the
+bridge declaring to the multitude that he would not be a Papist for
+all that earth could give, and that nothing could induce his
+fellow-citizens to submit to Home Rule for one second of time. "No,
+never, never, never. Rather than accept of Popish rule, we'll take
+arms in our hands as our fathers did, and like them we will conquer.
+Have we not their example before us? Are we such dastards as to give
+up that for which they shed their blood? Shall the sons be unworthy of
+the sires? Never shall it be said that the children were unworthy
+their inheritance of Freedom. Old as I am, I would take a musket, and
+go forth in the name of the Lord. Shame on the Scots and English if
+they desert us in our hour of need. Are they not our own kith and kin?
+But whether they aid us, or whether they desert us, we will stand
+firm, and be true to ourselves. Our cause is good, and we are bound to
+win, as we won before. Only stand firm, shoulder to shoulder. Shall
+we bow down to Popery? No, by the God that made us, No. Shall we
+truckle to Rome, shall we become slaves to Popish knaves, shall we
+become subservient to priestcraft and lying and roguery and trickery?
+Never shall it be said of us. We claim to be part and parcel of the
+glorious British Empire. We have helped to upbuild that Empire, and we
+claim our inheritance. We will NOT sell our birthright, we will NOT
+connive at the destruction of Britain's greatness, we will NOT have
+Home Rule. 'Shall we from the Union sever? By the God that made us,
+never!'"
+
+The people listened silently, with grave, earnest faces. They mean
+business. During my first visit to Belfast I interviewed the leading
+citizens, the clergy, nobility, and gentry. This time I spoke with
+artisans and craftsmen, and I found the same feeling, a deep and
+immovable resolve to fight till the last extremity. It should be
+remembered that all Ulstermen are not Orangemen. But the religious
+bodies which have held aloof from Orangeism are just as determined. On
+the Irish Church question the Orange body stood alone. The dissenting
+sects were against them everywhere. All are united now, and the
+attempt to force Home Rule on these resolute men would be attended by
+the most awful consequences. They are not of a breed that easily
+knocks under. They remind you of the Scottish Covenanters. They are
+men with whom you would rather dine than fight. In Belfast, besides
+Mr. Fullwood, of Birmingham, previously mentioned, I met with Mr.
+Lyons, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who in his walks abroad in the city had
+put down in his pocket-book the names of all streets he judged to be
+exclusively Catholic. He was right save in three cases, where the
+people were mixed. He also observed that in the poorer quarters the
+windows of all Protestant places of worship were protected by wire
+netting, but that the Catholic chapels were not so protected. As the
+Protestants are three to one, he thought this a curious commentary on
+the statements anent Orange rowdyism. Mr. Deacon, of Manchester, and
+the Englishmen hereinbefore mentioned were present at the Orange Hall,
+and all saw what I have related. Mr. Henry Charlton, J.P., of
+Gateshead-on-Tyne, agrees with them that the religious question is the
+secret of the whole agitation, and that the sooner a leading statesman
+meets the Home Rule movement on this, the true ground, the better for
+the country. "We are too squeamish in England. We fear to offend our
+Catholic friends, with whom there is no fault to be found. But we want
+an influential speaker to say at once that the conflict is reality
+between Protestantism and Popery. The best plan would be to state
+things as they are, and to meet the enemy directly." So spoke one of
+these visitors, a gentleman of great political experience. Is this
+opinion not well worth consideration? Is not the time for soft
+speaking nearly over?
+
+Mr. Dillon says he will manage Ulster. He will need the British Army
+at his back. His Army of Independence will not avail him much. The
+position of the Nationalist members towards Ulster is not unlike that
+of the Chinaman who wanted an English sailor punished. "There he
+stands," said the skipper, "go and punch his head." "No, no," said the
+Celestial complainant, "me no likee-pikee that way. But spose three,
+five, 'leven big sailors tie him up, hold him fast, then very much me
+bamboo he." And that is how the Dillonites would hope to manage
+Ulster.
+
+Belfast, July 15th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 49.--THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ORANGE LODGES.
+
+
+Portadown is another of the clean, well-built towns of Ulster
+dependent for its prosperity on the linen trade. The River Bann flows
+through it, a fine stone bridge spanning its waters in the principal
+street. Everybody seems comfortably off, and dirty slums are nowhere
+to be found. Some of the shops are very much larger than the size of
+the town would seem to warrant, and one ironmonger's store is far
+larger than any similar shop in Birmingham. The Presbyterian
+meeting-house, on the right as you enter, and the Protestant Church,
+which occupies a conspicuous position at the meeting of two main
+thoroughfares, are plain, substantial buildings without any striking
+architectural pretensions, and the Orange Hall, which seems an
+indispensable adjunct of all "settler" towns, is also modest and
+unassuming. The meadows bordering the Bann are spread with miles of
+bleaching linen, for which the river is especially famous, its waters
+having a very superior reputation for the production of dazzling
+whiteness. The town is half-a-mile from the station, which is an
+important junction, and the number of cars in waiting show that the
+people expect the coming of business men. When first I visited the
+town, placards announcing drill meetings at the Orange Hall were
+everywhere stuck up, but I saw none during my last march round.
+Perhaps the Orangemen have completed their arrangements. The Portadown
+people have no intention of accepting Home Rule. On the contrary they
+are determined to have none of it. At present they are quiet enough,
+because they are confident that the bill can never pass, and they do
+not wish to meet trouble halfway. The House of Lords is their best
+bower anchor, and for the present they leave the matter with the
+peers. So they mind their work, and spend their time in making linen.
+When they demonstrate they do it with a will, but they cannot live by
+demonstrations, and they are used to paying their way. They see what
+happens in so-called "patriotic" districts, how neglect of duty
+accompanies eternal agitation, and how the result is poverty and
+failure to meet the ordinary obligations of social life. The artisans
+of Portadown go to work every day, and the farmers do their level best
+with the land, which all about this region is highly cultivated. They
+claim to belong to the party of law and order, and they agree with the
+great orator who once said:--"The party of law and order includes
+every farmer who does not want to rob the landlord of his due and who
+does not want to be forced to pay blackmail to agitation--every poor
+fellow who desires to be at liberty to earn a day's wages by
+whomsoever they are offered him, without being shunned, insulted,
+beaten, or too probably murdered." The orator in question bears the
+well-known name of William Ewart Gladstone, now intimately associated
+with the names of Dillon, O'Brien, Sexton, O'Connor, Tim Healy, and
+the rest of the agitators to whom he was referring in the above-quoted
+speech, delivered at Hawick just ten years ago.
+
+A Portadown Orangeman complained bitterly of the attitude of the
+English Gladstonian party with reference to his order. He said:--"We
+have been denounced as rowdies and Orange blackguards until the
+English people seem to believe it. They never think of comparing our
+record with the record of the party denouncing us, nor do they know
+anything of the history and constitution of the order. We have always
+been loyal, always friends of England, and that is why the Nationalist
+party so strongly disapprove of us. We have never occupied the time of
+the English Parliament, nor have we leagued ourselves with the enemies
+of England. We have maintained order, and taken care of English
+interests in Ireland, besides looking after our own personal affairs.
+We have not stood everlastingly hat in hand, crying, like the daughter
+of the horse-leech, Give, give. And great is our reward. We are to be
+handed over to a pack of Papist traitors and robbers, who for years
+have made the country a perfect Hell. Mr. Gladstone would fain give
+rich, industrious Ulster into the hands of lazy, improvident
+Connaught. Let them try it on. Let them impose their taxes, and let
+them try to collect them. They'll find in Ulster something to run up
+against. We prefer business to fighting and disturbance, but when once
+we make up our minds for a row we shall go in for a big thing. Most of
+our people have a deep sense of religion, and they will look upon it
+as a religious war. It will be the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. We
+never will bow down to Popery. And that is what Home Rule means. We
+see the abject condition of the Papists, and we know their slavish
+superstitions. The bulk of them are body and soul in the hands of the
+priests, and that is the secret of their non-success in life. The
+poorest among them are taxed to death by the Church. A fee must be
+paid for christening, and unless you pay a stiff figure you won't have
+a priest at your funeral. The poor Catholics are buried without any
+religious service whatever. They are taken to the churchyard by their
+friends and put in a hole, like a dog. Pay, pay, pay, from the cradle
+to the grave. And when the priests wish to raise money, they dictate
+how much each person is to give. They do not believe in free-will
+offerings, otherwise their receipts would be very small indeed. There
+you have one explanation of Papist poverty. Are we to put our necks
+under the heels of a Parliament worked by Bishop Walsh of Dublin?
+Never, as long as we can strike a blow for freedom. We look to England
+at present. If England fails us, we shall look to ourselves. Our
+fathers died to preserve us from King James and Popery, and we are not
+going back to it at this time of day.
+
+"English Home Rulers have actually taken up the cry of Equality, and
+down with Protestant ascendency. Such foolish ignorance almost amounts
+to crime. Where are the Roman Catholic disabilities? For two
+generations the Papists have had absolute equality. Every office is
+open to them on the judicial bench. There have been Roman Catholic
+Lord Chancellors, and Lord Chief Justices. O'Laughlin, O'Hagan, Naish,
+Pallas, Barry, O'Brien, Keogh, and many others are all Roman Catholic
+judges. The Papists have an overwhelming preponderance in
+Parliamentary representation. They are looked after in the matter of
+education, whether elementary, intermediate, or University. The system
+of the National Board was introduced to meet the objections of the
+Roman Catholics. They objected to the use of the Bible. As you know
+the Papists object very strongly to the Bible, and as it came out some
+time since, before the Commissioners of Education, of four hundred
+Maynooth students only one in forty had a Bible at all. Theological
+students without a Bible! But each was compelled to have a copy of
+some Jesuit writer.
+
+"Where is the inequality? The Romanists have their own college, this
+very Maynooth, entirely under the control of their own bishops, where
+they educate the sons of small farmers and peasants and whiskey-shop
+keepers by means of funds very largely taken from the Protestant
+Church of Ireland. They do not desire equality, they are resolved on
+ascendency. We who live in Ireland know and feel the spirit of
+intolerance which marks the Romanist body. It is proposed to make of
+Ireland a sort of Papal state. We have the declarations of Cardinal
+Logue, of Archbishop Walsh, of Archbishop Croke before us. We need to
+know no more. The English people pay no attention to them, or have
+forgotten them. We bear them in mind, and we shall act accordingly."
+
+My friend's statements anent the raising of money by the Roman
+Catholic clergy and the alleged poverty of Ireland reminded me that a
+year ago at the opening of the Redemptorist Church of Dundalk the
+collections of one day realised twelve hundred pounds, and that in the
+same town a priest refused to baptise the child of a poor woman for
+less than five shillings. She tendered four shillings and sixpence,
+but the man of God sent her home for the odd sixpence. She then went
+to the Protestant minister, who baptised the child for nothing. In
+Warrenpoint the priest decided what subscriptions each and every
+person should pay to the funds of the new Catholic Church, and in
+Monaghan three well-to-do Papists had their cheques returned, as being
+insufficient. The Romanist Cathedral of that poor little town is
+currently reported to have cost half a million, but that it cost at
+least a hundred thousand pounds, exclusive of the stone, which was
+given by the Protestant landowner, Lord Rossmore, is admitted by the
+most reliable authorities. The landlord agreed to give the stone on
+condition that the quarry should be filled up and the land levelled as
+it was found at first. Stone for the cathedral, a convent, and many
+other buildings was taken, but the conditions were not fulfilled, and
+a hole with forty feet of water was left, so that the field was
+dangerous for cattle. The Catholic party refused to level, and a
+lawsuit was the result. My Monaghan letter related the total exclusion
+of Protestants, including Lord Rossmore's agent, from the Town
+Council. So much for Papal tolerance and gratitude.
+
+The English prejudice against Orangemen is ill-founded. Their
+sheet-anchor is an open Bible, and their principles, as expressed by
+their constitution, are such as ought to ensure the approval and
+support of Englishmen. They read as follows:--"The institution is
+composed of Protestants resolved to the utmost of their power to
+support and defend the rightful Sovereign, the Protestant religion,
+the laws of the country, the Legislative Union, and the succession to
+the Throne being Protestant, and united further for the defence of
+their own persons and properties and the maintenance of the public
+peace. It is exclusively an association of those who are attached to
+the religion of the Reformation, and _will not admit into the
+brotherhood persons whom an intolerant spirit leads to persecute,
+injure, or upbraid any man on account of his religious opinions_. They
+associate also in honour of King William the Third, Prince of Orange,
+whose name they bear, as supporters of his glorious memory." I have
+italicised a few words which clear the association from the charge of
+organised intolerance, which is made alike by English and Irish Home
+Rulers. The Portadown folks are especially well-versed in the history
+of the movement, and in the perils which impelled their forefathers to
+band themselves together. According to Froude, it was on the 18th
+September, 1795, that a peace was formally signed at Portadown between
+the Peep-o'-Day Boys and the Defenders, and the hatchet was apparently
+buried. But the incongruous elements were drawn together only for a
+more violent recoil. The very same day Mr. Atkinson, a Protestant, one
+of the Defender subscribers, was shot at. The following day a party of
+Protestants were waylaid and beaten. On the 21st both parties
+collected in force, and at a village in Tyrone, from which the event
+took the name by which it is known, was fought the battle of the
+Diamond. The Protestants won the day, though outnumbered. Eight and
+forty Defenders were left dead on the field, and the same evening was
+established the first lodge of an institution which was to gather into
+it all that was best and noblest in Ireland. The name of Orangemen had
+long existed. It had been used by loyal Protestants to designate those
+of themselves who adhered most faithfully to the principles of 1688.
+Threatened now with a general Roman Catholic insurrection, with the
+Executive authority powerless, and determined at all events not to
+offer the throats of themselves and their families to the Roman
+Catholic knife, they organised themselves into a volunteer police to
+prevent murder, and to awe into submission the roving bands of
+assassins who were scaring sleep from the bedside of every Protestant
+household. They became the abhorrence of traitors whose crimes they
+thwarted. The Government looked askance at a body of men who
+interfered with the time-honoured policy of overcoming sedition by
+tenderness and softness of speech. But the lodges grew and multiplied.
+Honest men of all ranks sought admission into them as into spontaneous
+Vigilance Committees to supply the place of the constabulary which
+ought to have been, but was not, established; and if they did their
+work with some roughness and irregularity, the work nevertheless was
+done. By the spring of 1797 they could place twenty thousand men at
+the disposition of the authorities. In 1798 they filled the ranks of
+the Yeomanry, and beyond all other influences the Orange organisation
+counteracted and thwarted the progress of the United Irishmen in
+Ulster, and when the moment of danger arrived, had broken the right
+arm of the insurrection. After this brief sketch of the origin of the
+movement it would not be surprising if the constitutions of the body
+inculcated intolerance, or even revenge. On the contrary, both these
+things are sternly prohibited, and their contraries expressly insisted
+on. A pious Brother of Portadown said:--"As Protestants we endeavour
+to make the Bible our rule and guide. We endeavour to love our
+neighbour as ourselves, we obey the constituted authorities, we
+maintain and uphold the law, we fear God and honour the Queen. We are
+firmly resolved to maintain our present position to the British Crown,
+and we deny the right of Mr. Gladstone to give us away, or to barter
+us for power. By the confession of his own followers, all his previous
+legislation for Ireland has been a failure, for if it be not so, why
+the present measure? We claim no ascendency, and we will submit to
+none. It was from our ancestors that ascendency received its
+death-blow. Ever since 1681 our leading doctrine has been equality for
+all, without distinction of class or creed. By thrift and industry we
+have created a state of commercial prosperity which is a credit and an
+honour to the empire, while the Nationalist party under precisely
+similar conditions have discredited the empire, and by perpetual
+agitation, and not sticking to business, have brought every part of
+the country under their influence to degradation and poverty; besides
+which they have, by their repudiation of contracts, undermined the
+morality of their supporters all over Ireland. The Nationalist farmers
+prefer to have twenty-five per cent. off their rent by agitation or
+intimidation rather than to double or treble the productiveness of
+their land by hard work and the application of modern principles of
+farming. We have seen from the first that the whole movement was
+originated in roguery and sustained by roguery, and we see that it is
+carried on by roguery. We not only know the men who keep up the
+agitation, but we know the influences at work behind them. All their
+talk is of Protestant ascendency. Can they point out a single instance
+in which we have the upper hand, or state anything in which we as
+Protestants have any advantage whatever? Mr. Gladstone himself cannot
+do it. He has said so in as plain terms as he can be got to use. But
+the time for talking is over. We have said our say, and we are
+prepared to do our do. The Papists round here are very confident that
+before long they will have a marked ascendency. They expect no less.
+Let them attempt it. We shall be ready to stand our ground. As the
+poet says, Now the field is not far off When we must give the world a
+proof Of deeds, not words, and such as suit Another manner of
+dispute."
+
+A Home Ruler encountered casually showed some temper. He said:--"All
+the prosperity of which the Protestants boast is due to the fact that
+for centuries they have been the favoured party. England has petted
+them, and helped them, and encouraged them in every way. We were a
+conquered people, and these settlements of Methodists, and
+Presbyterians, and Quakers, and all the tag-rag-and-bob-tail of
+dissent, were thrown into the country to hold it for England, and to
+act as spies on the real possessors of the land, in the interests of
+England. They were, and are, the English garrison. They have no part
+with the natives, the original sons of the soil. What right, moral or
+legal, have these Colquhouns, these Galbraiths, these Andersons, to
+Irish soil? None but the right of the sword, the right of superior
+force. Other nations have succumbed to the yoke of England, the
+greatest tyrant with which the earth was ever cursed. The Scots and
+Welsh lick the boots of the English because it pays them to do so. The
+Irish have never given in, and they never will. For seven hundred
+years we have rebelled, and as an Irishman I am proud of it. It shows
+a spirit that no tyranny can break. What tyranny do we now undergo?
+The tyranny of a master we do not like, and in whom we have no
+confidence. We never agreed to accept the yoke of England. Now all we
+ask is to be allowed to govern Ireland according to Irish ideas, and
+after promising that we shall do so a bill is brought in which is a
+perfect farce, and which puts us in a far worse condition than ever.
+Some say that when once we get an Irish Parliament we can arrange
+these small details. And mind this, we shall exact considerably more
+because of English distrust and English meanness."
+
+I note in Saturday's issue of the party sheets a quotation from an
+Irish-American paper, the _Saint Louis Republic_, which thus opines as
+to the policy of the Irish leaders:--
+
+"They would better hold off until they have the bill out of the woods
+before they start a scrimmage over small details. Ireland and America
+will think any bill which establishes local government a progressive
+step of glory enough for one year. If Ireland cannot improve the law
+after it gets a Legislature it needs a few American politicians, more
+than an extra fund." How does this promise for the peace that is to
+follow this great measure of "Justice" to Ireland? With the improved
+methods of the Irish-American politicians, who, on the establishment
+of an Irish Parliament, would inundate the country, finding in its
+chaotic and helpless state a fit subject for plunder, the
+meek-and-mild Radicals of the bread-and-butter type, who trollop
+through the lobbies after the Grand Old Bell-wether, would be highly
+delighted. How did the Items get into Parliament at all? Why did they
+desert the mothers' meetings, the Band-of-Hope committees, the five
+o'clock tea parties at which they made their reputations? There,
+indeed, they found congenial society, there they were listened to with
+rapt attention, there they could coruscate like Tritons among minnows.
+Among the blind a one-eyed man is King. The English Home Rule members
+are a collection of intellectual Cyclops. They can vote, though. They
+can walk about, and that suffices their leader. If weak in the head,
+they are strong in the legs. Legislation must in future be pronounced
+with a hard g, or to avoid confusion of terms, and to preserve a pure
+etymology, a new term is needed to describe the law-making of the Home
+Rule members. Pedislation might serve at a pinch. I humbly commend the
+term to the attention of my countrymen.
+
+Judged by classification of its friends and enemies, Home Rule comes
+out badly indeed. The capitalists, manufacturers, merchants,
+industrial community, professional men are against it. Six hundred
+thousand Irish Churchmen are against it. Five hundred thousand
+Methodists and Presbyterians are against it. Sixty thousand members of
+smaller denominations are against it. A hundred and seventy-four
+thousand Protestants in Leinster, and a hundred and six thousand in
+Munster and Connaught are against it. The educated and loyal Roman
+Catholic laity are against it. All who care for England and are
+willing to join in singing "God save the Queen" are against it. On the
+other hand amongst those who are for it, and allied with them, we find
+the dynamiters of America, the Fenians and Invincibles, the illiterate
+voters of Ireland, the idlers, the disloyal, the mutilators of cattle,
+the boycotters, the moonlighters and outragemongers, the murderers,
+the village ruffians, the city corner boys, and all the rest of the
+blackguards who have flourished and been secure under the Land
+League's fostering wing. Are we to stand quietly aside and see the
+destinies of decent people entrusted to the leaders of a movement
+which owes its success to such supporters? Are Englishmen willing to
+be longer fooled by a Government of nincompoops?
+
+Those who have studied the thing on the spot will excuse a little
+warmth. And then, I am subject to a kind of Dillonism. I am
+exasperated at the recollection of what may possibly take place next
+year.
+
+Portadown, July 18th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 50.--THE HOLLOWNESS OF HOME RULE.
+
+
+This beautiful watering place cannot be compared with the celebrated
+holiday resorts of England, Wales, Scotland, or France without doing
+it injustice. It is unique in its characteristics, and globe-trotters
+aver that earth does not show a spot with an outlook more beautiful.
+From the beach the view of the mountain-bordered Lough extends for
+many miles seaward. On the opposite slopes to the right are the fresh
+green pastures and woods of Omeath, backed by the Carlingford
+mountains. On the left are wooded hills a thousand feet high which
+lead the eye to the Mourne Mountains at Rostrevor, where is the famous
+Cloughmore (Big stone), a granite block nine feet high by fifteen feet
+long, poised on the very apex of the mountain in the most remarkable
+way. How it got there is indeed a puzzle, as it stands on a bed of
+limestone nine hundred and fifty-seven feet above sea level. You can
+see it from the square of Warrenpoint, four miles away, and no doubt
+good eyes would make it out at a much greater distance. Geologists
+talk about the glacial age, and say that the boulder was left there by
+an iceberg from the north; but the mountain peasants know better. They
+know that Fin McCoul heaved it at Brian Boru, jerking it across the
+Lough from the opposite mountain five or six miles away, as an
+indication that he didn't care a button for his rival. These modern
+mountaineers are almost as easily gulled as their ancestors. They
+believe in Home Rule because they will, under an Irish Legislature,
+"get all they want." They have votes, and they use them under clerical
+advice. "I don't know anything about Home Rule except that we are to
+get all we want." Those are the very words of an enlightened and
+independent elector resident near Cloughmore. Never was there more
+simple faith, or more concise _credenda_. The Newcastle programme is
+comparatively unpromising. The wildest Radical, the most advanced
+Socialist, never came up to this. The Grand Old Man himself in his
+most desperate struggles for place and power, never exactly promised
+everything that everybody wished. To get all you want is, indeed, the
+_summum bonum_, the Ultima Thule, the _ne plus ultra_ of political
+management. After this the old cries of peace, retrenchment, and
+reform sound beggarly indeed. Never was there such a succinct and
+complete compendium of political belief. Nobody can outbid the man who
+offers "all you want." For compactness and simplicity and general
+satisfactoriness this phase of Home Rule diplomacy takes the cake.
+Failure to fulfil the promise is of course to be charged to the brutal
+Saxon. Meanwhile the promise costs nothing, and like sheep's-head
+broth is very filling at the price.
+
+Not long ago the point in the Lough was a rabbit warren, whence the
+name. Before that the situation was too exposed to the incursions of
+rovers to tempt settlers, and Narrow-water Castle, built to defend the
+pass, was (and is) between the town and Newry. But times have
+changed. Settlers flocked across from Ayr, from Troon, from Ardrossan,
+and other Scots ports lying handy. A smart, attractive town has sprung
+up, starting with a square a hundred yards across. Big ships which
+cannot get up to Newry discharge in the Lough by means of lighters. An
+eight-hundred-ton barque from Italy is unloading before my window.
+There is a first-rate quay, with moorings for many vessels. The
+harbour is connected by rail with all parts of Ireland, and in it
+seven hundred to eight hundred ships yearly discharge cargoes. The
+grassy beach-promenade is half-a-mile long, and an open tramcar runs
+along the shore for three miles. The residents are alive to the
+importance of catering for visitors, and the Town Commissioners, a
+mixed body, have provided bathing accommodation for both sexes.
+Galway, with thrice the population, a fine promenade, good sands, and
+a grand bay, has no such arrangements; and Westport has very little
+accommodation for tourists. The contrast between the North of Ireland
+and the South and West comes out in everything.
+
+The Methodists and Presbyterians are strong in the town, to say
+nothing of the two Protestant Churches, one in Warrenpoint and another
+in the Clonallon suburb. The Catholic Chapel is counterbalanced by the
+Masonic Hall. Wherefore it is not surprising to learn that the bulk of
+the townsmen are staunch Unionists. The Nationalist papers have little
+sale hereabouts, the _Belfast News Letter_ and the _Irish Times_
+having the pull. A business man, who has lived here for forty years,
+said:--
+
+"We are fairly matched in numbers but the Conservatives have the
+wealth and respectability. The fishermen and labourers are nearly all
+Home Rulers, simply because they are Catholics. They are quite
+incapable of saying _why_ they are Home Rulers, and some of them even
+profess to regard the proposed change with alarm, and say they prefer
+that things should remain as they are. But although they speak so
+fairly, yet when the time comes to vote, they vote as the priest tells
+them. They have no option, with their belief. I don't blame the poor
+fellows one bit. I followed the report of the South Meath election
+petition very closely, and I know that the same kind of pressure was
+exerted here. At Castlejordan Chapel Father O'Connell commanded the
+people, in a sermon, to go to a Nationalist meeting, and said he would
+be there, and that their parish priest expected them to go. He said
+that if any were absent he would expect them to give a good and
+sufficient reason for their absence. On another occasion a priest met
+a number of men who were going to an opposition meeting, and turned
+them back with threats. These priests not only threatened to refuse
+extreme unction to persons who voted against the clerical party, but
+they also threatened personal violence, and then said, 'Don't hit
+back, for I have the holy sacrament on me.' Father John Fay, parish
+priest of Summerhill, County Meath, told his people that they must not
+look on him as a mere man; if they did they might have some prejudice
+against him, for all had their shortcomings. 'The priest is the
+ambassador of Jesus Christ, and not like other ambassadors. He carries
+his Lord and Master about with him, and when the priest is with the
+people Almighty God is with them.' That is what Father Fay reckoned
+himself. Almighty God, no less. He alluded to the consecrated wafers
+he had in his pocket. The doctrine of transubstantiation is here
+invoked to assist in carrying a Home Rule candidate of the right
+clerical shade. And all the awful language used from the altar, in the
+confessional, all the threats of eternal damnation, and burning in the
+fires of hell, all the refusals of mass, and to hear dying
+confessions, were directed against another section of the Home Rule
+party, and not against a Unionist at all. How does this promise for
+the working of an Irish Parliament?
+
+"I note that the English Home Rule papers say nothing good of the
+bill. They are always praising the management of the Old Parliamentary
+Hand. They beslaver him with fulsome adoration. They cannot point out
+anything good in the provisions of the bill, nor in the central idea
+of the bill, but they must fill up somehow, and they praise his
+artfulness, how he dodged this, and dexterously managed that. They
+have nothing but admiration for his jugglery and House-of-Commons
+tricks. They bring him down to the level of a practised conjuror or a
+thimblerigger. But, with all his wonderful cleverness, he is not
+admired or supported by any intelligent body of public men. The
+gag-trick ought to settle him. We in Ulster feel sure that a general
+election to-morrow would for ever deprive him of power. Of course the
+Old Hand knows that, and will not give the country an opportunity of
+pronouncing judgment. He and his flock of baa-lambs will put off the
+day of reckoning as long as ever they can. Either on the present or
+next year's register he is bound to be badly beaten. His course is
+clear. He used to have three courses open to him, but now he has only
+one. He must try to weather the storm until he has a chance of faking
+the voters' lists so as to improve his own chances. It is said that
+Mr. Henry Fowler is already preparing such a scheme. Like enough. If
+tricks will win, I back the G.O.M. There are more tricks in him than
+in a waggon-load of monkeys. The strangest thing I ever saw or ever
+heard of is the calmness with which the English people take the
+proposition that Ireland shall manage English affairs, while Ireland
+is to manage her own without any interference. I should have expected
+the British workman to processionise about this. I should have thought
+the British middle-classes would have been up in arms at the bare
+thought of so monstrous a proposition. And so they would if they
+thought it would become law. But, like us, they know there will never
+be any Home Rule. Then, they are not so nervous as we in Ireland are,
+because they don't know as we do what Home Rule really means.
+
+"No earthly power can assist the Irish peasantry so long as they
+remain under the dominion of the priests. Popery is the vampire that
+is sucking the life-blood of the country. It is fashionable nowadays
+to abstain from denouncing other religious systems, on the plea of
+toleration. I agree with perfect toleration, and I am not desirous of
+making reference to Romanism. But they force it upon us. The Papist
+clergy say that the poverty of the country is due to English rule. We
+who live here know that it is due to Romish rule. How is it that all
+Protestants are well off, and make no complaint? How is it that their
+children never run barefoot? How is it that their families are well
+educated, that their dwellings are clean, and that they pay their way?
+Home Rule may impoverish those whom the teachings and habits of
+Protestantism have enriched, but neither Home Rule nor anything else
+will enrich those whom Popery has impoverished. England should turn a
+deaf ear to the cry for Home Rule, which means the ruin of her only
+friends in Ireland, and unknown damage to herself. To give her enemies
+the means wherewithal to damage her is very midsummer madness."
+
+The difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic farmers was shown
+in striking contrast on the Marquess of Lansdowne's estate in Queen's
+County. Most of the tenants were non-judicial, and the total rents
+amounted to Ł7,000, of which the Marquess allowed Ł1,100 to be
+annually expended on the estate. In 1886 the tenants demanded
+thirty-five per cent. reduction on non-judicial and twenty-five per
+cent. on judicial rents, threatening as an alternative to adopt the
+Plan of Campaign. The Marquess refused to comply with this exorbitant
+demand, but offered reductions of fifteen to twenty-five per cent. on
+non judicial rents. The tenants declined to pay anything, and the
+landlord enforced his rights, Mr. Denis Kilbride, M.P., declaring that
+"these evictions differed from most of the other evictions to this
+extent,--that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight of
+intelligence against intelligence, a case of diamond cut diamond." Mr.
+Kilbride, who held a large farm at a rental of seven hundred and sixty
+pounds was one of the evicted. Another of these poor destitute,
+homeless tenants, brutally turned out on the roadside to starve, or
+die like a dog from exposure, was no sooner evicted than he entered a
+racehorse for the great contest of the Curragh. This victim of Saxon
+tyranny was named John Dunne, and his holding comprised more than
+thirteen hundred acres. Let us hope the colt did him credit. Let us
+trust that the evicted quadruped carried off the blue ribbon of
+Kildare. For under the Lansdowne "Rack-rents" the struggling farmer
+could barely keep one racehorse, which, like the fabled ewe-lamb of
+ancient story, was his little all. Perhaps Mr. Dunne's colt was
+related to that well-bred travelling horse, of which the picture
+adorned the walls of Limerick and its vicinity, and which gloried in
+the name of Justice to Ireland. There were no evicted Protestants on
+the Lansdowne estate. Every Protestant farmer paid his rent and
+steadfastly refused to join the Plan of Campaign.
+
+The injustice of an Irish rent largely depends on the question, To
+whom is it due? A good Nationalist may draw a higher rent than a
+Loyalist. A sound Home Ruler may ask for and insist on an exorbitant
+rent, but he is never denounced by the Nationalist press. The
+Corporation of Dublin is red-hot in the matter of patriotism. Its
+Parnellite members have from time to time comprised the pick of the
+Nationalist agitators. The Dublin "patriot" press has ever been
+foremost in denouncing Rack-rents. But the city of Dublin is a
+landlord. It has agricultural tenants who are never allowed under pain
+of eviction to get into arrears. The members of the Corporation fixed
+the rents, and, strange to say, the tenants at the first opportunity
+appealed to the Land Commissioners. Six of them holding four hundred
+and twenty-seven acres of land, were paying Ł883 16s. 4d. The rent was
+therefore over Ł2 an acre, which is perhaps double the average. The
+Government valuation was Ł625 10s. The new rent was finally settled at
+Ł683, being an all-round reduction of twenty-three per cent. Lord
+Clanricarde is frequently denounced by Nationalists for excessive
+rents, lack of conscience, and non-residence. The Land Commissioners
+were unable to deduct anything like twenty-three per cent. from the
+Clanricarde rent-roll. The Councillors of Dublin were never upbraided,
+nor put in danger of their lives. The Loughrea people shot Lord
+Clanricarde's agent, his driver, his wife, and several other people,
+in protest against the Clanricarde rents and to encourage the landlord
+to live on the estate. About a dozen were murdered altogether. Surely
+these parallel cases should demonstrate the utter hollowness of the
+Home Rule agitation.
+
+The Protestants of Warrenpoint, like those of Newry and Belfast, are
+confident of their ability to hold their own. Their attitude is very
+different from that of the trembling heretics of Tuam or Tipperary.
+They are strong in numbers, discipline, and resolution, and in
+addition to upholding their own personal cause they declare that their
+isolated co-religionists in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught shall not
+be forsaken nor left to their own shifts. A rough and ready farmer
+thus spoke forth his mind:--"England may give the Papists a Parliament
+to manage Papists, but not to manage Protestants. We should never
+begin to consider the advisability of submitting to it. The thing's
+clean impossible. What! Let Papists tax us! Pay for the spread of
+Popery! Did you ever hear anything so absurd? Not one farthing would
+_I_ ever pay. I'd leave the country first. So would all the decent,
+industrious folks. We know what happens in every country where Popery
+gets the mastery. Look at Spain, Italy, and the Catholic parts of
+Ireland. If England sends an army of redcoats to punish us for our
+loyalty, we shall give way at once. We've sense enough to know that we
+could do nothing against the Queen's troops, even if we wished to
+fight them. But to take arms against the soldiers of England would be
+quite against our principles. What we should ultimately do, under
+military compulsion, we have not yet decided, but we should never
+under any circumstances show fight against the Queen. We don't think
+the day will ever come when England would send the military to shoot
+us for sticking to England. As for the police of the Irish Parliament,
+that's another thing. They would have no assistance in Ulster. The
+sheriff's officers, when engaged in the compulsory raising of taxes,
+would have a lively time, and I am sure they would never get any
+money. We don't take it seriously yet. If the bill were actually on
+the statute book and an Irish House of Commons doing the Finnigan's
+wake business with the furniture legs of the College Green Lunatic
+Asylum, even then we would not take it seriously. We shall never think
+it worth while to be serious until we see the British army firing on
+us. It's too ridiculous. We pay no attention to the Irish Nationalist
+members, whom we regard as a bankrupt lot of bursted windbags. Why,
+hardly one of them could be trusted with the till of a totty-wallop
+shop. To how many of them would Gladstone lend a sovereign? How many
+of them could get tick in London for a new rig-out? Dublin is out of
+the question, of course, because in Dublin these statesmen are known.
+Would Englishmen let such men govern their country? Not likely. Nor
+will we."
+
+I submitted that, so far as at present enacted, these very heroes were
+really going to govern both England and Ireland. The great organ of
+English Roman Catholicism objecting to this has given great offence to
+the Irish Papists, and the Nationalist press is shrieking with futile
+rage. English Catholicism and Irish Catholicism seem to be entirely
+different politically. Englishmen are Englishmen first, and Catholics
+next. Irishmen look first to Rome, and cordially hate England,--there
+is the difference. The Conservative Catholic organ says, referring to
+the retention of members at Westminster:--
+
+"With just as much reason might we import a band of eighty South
+Africans, and whether they were eighty Zulus or eighty Archangels in
+disguise, their presence in the British House of Commons would be a
+gross violation of the principles of representative government. At
+present, as members of the common Parliament of an United Kingdom,
+English and Irish members have correlative rights, but when Irish
+affairs are withdrawn from the Parliament at Westminster, on that day
+must the Irish members cease to take part in purely British
+legislation. We are asked to grant Home Rule to Ireland in deference
+to the wishes of the local majority, and then we are told we must let
+the local majority in Great Britain be dictated to by eighty men who
+have neither stake in the country nor business in her Parliament, and
+who do not represent so much as even a rotten borough between them."
+
+My Warrenpoint friend may well say that he cannot take it seriously.
+The dignity of the English Parliament is, however, a matter of great
+concern to Englishmen, and that for the present seems consigned to the
+charge of Dillon, Healy, and Co. And all to further the Union of
+Hearts. Yet Misther Tay Day Sullivan, not content with the management
+of both England and Ireland, proposes to oust us from India! The Irish
+faction will boss the wuruld from ind to ind. Begorra, they will. Tay
+Day says:--
+
+    England fears for India,
+      For there her cruel work
+    Was just as foul and hateful
+      As any of the Turk.
+    But when God sends us thither
+      Her rule to overthrow,
+    With fearless hearts rejoicing
+      To work His will we'll go.
+    Stupid little England
+      Thinks to say us nay,
+    But paltry little England
+      Shall never stop our way.
+
+There is a tribute of affection! There is an outpouring of loyalty!
+There is an anthem to celebrate the Union of Hearts! It should be sung
+round a table, Gladstonians and Irish Home Rulers hand in hand, as in
+"Auld Lang Syne," and given out by Pastor W.E. Gladstone, as short
+metre, two lines at a time. Why not? Stranger things are happening
+every day.
+
+Warrenpoint, July 20th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 51.--THE IRISH PRESS ON "FINALITY."
+
+
+Englishmen who have any doubt remaining anent Home Rule should read
+the Irish Nationalist press. Those who propose to concede the measure
+for the sake of peace and finality should read, mark, learn, and
+inwardly digest the _United Ireland_ leader, which commences: "Let it
+be pretended no more that the fate of the present Home Rule Bill is
+henceforth a matter of vital interest to us," and afterwards says, "We
+shall have to go on fighting--to go on fighting--without even a
+temporary intermission, and whether this bill pass or not, this year
+or next, or the year after, no matter what becomes of it." "Mr.
+Gladstone's bill in its present form is exactly such a Central Council
+as Mr. Chamberlain would have agreed to at the time of the Round Table
+Conference. If it pass it can be no more than a milestone on our
+march. To talk of finality any more would be simply grotesque, and yet
+the Gladstonians have urged, in season and out of season, that the
+bill would be nothing if not 'final, reasonably final.'" The English
+Home Rulers are dealt with as severely as the most hardened Unionist
+could wish. The writer speaks of their "disastrous fatuity in
+consuming the whole of this session of the Imperial Parliament, and
+the greater part of one or two more, over a Home Rule Bill which will
+settle nothing, no, not even for three years." Disastrous fatuity is a
+good phrase, an excellent good phrase, in sooth. I thank thee, Jew,
+for teaching me that word. Those who believe in the security of the
+Gladstonian safeguards, and the pacific disposition of the Nationalist
+party, will perhaps be able to put a friendly construction on the
+passage which begins:--"And it is already settled that no man in
+Ireland is to bear a rifle unless he be a soldier of the army of
+occupation, which will still be encamped on our soil 'to mak siccare.'
+This hateful and degrading prohibition is what no Parnellite can
+pretend to consent to for any reasonable or unreasonable fraction of a
+period of reasonable finality." Those who believe in the severe
+commercial morality and rigid honesty of the authors of the Plan of
+Campaign will doubtless find their favourable opinion confirmed by the
+succeeding remarkable complaint. "And the Irish Legislature--would it
+not be better policy now to refuse to regard it as a Parliament and to
+refuse to call it so?--is forbidden to take away any person's property
+except by process of law, in accordance with settled principles and
+precedents. There's trouble here." There is indeed trouble here. An
+Irish Parliament which could not "take away any person's property
+except by process of law" would be shorn of its principal functions,
+would fail to justify its existence, would fall immeasurably short of
+the popular expectation, would have, in fact, no earthly _raison d'
+ętre_. An Irish Parliament without power to take from him that hath,
+and give unto him that hath not, would be without functions, and the
+foinest pisintry in the wuruld would instantly rebel against such a
+nonentity. The farmers remember the oft-repeated statements of Mr.
+Timothy Healy to the effect that "landlordism is the prop of the
+British Government, and it is that we want to kick away." And the
+benefit accruing from this vigorous action was by the same eloquent
+patriot very plainly stated. "The people of this country ought never
+to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of
+land in the whole of Ireland." And they never will be satisfied, with
+or without rent. Their dissatisfaction has enabled Mr. Healy to put
+money in his purse. The wail of a great people whose Parliament will
+not be allowed to rob from all and sundry is accounted for towards the
+close of the article. There will be trouble "as soon as the Dublin
+Legislature becomes hard pushed for money, which will be desperately
+often from the beginning, as is now plain."
+
+These considerations are closely observed by the people of Strabane,
+the best of whom are steady loyalists. The town is bright, brisk,
+thriving, and Scotch. Or rather the Scottish element is conspicuous in
+the main street, with its McCollum and Mackey, its Crawford and Aikin,
+its Colhoun and Finlay, its Lowry and McAnaw. There are several shirt
+factories, of which the biggest is run by Stewart and Macdonald. A
+number of names which may be either English or Scotch are equally to
+the front, Taylor, White, and Simms, cheek by jowl with doubtful cases
+like McCosker and McElhinney, which, however, smack somewhat of the
+tartan. Macfarlane issues a notice, which is printed by Blair, and
+besides White I notice Black and Gray. The establishment of Mr.
+Snodgrass, near the Scotch Boot Stores, was remindful of Charles
+Dickens, and the small flautist piping "Annie Laurie," put me in mind
+of Robert Burns, the hairdresser of Warrenpoint. It became difficult
+to realise that this was Ireland. Not far away are two mountains,
+named respectively Mary Gray and Bessie Bell. The hills round Strabane
+retain their Irish names, but the genius of the place is distinctly
+Scottish. There are Irish parts of Strabane, but they are unpleasant
+and unimportant. The Unionists pay three-fourths of the rates, but
+there is only one Loyalist on the Town Council, which has nine
+members, of which number three retire annually in rotation. The Town
+Commissioners, as a whole, are not highly esteemed by the people of
+Strabane. One of them, the leading light of the local Nationalist
+party, is rated at Ł8. Another, a working plasterer, is the accredited
+agent of the Home Rule party in this division of Tyrone, and is
+playfully called the Objector-General, on account of his
+characteristic method of working in the Registry Court. The Chairman,
+who occupies the position of Mayor, but without the title, is rated at
+Ł13. Two small publicans are rated at Ł12 and Ł27 respectively. The
+remainder, including the Conservative member, are rated sufficiently
+high to be regarded as having some stake in the country, and no
+objection is taken on this score. But the Strabane Town Commissioners
+are intolerant. Apart from the fact that they admit only one Unionist
+to a body which derives three-fourths of its funds from Unionists,
+they are distinctly intolerant in the matter of employment. They
+employ no Protestants. Their solicitor, Mr. William Wilson, is indeed
+of the proscribed faith, but he seems to have inherited the office
+from his father. No Protestants need apply for any situation, however
+small, under the Strabane Town Council, which pays its servants with
+the money of Protestants. This is the party which clamours for
+equality of treatment, and eternally complains of the exclusiveness of
+Protestantism. A well-known Strabaner said:--
+
+"If we are shut out from the Town Council, it is, to some extent, our
+own fault. Two causes mainly contributed to this result--the apathy of
+the Unionist voters, and the unwillingness of our best men to rub up
+against some of the men put forward by the other party. I say some
+only, not all. We did not care to be mixed up with fellows of low
+class, especially when they are as ignorant as possible. Then again,
+we are well represented on the Poor Law Board, which really has all
+the power, attending as it does to sanitation and so forth. The
+Nationalists greedily snap at every shred and semblance of power, and
+leave no stone unturned to get the mastery. There has come a sad
+change over the poor folks, that is, the Roman Catholics. Formerly
+they were civil and kind, and we all got on famously together. If a
+Protestant was out in the country a mile or two away, and rain came
+on, they were hospitable with that beautiful old courtesy which was
+one of the best things the nation possessed. It was something to
+boast of. It was unique, and could not be found in such perfection out
+of Ireland. It's all over now. Since Mr. Gladstone commenced to
+destroy the country the poor folks hereabouts have changed very much
+for the worse, and if you now got caught in a shower while out in the
+country you might be drowned before they would ask you to take
+shelter. They expect to be enjoying our property very shortly. They
+fully believe that they will soon have the land and goods that we have
+worked for and earned by the sweat of our brows, while they have stood
+by complaining, instead of doing their best to get on. What shall I do
+if Home Rule becomes law? Just this--I shall get out of the country in
+double-quick time. There will be no security for life or property. The
+country will be a perfect Hell upon Earth."
+
+There are three rivers at Strabane, which, notwithstanding the neglect
+of the guide-books, is well worth the tourist's attention. The Mourne,
+a really beautiful river, runs beside the town, washing the very
+houses of a long street, and meeting the Finn, another fine river, in
+the meadows near Lifford, which is in Donegal, but for all that only
+ten minutes' walk from Strabane. From the confluence the river is
+called the Foyle, so that from the splendid bridge leading into
+Lifford may be seen the rare spectacle of three considerable rivers in
+one meadow. Lifford is very clean and very pretty. The gaol is the
+most striking building, and I wandered through its deserted corridors,
+desolate as those of Monaghan. There were some strange marks in the
+principal square; a number of parallel lines which puzzled me. I
+turned to the gaoler who had just liberated me for some explanation.
+
+"Faith, thin, it's the militia officers that made them."
+
+"Studying fortification?"
+
+"Divil a fortification, thin. 'Tis lawn tennis it is, jist."
+
+And so it was. Two courts of lawn tennis in the square of the county
+town of Donegal! That will give some idea of the business traffic.
+
+An experienced electioneerer said:--"We had an awful fight before we
+could return Lord Frederick Hamilton for North Tyrone. We had all our
+work cut out, for although we have on paper a majority of about one
+hundred, many of our people are non-resident landlords, or army and
+navy men, and they are not here to vote for us. So that our majority
+of forty-nine was a close thing, though not so close as we expected.
+The other side do not fight fair. Their tricks in the Registry Court
+are most discreditable. Both parties fight the register, the
+Nationalists expending any amount of time and money, and showing such
+enthusiasm as our people never show. And this is the reason. Our Scots
+farmers--for they are as Scottish as their ancestors of two hundred
+years ago--_will_ stick to their work, and persist in making their
+work the paramount concern of their lives. They cannot believe that
+objections will be made to their names on the register, and when such
+objections have been raised they must appear in person, and there
+comes the difficulty. For if it's harvest time, or if engaged on any
+necessary work, you cannot get them to the Court. At Newtonstewart
+where the bulk of the voters are Protestant, no less than five
+substantial farmers were objected to successively. The inspector, that
+is, the Nationalist agent who is supposed to look into the claims of
+the Unionist party, said that one had assigned the farm to his son, or
+that another was not the real tenant, or that something else was
+wrong, and as this statement established a _primâ-facie_ case, it
+became necessary for the persons whose votes were questioned to come
+into Court. Now, there is the rub. The objector calculates that some
+will not come, for he knows how hard it is to get them to come. Then
+they stuff the register with bogus names. They put down dozens of
+people who don't exist, with the object of polling somebody for
+them--if any of them should escape the scrutiny of the opposite
+party--and with the further object of causing the Unionist party
+expense and loss of time. For there is a stamp duty of threepence to
+be paid for every objection, and then the Loyalist lawyer and his
+staff are kept at work for six weeks, instead of a fortnight or three
+weeks, which should be the outside time taken. Then the annoyance and
+loss of time to the industrious Unionist voters, who have to leave
+their work. This does not hurt the opposite party, who have nothing
+else to do, and who in these wrangling affairs are in their native
+element, thoroughly enjoying themselves. What makes the work so hard
+for the Loyalist lawyer is the fact that our folks are all for
+business and look upon politics as a nuisance, while the other side
+make politics the principal business of their lives. They are
+tremendously energetic in this, but wonderfully supine in everything
+else. In politics they spare neither time nor money, nor (for the
+matter of that) swearing. The lying that goes on in the Registry Court
+would astonish Englishmen. The Papist party themselves admit that they
+are awful liars, but they laugh it off, and plead that all is fair in
+love and war.
+
+"The priest sits in the Revision Court all day long. In these Revision
+Courts every priest is an agent of the Separatist party. They watch
+the inspectors and witnesses, keeping a keen eye on those who do not
+swear hard enough, ready to reward or censure, as the case may be.
+Every Sunday the people are instructed from the altar as to their
+political action. This eternal elbowing-on keeps them up to their
+work, as well as the promises of the good things to come. Our folks
+are never worked up. That makes it very hard for us. They came up
+pretty well last time, though. But when one side is all for business,
+and the other side all for politics, the business folks are
+handicapped.
+
+"The Nationalists ran John Dillon on one occasion. We smashed him up.
+No respectable constituency would ever return any of his class, and we
+resented the attempt to couple us with a man of that stamp. He was
+beaten by several hundreds. Then they ran a Mr. Wylie, who had been a
+Land Commissioner for this district. We thought that positively
+indecent, and we wondered that any gentleman would put himself in such
+a position. He had been round here reducing rents, and then he came
+forward as a candidate. We accuse him of bad taste, nothing worse. He
+only made one speech, though, and that was to thank the people for
+placing him at the bottom of the poll. He confined himself to
+canvassing. If he had once mounted the hustings we would have heckled
+him about the Land Commission business. He knew that and never gave us
+a chance. It was a cute stroke of policy to bring him forward. He was
+a Presbyterian, and might be Land Commissioner again. At least the
+people thought so. Then they tried a Professor Dougherty, of
+Londonderry, another Home Rule Presbyterian; for there are a few,
+though you could count them off on your fingers, and they are a
+hundred times outnumbered by the Conservative Catholics. He belonged
+to Magee College, and we trotted out the whole of his co-professors
+against him. We never had a meeting without one or other of his
+colleagues pitching into him--a great joke it was.
+
+"Over the water Mr. E.T. Herdman tried to get in for East Donegal, a
+very popular man who pays thirty or forty thousand pounds a year in
+wages. The people promised to support him. The priests promised to
+support him. They asked what would they do else, and what did he take
+them for? They are so anxious about employment, these good men. All
+they want is the good of the people. You saw how they ran after the
+Lord Lieutenant saying: Only find us work! You see how they run after
+the Countess of Aberdeen, who is encouraging industry (and about whom
+there are some pickings). What did the people of East Donegal do,
+under the guidance of their clergy? They returned Arthur O'Connor, who
+never did anything for them, who never darkens their doors, and who is
+utterly unknown to them. What can you say for them after that?"
+
+The politician who was preferred to Mr. Herdman probably promised to
+give the people "all they want," while the Unionist was only paying
+them wages for working all the year round. And besides this, Mr.
+O'Connor's speeches were probably more full-flavoured, more
+soul-satisfying, than those of Mr. Herdman, who, being a practical man
+of business, and having a sense of responsibility, would only talk
+common-sense, and would promise no more than he could hope to perform.
+Mr. O'Connor speaks in the epic style. He reminds you of Bombastes
+Furioso, or Ancient Pistol, with a subtle admixture of Falstaff and
+Parolles. He belongs to the lime-light and blue fire school of
+oratory, and backs up a vivid imagination with a virulent hatred of
+England. The raging sea of sedition which surged around us is now
+silent enough. It Now hath quite forgot to rave While birds of calm
+sit brooding on the charmed wave. The reason why is plain or should be
+plain to anything above the level of a Gladstonian intellect. It
+cannot be amiss, though, to recall a specimen of Mr. Arthur O'Connor's
+style, that so we may judge of his superior acceptability to the
+people of East Donegal. Speaking after the Union of Hearts had been
+invented and patented (provisionally), Mr. O'Connor said:--
+
+"I know it to be a fact that in whatever war Great Britain may be
+involved, whatever Power she may have to struggle with, that Power can
+count on a hundred thousand Irish arms to fight under her flag against
+Great Britain--(great cheering). Does not the Government of the United
+States know perfectly well that at three days' notice it could have a
+force, of which one hundred thousand would only be a fraction, a force
+willing to serve against Great Britain for the love of the thing,
+without any pay?--(renewed applause). And it is not amiss that the
+Government of England should know it also"--(continued applause). The
+M.P. who made this speech is one of the politicians now dominating the
+English Parliament at Westminster. It is in response to the clamour of
+him and his sort that the gag is put on men like Balfour, Goschen,
+Chamberlain. This little gem set in the silver sea, this isle, this
+realm, this England, is becoming a paltry concern, is fast being
+Gladstoned into drivelling imbecility. What does O'Connor mean by the
+100,000 Irish arms? Does he mean 50,000 Irishmen? The point is
+obscure, as will be seen from the oratory of another distinguished
+patriot, who said, "Ten millions of Irish hearts are beating with high
+anticipation, ten millions of eyes are looking forward to the passing
+of the bill." A very large number of one-eyed Irishry.
+
+The _Irish Catholic_ makes a slip. The journal approves of Mr.
+Gladstone's closure, but with reference to the refusal of a newspaper
+to print a Dr. Laggan's letter about, something delivers itself
+thus:--
+
+  The application of the gag in polities has always been the resort
+  of the stupid, incapable, and tyrannical politician. Whether
+  tried in Russia, in France, or in England of old, it has
+  invariably failed in its purpose. The stifling of the individual
+  voice becomes of small advantage when the object-lesson of its
+  possessor with a bandage across his mouth, and his hands tied
+  behind his back, is presented to the populace. Just as the gag
+  has failed elsewhere it is, we are glad to think, destined to
+  fail in Ireland also, and, indeed, if it were not so destined,
+  Ireland would be precisely the best country to live out of.
+
+So much for absent-mindedness. It is pleasant to be able to agree with
+the _Irish Catholic_ for once.
+
+On the whole, the confusion is deepening. The Grand Juries of Ireland
+are passing unanimous resolutions condemning the bill. The Nationalist
+party condemns the bill. The Scottish Covenanters, who have not
+delivered a political pronouncement for more than two hundred years,
+and who never vote either way, have risen in their might and cursed
+the bill, smiting the Papists hip and thigh with great slaughter, and
+denouncing the movement as purely in the interests of Romanist
+ascendency. Be it understood that these religionists live in Ireland
+and date their malediction from Coleraine. But nothing will stop the
+G.O.M.'s gallop over the precipice. Let him go, but let him not drag
+the country after him. And in after years his Administration will be
+described in words like those of Burke, who, speaking of the Gladstone
+of his day, said, "He made an Administration so checked and speckled,
+he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically
+dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified
+mosaic, such a tesselated pavement without cement, that it was indeed
+a curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand upon.
+The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared at each
+other, and were obliged to ask, 'Sir, your name?' 'Sir, you have the
+advantage of me. Mr. Such-a-one, I beg a thousand pardons.' I venture
+to say that persons were there who had never spoken to each other in
+their lives until they found themselves together they knew not how,
+pigging together heads and points in the same truckle bed." This is
+prophecy.
+
+Have you heard that Mr. Balfour, who went through Ireland without an
+escort, is unable to move about England without the protection of a
+hundred and fifty mounted police to save him from English Home Rulers
+who are burning to avenge the wrongs of Ireland? No? England is badly
+served in the matter of news. They manage these things better in
+Ireland. A leading Dublin Nationalist print has a number of prominent
+headlines referring to the "facts." "The Arch-Coercionist Protected by
+Police. Caught in His Own Trap." The writer even goes into particulars
+and tells how "effusively" the ex-Secretary thanked the police for
+protecting his "frail personality." The Irish moonlight patriots are
+gratified. Balfour was their aversion. During his reign it could no
+longer be said that the safest place in Ireland, the one spot where no
+harm could befall you, was the criminal dock. Balfour stamped out
+midnight villainy, and helped the industrious poor. Wherefore he is
+honoured by honest Irishmen and hated by all rascalry. Ireland needs
+him again with his _suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_; his fairness
+and firmness, his hatred of tyranny, his determination to do right
+though the heavens should fall. With Balfour in office the Irish
+agitators have hard work to keep the broil agoing. They hate him
+because of the integrity which won the confidence of the Irish people,
+and because of the substantial benefit arising from his rule, a
+benefit there was no denying because it was seen and known of all men.
+The return of Balfour to power threatens to cut the ground from under
+the feet of those who live by agitation. They dread him above
+everything. They are horror-stricken at the prospect of a return to
+his light railways and heavy sentences. Hence this attempt to damage
+his prestige. Unhappy Mr. Balfour! To be protected by one hundred and
+fifty mounted police, and not to know of it! And the venal English
+press which conceals the fact, what shall be said of it? Where would
+England be but for Irish newspaper enterprise?
+
+Strabane, July 22nd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 52.--HOW THE PRIESTS CONTROL THE PEOPLE.
+
+
+This is a terribly Protestant place. The people are unpatriotic and do
+not want Home Rule. They speak of the Nationalist members with
+contempt, and say they would rather be represented by gentlemen. They
+are very incredulous, and refuse to believe in the honesty of "honest"
+John Dillon. They say that Davitt is a humbug and Healy a blackguard.
+They speak of O'Brien's breeches without weeping, and opine that
+Davitt's imprisonments and Healy's horse-whipping served them both
+right. These misguided Irishmen affect to believe that the English
+laws are good, that Ireland is a splendid country, and that things
+would be far better as they are. Raphoe is on the road to nowhere, and
+yet it runs a rattling tweed mill--the proprietor is a Unionist, of
+course. Queer it is to see this flourishing affair in the wilds of
+Donegal. Blankets, travelling rugs, and tweed for both sexes, of
+excellent quality and pretty patterns. Raphoe has a cathedral, but
+without features of note. The bishop's palace is in ruins. In 1835 the
+bishopric was annexed to Derry. The police of this district are sad at
+heart. There are but few of them, very few indeed, and they have no
+work to do. These Protestant districts afford no pleasurable
+excitement. Work, work, work, without any intervals of moonlighting
+and landlord shooting. These Saxon settlers have no imagination. Like
+mill horses, they move in one everlasting round, unvaried even by a
+modicum of brigandage. An occasional murder, a small suspicion of
+arson, might relieve the wearisome monotony of their prosaic
+existence, but they lack the poetic instinct. They have not the
+sporting tastes of their Keltic countrymen. They are not ashamed of
+this, but even glory in it. An Orangeman asked me to quote a case of
+shooting from behind a wall by any of his order. He says no such thing
+ever took place, and actually boasted of it! He declared that if the
+body had in future any shooting to do they would do it in the open.
+The Nationalist patriots are more advanced. They know a trick worth
+two of that. The Protestant party have no experience in premeditated
+murder, and must take a back seat as authorities in the matter. They
+have not yet discovered that shooting from behind a wall is
+comparatively safe, and safety is a paramount consideration. Landlords
+and agents carry rifles, and should they be missed unpleasant results
+might ensue. The case of Smith, quoted in a Mayo letter, shows the
+danger of missing. It is not well to place the lives of experienced
+and valuable murderers at the mercy of a worthless agent. The
+Nationalist party cannot afford to expose to danger the priceless
+ruffians whose efforts have converted Mr. Gladstone and his Tail. The
+patriots need every man who can shoot, and the stone walls of Ireland
+are a clear dispensation of Providence. To shoot in the open is a
+flying in the face of natural laws. The patriots are wedded to the
+walls, or, as they call them in Ireland, ditches. The "back iv a
+ditch" is a proverbial expression for the coign of vantage assumed for
+the slaying of your enemy. Like General Jackson, the Irish are
+Stone-wallers, but in another sense. They have brought the Art of
+Murder with Safety to its highest pitch of perfection. They are the
+leading exponents of mural musketry.
+
+A moderate Unionist said:--"To speak of tolerance in the same breath
+with Irish Roman Catholicism is simply nonsense. You will not find any
+believers in this theory among the Protestants of this district,
+although being more numerous they are not so much alarmed as the
+unfortunate residents in Romanist centres. We cannot believe anything
+so entirely opposed to the evidence of our senses. A Protestant farmer
+of my acquaintance, the only Protestant on a certain estate, has
+confided to me his intention of leaving the district should the bill
+pass, because he thinks he could not afterwards live comfortably among
+his old neighbours. A woman who had occupied the position of servant
+in a Protestant family for forty years, recently went to her mistress
+with tears in her eyes, and said her clergy had ordered her to leave,
+as further continuance in the situation would be dangerous to her
+eternal interests. A girl who had been four years in another situation
+has also left on the same plea. The progress of Romanism is distinctly
+towards intolerance. It becomes narrower and narrower as time goes on.
+This is proved by the fact that formerly dispensations were granted
+for mixed marriages--that is, Catholic and Protestant--on the
+understanding that the children should be brought up, the boys in the
+father's faith, the girls in the mother's. All that is now changed,
+and dispensations are only granted on condition that all the children
+shall be Roman Catholics. The absolute despotism of the Catholic
+clergy is every year becoming more marked. They rule with a rod of
+iron. A bailiff of my acquaintance who had paid all his clerical dues,
+was very badly treated because he was a bailiff and for no other
+earthly reason. No priest in Ireland would perform the marriage
+ceremony for his daughter, who actually went to America to be married.
+She was compelled to this, the bridegroom going out in another boat.
+The ceremony being performed, they returned to Ireland, and the girl's
+father assures me that the affair cost him fifty pounds. The case of
+Mrs. Taylor, of Ballinamore, was a very cruel one, which a word from
+the priest of the district would have altogether prevented. But that
+word was not spoken, for she was a Protestant. Her brother had
+discharged a cotter, I do not know whether justly or unjustly, but
+although Mrs. Taylor had nothing whatever to do with the affair--and
+it was not asserted that she had--she was severely boycotted. The
+brother, who was the guilty party, if anybody was guilty, was rather
+out of the way, and being a substantial farmer, quite able to hold his
+own, could not be got at. But Mrs. Taylor was a widow, and lived by
+running a corn mill. Nobody went near it, nobody would have anything
+to do with the widow, who, however, struggled on, until the mill was
+burnt to the ground. She was compensated by the County, and rebuilt
+the mill. This spring it was again burnt down, and she is ruined. Her
+property is now in the Receiver's hands, and she is going through the
+Bankruptcy Court.
+
+"The Home Rule Bill has produced, with much that is tragic, some
+comical effects. Since the passing of the Second Reading our servant
+has become unmanageable. She is evidently affected in the same way as
+many of the most ignorant Papists, believing that the time will soon
+come when, by the operation of the new Act, she will so far rise in
+the social scale as to be quite independent of her situation. This
+kind of thing is visible all around. There is work for everyone about
+here, but the farmers cannot get labourers. In many parts of Ireland
+the cry is 'There is no employment,' but here it is not so. There is
+plenty of work at good wages, waiting to be done, but men cannot be
+got to do it. The Sion Mills, which employ twelve hundred people,
+eight hundred Catholics and four hundred Protestants, would employ
+many more if they could be had. The labourers of this district are
+Catholic, and they prefer to stand loafing about to the performance of
+regular work. They believe that a perpetual holiday is coming, and
+that they may as well have a foretaste of the ease which is to come.
+Up to the times of the Home Rule Bill they were industrious enough.
+The Catholics of Tyrone and Donegal are not like those of the South
+and West. They are very superior, both in cleanliness and industry.
+Having for so long mingled with the Saxon settlers of the North, they
+have imbibed some of their industrial spirit, and until lately there
+was no reasonable ground of complaint. Their morale is unhappily now
+sadly shaken, and whether the bill passes or not it will be long, very
+long, before they resume their industrial pursuits with the energy and
+regularity of men who have nothing on which to depend but their own
+exertions. And whatever happens to the bill, the country will be the
+poorer for its introduction. Ireland is now an excellent country to
+live out of, and those who can leave it have the most enviable lot."
+
+A man of few words said:--"Under Home Rule the landlords may take
+their hook at once. Their property will disappear instanter. The
+tenant has already more lien on the land than the fee-simple _in toto_
+is worth, and with a Nationalist Parliament he would pay no rent at
+all. The judges would not grant processes, and if they did their
+warrants could not be enforced. The destruction of the landlord class
+means the destruction of English influence in Ireland. A short time
+ago two men were talking together. One was doubtful, and said,
+'Michael Davitt says we must have only five acres of land. Now you
+have twenty-five acres, you'll lose twenty.' 'Ye didn't read it
+right,' said the other. ''Tis the landlords and them that holds a
+thousand and two thousand acres that'll be dispossessed, and their
+land divided among the people. In six years we'll have the counthry
+independent, and then we'll do as we like. Every Saxon will be
+cleared out of the counthry. Only keep yer tongue between yer teeth.
+Be quiet and wait a bit till ye see what happens.'
+
+"'But,' said the objector, 'them Ulster fellows'll give us no peace.
+They have arms, and I'm towld they have a lot of sojers among them,
+and that they're drilled, and have officers, regular military
+officers. Sure, how would we do as we liked, wid an army of them
+fellows agin us? And they're devils to fight, they say.'
+
+"'Arrah now, sure, ye're mighty ignorant, thin. Sure, they say they'll
+not pay taxes. Thin the sojers comes in and shoots them down, and you
+and I stands by wid our tongues in our cheeks. 'Tis no consarn of
+ours. We have nothin' to say to it, one way or another. The Orangemen
+can shoot the troops, and the troops can shoot the Orangemen, and they
+can murdher each other to their heart's contint, and fight like
+Kilkenny cats, till there's nothin' left but the tail. And good enough
+for the likes of them. Sure, twill be great divarshun for them that
+looks on. And that's the way of it, d'ye mind me?'"
+
+This worthy politician must have been a perfect Machiavelli. His
+favourite saying was doubtless 'A plague on both your houses,' and
+with equal certainty his favourite quotation the bardic 'Whether
+Roderigo kill Cassio, or Cassio kill Roderigo, or each kill the other,
+every way makes my gain.' His theory of Nationalist progress was
+four-square and complete, and showed a neat dovetailing of means with
+the end. There is some justification for his simple faith. He has seen
+Mr. Gladstone and his supporters, converted _en bloc_, including the
+great Sir William Harcourt, styled by the Parnellite sheet "the
+new-born, emancipator of Ireland," the unambitious and retiring
+Labouchere, the potent Cunninghame Graham, the profound Conybeare, and
+the pertinacious Cobb--he has seen these great luminaries throwing in
+their lot with the sworn enemies of England, and doing all that in
+them lies to disintegrate and destroy the Empire, and the rude peasant
+may be pardoned for expecting that the British army will, at his call,
+complete what these worthies have so well begun. To narrow loyalist
+liberties, to tax loyalist industry, to create a loyalist rebellion,
+and to have the loyalists shot by other loyalists is an excellent
+all-round scheme. This is indeed a high-souled patriotism.
+
+Continuing, my friend said:--"A Romanist neighbour of mine had
+promised to vote for Lord Frederick Hamilton, for, as he said, he had
+no confidence in any Irish Parliament. Just before the battle he
+called and said he must vote the other way, for Father Somebody had
+called on him and said, 'I hear you are going to vote for Lord
+Frederick Hamilton.' Admitted. 'Then you may call in Lord Frederick
+Hamilton to visit you on your death-bed. You can get him to administer
+the Sacraments of the Church.' 'What could I do?' said the farmer. 'I
+couldn't go against the priest. I could not incur the anger of my
+clergy without imperilling my immortal soul. Besides that, I'd be made
+a mark and a mock of. Perhaps I'd be refused admission to Mass, like
+the men in South Meath who voted contrary to the orders of the
+priest. So to save my soul I'll have to vote against my conscience. No
+use in telling me we will vote by ballot. Them priests knows
+everything. They fix themselves in the polling booths, and they can
+read what way ye went in your face. Sure, they know us all inside and
+out, since we were So high. We couldn't desave them.' Then they always
+act as personation agents, and they order people who can read and
+write to say they can't do either. So they have to declare aloud whom
+they will vote for, and the priest hears for himself. This is the true
+explanation of the fearful illiteracy of Donegal, as revealed by the
+voting papers. Is it likely that in one quarter of Donegal--that is,
+in one-fourth part of one county--there should be more illiterates
+than in the whole of Scotland? Yet according to the election returns,
+it was even so. The fact that the people declared themselves
+illiterate at the orders of the priest, when they were not illiterate,
+shows how degraded are the people, and how completely they are under
+the thumb of the priests."
+
+A Protestant clergyman on his holidays, and not belonging to these
+parts, was very eloquent on the subject of political popery. In all my
+journeyings I have never interviewed a Protestant parson, save and
+except Dr. Kane, whom I met in the Royal Avenue, Belfast, along with
+the Marquess of Londonderry and Colonel Saunderson, as recorded in an
+early letter. I was disposed to believe that the English public might
+regard their evidence as being prejudiced, and therefore of little
+value. But my Raphoe acquaintance was a singularly modest and moderate
+man, upon whose opinion you at once felt you could rely. He said:--"My
+Catholic neighbours were friends until lately. Nobody could have been
+more kind and obliging. There was no sensible difference between us,
+except that they did not come to church. They would do anything for me
+and my family; we would do anything for them. Lately they have changed
+their manner. They have grown cold. Their children playing with mine
+have let out the secret. Through them we learn that the days of the
+Protestants are numbered. Father says this, and mother says that. My
+land is disposed of among my Papist neighbours. All my congregation
+have similar experiences. This makes things very unpleasant, and
+nothing can ever bring back the kind, neighbourly feeling of old. The
+Papist clergy are the cause of it all. Their church is nothing if not
+absolute, and dominancy is their aim. The Protestant party will get no
+quarter. I do not say we shall be murdered, or even personally
+maltreated. But when the large majority of a district want to see the
+back of you, with the idea of dividing your farm or your Church lands,
+they have many ways of making things so unpleasant that you would soon
+be glad to go. For my own part, I should endeavour to leave the
+country at the earliest possible moment. And that is what 999
+Protestants out of 1,000 would tell you. The clergy are inimical to
+England. Here and there you find a Conservative, and, strange to say,
+the scholarly men, what you might call the gentlemanly party, are
+against Home Rule. These, unhappily, are very few. The Maynooth men
+are violently against England." This cleric called attention to the
+opinion of Dr. Wylie, of Edinburgh, who has made a special study of
+the matter. The learned professor says the more palpable decadence of
+Ireland dates from the erection of Maynooth. Before the institution of
+this school the Irish priests were educated in France, then the least
+ultramontane country in popish Europe. They could not be there without
+imbibing a certain portion of the spirit of "Gallican liberties." It
+was argued that by educating them at home, we should have a class of
+priests more national and more attached to British rule; at least we
+would have gentlemen and scholars, who would humanise their flocks.
+These have since been shown to be miserable sophisms. "Maynooth is a
+thoroughly ultramontane school. We have exchanged the French-bred
+priest, illread in Dens, with low notions of the supremacy, and
+proportionally high notions of the British Crown, for a race of
+crafty, Jesuitical, intriguing, thorough-trained priests of the
+ultramontane school, who recognise but one power in the world--the
+Pontifical--and who are incurably alienated from British interests and
+rule. The loud and fearful curses fulminated from the altar, which
+come rolling across the Channel, mingled with the wrathful howls of a
+priest-ridden and maddened people, proclaim the result. These are your
+Maynooth scholars and gentlemen! These are your pious flocks, tended
+and fed by the lettered priests of Maynooth! Better had we flung our
+money into the sea, than sent it across the Channel, to be a curse in
+the first place to Ireland, and a curse in the second place to
+ourselves, by the demoralising and anti-national sentiments it has
+been employed to propagate. The better a priest, the worse a citizen.
+And whom have Government found their bitterest enemies? Who are the
+parties who have invariably withstood all their plans for civilising
+Ireland? Why, those very priests whom they have clothed, and educated,
+and fed."
+
+Such, according to an expert, are the men who now manipulate the
+voting powers of the Irish people. The priests do not deny that they
+have this full control; they merely say they have a right to it.
+Bishop Walsh, of Dublin, says that as priests, and independent of all
+human organisations, they have an inalienable and indisputable right
+to guide the people in this momentous proceeding, as in every other
+proceeding where the interests of Catholicity as well as the interests
+of Irish nationality are involved. He suggested, and the suggestion
+was adopted, that at all the political conventions held in the various
+Irish counties an ex-officio vote should be given to the priests! This
+embodied the principle that if Home Rule became law the Irish
+priesthood would have privileges which would make them absolute rulers
+of Ireland. Cardinal Logue says:--"We are face to face at the present
+moment with a great disobedience to ecclesiastical authority." This
+was in view of the Parnellite rebellion against priestly dictation.
+"The doctrines of the present day," said the good Cardinal, "are
+calculated (horror!) to wean the people from the priests' advice, to
+separate the priests from the people, and (here the Cardinal must have
+shivered with unspeakable disgust) TO LET THE PEOPLE USE THEIR OWN
+JUDGMENT." These are Cardinal's words, not mine. To make any comment
+would be to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume
+o'er the violet. Well might Mr. Gladstone say nineteen years ago:--"It
+is the peculiarity of Roman theology, that by thrusting itself into
+the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a
+frequent theme of political discussion." Archbishop Croke was the
+inspirer of the Tipperary troubles, worked out by his tools, Dillon,
+O'Brien, and Humphreys. Dr. Croke helped to found the Gaelic Athletic
+Association, which is well-known to be the nucleus of a rebel army.
+Dr. Croke gave Ł5 to the Manchester Murderers' Memorial Fund, and
+accompanied the gift with a letter stating that the men who murdered
+Police-sergeant Brett were "wrongfully arrested, unfairly tried,
+barbarously executed, and went like heroes to their doom." It was Dr.
+Croke who supported a movement to raise a pension for James Stephens,
+the Fenian Head-centre, the famous Number One, the general of the
+Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. We are asked to believe that this
+gentleman and his crew of subordinate clergy are eminently loyal, and
+that the moment a Home Rule Bill puts it into their power to injure
+England, from that very moment they will become friendly indeed, will
+cease to do evil and learn to do well, and that the altars from which
+England is now every Sunday hotly denounced will in future vibrate
+with the resonant expression of sacerdotal affection.
+
+These gentlemen must have a wonderful opinion of the gullibility of
+the great Saxon race. But as they see a certain portion believe in Mr.
+Gladstone they may expect them to believe in anything. To swallow the
+G.O.M. plus Harcourt, Healy, Conybeare, Cobb, O'Brien, and the Home
+Rule Bill is indeed a wonderful feat of deglutition.
+
+Raphoe, (Co. Donegal), July 25th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 53.--WHAT THEY THINK IN COUNTY DONEGAL.
+
+
+The Stranorlar people can be excessively funny. In a well-known public
+resort yesterday I witnessed a specimen of their sportive style. A
+young fellow was complaining that the examining doctor of some
+recruiting station had refused him "by raison of my feet."
+
+"I heerd tell they wouldn't take men wid more than fifteen inches of
+foot on thim," remarked a bystander. "The Queen couldn't shtand the
+expinse at all at all in leather."
+
+"Arrah, now, will ye be aisy," said another. "Sure, Micky isn't all
+out so bad as Tim Gallagher over there beyant, that has to get up an'
+go downstairs afore he can tur-rn round in bed. An' all on account iv
+the size iv his feet. 'Tis thrue what I spake, divil a lie I tell ye.
+The boy has to get up and go down shtairs, an' go into the sthreet,
+an' come up the other way afore he can tur-rn round, the crathur."
+
+"Hould yer whist, now, till I tell ye," said another. "Ye know
+Kerrigan's whiskey-shop. Well, one day Kerrigan was standin' chattin'
+wid his wife, when the shop-windy all at once wint dark, an' Kerrigan
+roars out, 'What for are ye puttin' up the shutters so airly?' says
+he. An' faix, 'twas no wondher ye'd think it, for ould Hennessy of
+Ballybofey had fallen down in the street, an' it was the two
+good-lookin' feet of him stickin' up that was darkenin' the shop. Ax
+Kerrigan himself av it wasn't."
+
+A roar of laughter followed this sally, and the rejected recruit was
+comforted.
+
+Stranorlar is pleasantly situated on the river Finn, in a fertile
+valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of green hills, beyond which may
+in some direction be seen the more imposing summits of the Donegal
+highlands. The walk to Meenglas, Lord Lifford's Irish residence, would
+be considered of wonderful beauty if its extensive views were visible
+anywhere near Birmingham; but in Ireland, where lovely scenery is so
+uncommonly common, you hardly give it a second glance. The tenantry
+are mostly Nationalist, if they can be said to be anything at all.
+They one and all speak highly of Lord Lifford, whose kindness and
+long-suffering are administered _con amore_ by genial Captain Baillie.
+They have no opinions on Home Rule or, indeed, on any other political
+subject, and will agree with anything the stranger may wish. Whatever
+you profess as your own opinion is certain to be theirs, and like
+Artemus Ward they might conclude their letters with "I don't know what
+your politics are, but I agree with them." Every man Jack of the
+Catholic peasantry votes as he is told by his priest, and no amount of
+argument, no amount of most convincing logic, no earthly power could
+make him do otherwise. He will agree with you, will swear all you say,
+will go further than you go yourself, will clinch every argument you
+offer in the most enthusiastic way. Then he will vote in the opposite
+direction. He thinks that in voting against the priest he would be
+voting against God, and his religion compels him to conscientiously
+vote against his conscience, if any. A burning and shining light among
+the Home Rulers of Stranorlar having been indicated, I contrived to
+meet him accidentally as it were, and after some preliminary remarks
+of a casual nature my friend informed me that he was agin Home Rule,
+as, in his opinion, it would desthroy the counthry; that the farmers
+believed they would get the land for nothing, and that they were told
+this by "priests and lawyers;" that he believed this to be a delusion
+from which the people would have a dreadful awakening; that
+Protestants were better off, cleaner, honester than Catholics; that
+they were much more industrious and far better farmers, and so forth,
+and so forth. This man is a red hot Nationalist, and was under the
+impression he was "having his leg pulled," hence his accommodating
+speech. When taxed with flagrant insincerity he only smiled, and
+tacitly admitted the soft impeachment. Farmers you meet in rural lanes
+will profess earnest Unionism, but--find out their religion--you need
+ask no more. Whatever they may say, whatever their alleged opinions
+may be, matters not a straw. They must and will vote as the priest
+tells them. So that the last franchise Act endows every priest with a
+thousand votes or so. Will anybody attempt to disprove this? Will any
+living Irishman venture to contradict this statement? The fact being
+admitted, Englishmen may be trusted to see its effect. Is there any
+class or trading interest which would be by working men entrusted with
+such enormous power? And these thousand-vote priests are unfriendly to
+England, as is proved by their own utterances and by innumerable overt
+acts. All of which merits consideration.
+
+The Stranorlar folks are warm politicians. At the present moment
+feeling runs particularly high, on account of the riot on King
+William's Day, to wit, July twelfth. Two Orangemen were returning from
+Castlefinn, a few miles away, where a demonstration had taken place,
+and passing through Stranorlar, accompanied by their sisters, they
+were set upon by the populace, and brutally maltreated. Several shots
+were fired, and some of the rioters were slightly wounded or rather
+grazed by snipe shot, but not so seriously as to stop their daily
+avocations. The Catholic party allege that the Orangemen assaulted the
+village in general, firing without provocation. The Protestant party
+say that this is absurd, and that it is not yet known who fired the
+shots. A second case, less serious, is also on the carpet. A solitary
+Orangeman returning from the same celebration is said to have been
+waylaid, beaten, and robbed by a number of men who went two miles to
+meet with him. This also is claimed as Orange rowdyism.
+
+A Protestant handicraftsman said:--"If we had a Catholic Parliament in
+Dublin we should not be able to put our head out of doors. Those who
+in England say otherwise are very ignorant. I have no patience with
+them. Only the other day I heard an Englishman who had been in the
+country six hours, all of which he had spent in a railway train,
+arguing against an Irish gentleman who has spent all his life in the
+country. 'Give 'em their civil rights,' says this English fellow. He
+could say nothing else. Give 'em their civil rights,' says he. 'What
+civil rights are they deprived of?' says the other. 'Give 'em their
+civil rights,' says he. That was all he could say. He was for all the
+world like a poll-parrot. He was one of these well-fed fellows, with
+about three inches of fat on his ribs and three inches of bone in his
+skull, and a power of sinse _outside_ his head. He turned round on me
+and asked me to agree with him. When I didn't he insulted me. 'I see
+by your hands,' says he, 'that you've been working with them, and not
+with your brains,' says he. Well, he was a man with a gray beard, but
+not a sign of gray hair on his head, so says I, 'Your beard,' says I,
+'is twenty-five years younger than the rest of your hair, and it looks
+twenty-five years older.' I see,' says I, 'that _you_ have been
+working with your jaws and not with your brains.' That made him vexed.
+He didn't know what to say next, and 'twas well for him. He was too
+ignorant for this counthry, though he might do very well for them
+places where they vote for such men as Harcourt or the like of him.
+
+"The people of these parts are skinned alive by their religion. Not a
+hand's turn can be done without money. Money for christening, for
+confession, for everything from the cradle to the grave. And when
+they're dead the poor folks are still ruining the counthry, for their
+relatives run up and down begging money to get their souls out of
+purgatory. I have no objection to that; let them do it if they like,
+but let them not say they are poor because of England. The more money
+they pay the sooner their father's or mother's soul is out of torment.
+Of course they spend all they have. I was speaking with a priest
+lately, and I said, 'Suppose I fell into Finn-water, and a man who saw
+me drowning said, "I'll pull ye out for half-a-crown or a sovereign,"
+what would ye think of him?' Says the priest, 'I'd think him a brute
+and a heathen.' 'But suppose, instead of Finn-water it was purgatory I
+was in, and the priest said, "I'll pull ye out for five pounds," what
+about him?' 'Good morning to ye,' says the sogarth aroon (dear
+priest). There was no answer for me."
+
+Another Stranorlar man said:--"When the bill passed the second
+reading, there was not a hill round about, for many a mile, without a
+blazing tar-barrel on it, and the houses were lit up till ye'd think
+the places were on fire. The people were rejoicing for they knew not
+what. Says one to me, 'Ye can pack up yer clothes,' says he. They
+think they will now get rid of the English, and have things all their
+own way. That's their general idea. All their rejoicing passed off
+without a word of dissent from any Unionist. But if we rejoiced--!
+Suppose the bill were thrown out, and we lit a tar-barrel. We'd be
+stoned, and, if possible, swept off the very face of the earth. On St.
+Patrick's Day, March 17, they march over the place, flags flying,
+drums beating, bands playing, and nobody says a word against it. But
+if we started an Orange procession on July 12 in Stranorlar, we'd be
+knocked into smithereens. And yet in the town we are about
+half-and-half. Of course, when you get out into the wild districts the
+Romanists greatly outnumber us. The plea of reduction of rent being
+required is very absurd when you come to examine the matter. Many of
+them pay three or four pounds a year only. What reduction on that sum
+would do them any real good?"
+
+A land agent of Donegal showed me one page of a rent book, that I
+might bear witness to indisputable facts. There were twenty-one
+annual rents on the page, and eleven of them were under two
+pounds--most of them, in fact, were under thirty shillings. One man
+held thirty-three acres for thirty-three shillings per annum. He had
+paid no rent for two years. Another estate in Donegal has two thousand
+tenants for a total rent of Ł2,800. The agent has to look after all
+these "farmers"--to conciliate, threaten, soother, bully, beg, pray,
+promise, cajole, hunt, treat, fight, curse, and comether the whole two
+thousand a whole year for, and in consideration of, the princely sum
+of a hundred and forty pounds. Many of the farmers have the privilege
+of selling turf enough to clear the rent several times over, and of
+course every man can shoot at the agent as much as he chooses, his
+sport in this direction being only limited by his supply of
+ammunition. Of late their powder has given out. Could not something be
+done for these deserving men?
+
+A superior Home Ruler, one of those honest visionaries sometimes met
+in Ireland, said:--"For my own part, I confess that I aspire to
+complete independence. Then, and not till then, would the two
+countries be friendly. We in Ulster are ten times more patriotic than
+Irishmen elsewhere, for it is in Ulster that we have been most deeply
+wronged. The Hamiltons of Abercorn planted the country round here with
+Scotch settlers, and various agencies between 1688 and 1715 are said
+to have brought over more than fifty thousand Scottish families to
+Ulster, which was already populated to its utmost extent. The Irish
+were dispossessed, kicked out, and they have been out ever since. The
+Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel took flight to save their heads, and six
+counties were declared confiscated--Londonderry, Donegal, Tyrone,
+Fermanagh, Cavan, and Armagh. These were all 'planted' with English
+and Scotch colonists. The land was given to certain favourites by the
+English Government, which at that time was the stronger, and has
+remained so ever since When we ask for our own again you cry out
+'Robbery, robbery!' _We_ are the people to say 'Stop thief!' You say
+the owners of the land rebelled, and their property was rightly
+confiscated. We say they had a right to rebel, and that rebellion was
+an honourable action. You took the country at first by force and
+fraud. We have, and always had, a right to regain what belongs to us,
+by any means in our power. We have never expressed affection for the
+English Crown. We have never affected loyalty. We have been open,
+honourable enemies, and have always said we were biding our time. We
+are accused of fraud, of duplicity. Never was any accusation so
+ill-founded. I can refer to a hundred, aye, to a thousand utterances
+of my countrymen which clearly set forth the sentiments which animate
+every single individual Irishman. These settlers are not Irishmen.
+Their best friends would never claim for them Irish nationality. Most
+of them came from the South-west of Scotland, where the most rigid and
+bigoted Presbyterianism flourished. Their creed, as well as ours,
+forbade any intermarrying. Separate they were, and separate they
+remain. You might as well try to mix dogs and cats. And the attitude
+of the two races is mutually antagonistic--exactly like dogs and
+cats. They have led a dog and cat life from the first, and if the
+Scots have thriven while the Kelts have made little progress, it is
+because the Scots have been favoured by the English Government, which
+is composed of Teutons like themselves. Let the Scots stick to
+England. It suits them, it does not suit us. The Welsh don't like you
+either, but they have not the pluck to spit it out. They will tell
+Irishmen what they think, and it is not flattering to England. They
+are quite as bitter as Irishmen, and, like them, look on England as
+the biggest humbug, hypocrite, and robber in the world. I never heard
+a Welshman speak well of England, and I have spoken with scores of
+them. Now, we have a religious difference with England, which Taffy
+has not.
+
+"We claim that our nation is more talented than stupid England, more
+sparkling, more brilliant. But we also say that as we are more
+sentimental, and as sentiment is to us a matter of life and death, we
+cannot develop our industries, we cannot do ourselves justice, while
+subjugated by England. Freedom is our watchword. We want an army, a
+navy, a diplomacy of our own. We do not admit that England has any
+right to control our action, and we defy any man to prove that any
+country has a right to dictate our laws. Independence must come in the
+long run. Everything is tending in that direction. We may not get Home
+Rule at present, but we _shall_ get it. Then we shall be able to
+report progress. I believe that the material prosperity of this
+country will increase by leaps and bounds in exact proportion to the
+loosening of Saxon restraint, and freedom from selfish English
+interference. Our trade has been deliberately strangled, our
+manufactures deliberately ruined, by English influence on behalf of
+English interests. Then you ask us to believe that we have benefited
+by our union with England! We do not believe it. England has been the
+greatest modern curse, spreading her octopus arms over every weak
+country in the world. She goes to make money, and says she only wishes
+to push forward civilisation. Read Labouchere's opinion of England,
+and you will see what she is--a greedy, whining hypocrite. She holds
+India by fear, at the point of the bayonet--all for greed. Then her
+speakers get up on their philanthropic platforms, and after shooting a
+few thousand niggers and poisoning off the rest with rum, they say
+that such and such a country is now under the blessed rule of England,
+which is established merely for the propagation of the truth as it is
+in Jesus. You make out that your rum, rifles, and missionaries are
+only instruments in the hands of the Society for the Propagation of
+the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Away with such hypocrisy! England is a
+big bully, crushing the weak and truckling to the strong--truckling to
+the weak, even, when fairly taken to. Look at the Transvaal. When I
+see what a handful of Dutch farmers did with your grand army--when I
+see how a country with less than a quarter of the population of
+Ireland freed itself and knocked your bold army into a cocked hat, I
+am ashamed to be an Irishman submitting to foreign rule. You will at
+any rate see why we Irishmen in Ulster are even more rebellious than
+our southern countrymen. It is because these devilish plantations were
+in the North, and because we are outnumbered in the North by men who
+are really foreigners. Let them be loyal. No doubt it suits them best.
+But we will only be loyal to our country, which is Ireland, not
+England. And if these Scots, wrongly called Ulstermen, don't like the
+new arrangement, they can leave the country. No obstacle will be
+placed in the way of their departure. That I can promise you. They
+will leave the land, I suppose? That being so, we can spare the
+settlers. And as they got the land for nothing, they must be content
+to part with it on the same terms. Now you understand the No Rent cry.
+Now you understand the No Landlord cry. The land was stolen from the
+people, and the people carefully remember the fact. You hear
+Nationalists speaking ill of the Irish members. The members have done
+well for us. They have done grandly. Fourscore Irishmen have conquered
+the British Empire, and without firing a shot. That after all beats
+the record of the Boers, but they got complete independence. We are
+not yet there; but it will come, it will come."
+
+An equally intelligent Unionist, who bore a Scottish name,
+said:--"Does it suit England to throw us overboard? Because that means
+the giving up of the country. You can't hold Ireland without a friend
+in it. Twice the Protestant population have saved it for you. Its
+geographical position forbids you to give it up. That would ruin you
+at once. And yet immediate separation would be far better than a
+wasting agitation. Better plunge over a precipice than be bled to
+death. Better blow out your brains than be roasted at a slow fire.
+England is being kicked to death by spiders. And all in the interests
+of Rome. If the people here had any opinions I would not say a word
+against anything they might do, but they have none at all. They show
+their teeth because they are told to do so. All the disturbances which
+disgrace the country are excited by the priests, who pretend to
+disapprove of them, but who secretly approve. For the priests have the
+people thoroughly in hand, and whatever they really disapprove they
+can stop in one moment.
+
+"There is an organised clerical conspiracy to resist the law and to
+keep the agitation on foot, with the object of obtaining a complete
+Catholic ascendency. They bleed the poor people to death with their
+exactions, and the number of new buildings they have lately erected in
+Ireland almost exceeds belief. We have a splendid new Romanist Church
+in this little place. Well may the people say they can't pay rent.
+When Cardinal Logue's father died there was a collection for the
+general Church which realised more than eight hundred pounds. When a
+priest dies or when a priest's relative dies there is always a
+collection for the cause. Eight hundred pounds out of the starving
+peasantry of Donegal, for whose relief the English are always
+collecting money! Cardinal Logue's father was Lord Leitrim's coachman,
+and was on the spot when my lord was shot. The horse fell lame at the
+right moment. Curious coincidence--very. This Home Rule farce is
+growing rather stale. Cannot the English see that it is urged by a set
+of thieves and traitors? Cannot they see that brains and property are
+everywhere against it? And Gladstone's speeches show such ignorance of
+the subject that no Irishman can read or listen with common patience.
+To judge from his Irish orations I should say that he is not fit to be
+Prime Minister to a Parliament of idiots. What do you think?"
+
+I was sorry to dissent, but I said that to the best of my knowledge
+and belief Mr. Gladstone was of all men best fitted for such a post.
+
+Stranorlar (Co. Donegal), July 27th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 54.--A SAMPLE OF IRISH "LOYALTY."
+
+
+The country round here seems especially rich in minerals of all sorts.
+Bog-ore, to be spoken of as bog ore, is abundant, and manganese is
+known to exist in large quantities. Soapstone of excellent quality is
+also plentiful, and the peasantry will tell you that on the passing of
+the Home Rule Bill they will at once proceed to dig out the
+inexhaustible stores of gold, silver, lead, iron, tin, and coal, with
+which the district abounds. Ireland is a perfect El Dorado, and when
+the brutal Saxon shall have taken his foot off her throat, when
+Parlimint and the sojers allow the quarries to be worked, the mines to
+be sunk, the diamonds under Belfast to be dug up, the country will
+once more be prosperous, as in the owld ancient times, when the
+O'Briens and O'Connells cut each other's throats in peace, and harried
+their respective neighbourhoods without interference. Captain Ricky,
+of Mount Hall, is exploiting the bog-ore, and sending it to England by
+thousands of tons. The stuff is an oxide of iron and is used for
+purifying gas. The queerest feature of the use of bog-ore is the fact
+that when used up it is worth twenty-five per cent. more than before.
+Delivered to the gas companies at thirty shillings a ton, it fetches
+forty shillings when the gas-men have done with it. It seems to be
+composed of peat which by a few millions of years of saturation in
+water containing iron has become like iron-rust. The soapstone of
+Killygordon is used instead of fire-clay, and is also made into French
+chalk. Or rather it might be, but that the Captain declines to proceed
+with its extraction pending the Home Rule scare. There is much alder
+on the estate, which is watered by the river Finn. This is the right
+wood for the manufacture of clogs for the people of Lancashire and
+Yorkshire. Captain Ricky sends tons of these interesting articles to
+the sister isle. Men are turning out these favourite instruments of
+feminine correction, in a rough state, by boat loads. When the
+coster's done a-jumping on his mother, he should thank Ireland for
+his clogs. When the festive miner rejoices, his dancing would lack the
+distinguishing clatter which is its richest charm, without alder grown
+on the banks of the Donegal Finn. The countries were made to run in
+harness. One is the complement of the other. The brainy dwellers of
+Hibernia know this, and stick like limpets to England. Only the
+visionary, the lazy, the ne'er-do weels, the incompetent, the
+disorderly, the ignorant, the ambitious, want Home Rule. The
+contemners of law and order want to flourish and grow fat. The Healys
+and Sextons and all of that ilk know that while under an Irish
+Parliament their country would be ruined, yet that they themselves
+would pick up something in the general confusion, while Dillon, like
+Mrs. Gargery, could be ever on the rampage, carrying out his promises
+of dire revenge, and flourishing like a young bay tree. Nobody here
+rejoiced when the bill was reported amended. They are losing faith in
+its merits. Their simple faith received a severe shock after the
+return to power of the Three-acres-and-a-Cow Government. Then the
+Labourers' Dwellings Act proved a fraud. The peasantry asked the
+neighbouring landowners for an acre of ground and a new cottage. A
+neighbouring J.P. to-day told me that he had more than twenty
+applications from people who are now awaiting the gold mines, the
+great factories which the new Irish Government are about to open. If
+you would remain poor, vote for the Unionist candidate. If you would
+become rich beyond the dreams of avarice, if you would occupy the
+place of the Protestant landlords, if you would preserve your immortal
+soul from eternal flames, vote as instructed by Father Gilhooly. A
+patriot priest yesterday said that the Day of Independence would be
+the "Day of Ireland." He should have called it the _Dies Irć_.
+
+A Scottish Covenanter, not of the straitest sect, has no faith in the
+Home Rule Bill. He said:--"The people up in the mountains, those who
+want Home Rule, or rather those who have voted for it and expect to
+benefit by it, are all of the class no Act of Parliament would ever
+help. They don't farm their land, and they don't want to farm it. Half
+of it lies to waste every year, and they cut turf which they get for
+nothing, and sell it in the small towns about for three or four
+shillings a load, instead of making the land produce all it will. Go
+to their houses at ten in the morning, and you will find them smoking
+over the fire. My people are up and at work by six o'clock every
+morning in the week. The Scots farmers round Strabane are that keen on
+getting on that you can't get them away from their work, which is
+their pleasure. They are so keen on making the most of the ground that
+they are doing away with the hedges, and substituting barbed wire,
+merely to gain the difference in area of ground to till. Look at yon
+brae-face. Every yard tilled right up to the top. The Papist peasantry
+would never do that. You want to know what's the reason? Goodness
+knows. All the Protestants round here have got on till they have
+farms. There are no Protestant labourers. If English working men,
+agricultural fellows, would settle in Ireland, they would soon get
+their Three acres and a cow. The people who can and will do the best
+with the land ought to have it, that's my theory. Ireland everywhere
+illustrates the principle of the survival of the fittest. The only way
+to succeed is by work. The Catholic Irish are so accustomed to leave
+everything to the priest that they have no self-reliance, and in
+worldly matters they always ask, who will help us? They are all
+beggars by nature. The Duchess of Marlborough and other kind but
+mistaken ladies have pauperised some districts of Donegal. The people
+have a natural indisposition to work, and a natural disposition to
+beg. As for loyalty and tolerance, they have none of either. You never
+saw industry without other virtues, you never saw laziness without
+other vices. These everlasting grumblers are a generation of vipers.
+They are a peevish and perverse set of lazy, skulking swindlers. They
+can pay. Every man could pay his rent and be comfortably off if he
+liked. The Protestant farmers pay and get along. And we agree that the
+landlords favour the other sect. They know that we will do the right
+thing, and they let us do it, but the Papists may do less--for less
+than the right thing is what the landlord expects from them. He thinks
+himself lucky if his Papist tenants come anyway near the mark.
+Therefore I say, and any Protestant will say, the Papists are favoured
+by the landlords."
+
+A staunch Conservative, though not a land-owner, said:--"We want
+amendment of the Parliamentary voting regulations. No clergyman should
+be allowed to sit in the Revision Court. Scandals without end could be
+cited to show the necessity of this. I would, of course, exclude all
+sects, though no Protestant preacher ever takes part directly or
+indirectly in any of our political meetings. When a man has to make
+oath as to the validity of his claim to the suffrage he will often
+look at the priest who sits watching him. He gets a nod, and he goes
+on with his swearing. The perjury of the Irish Revision Courts is
+something fearful, and no one pays any attention to it. The Papists
+swear just anything. They get absolved, but a Protestant has not this
+great advantage and that holds him back. That is the Papist
+explanation. In my presence the Home Rule inspector of this
+district--we call the people who watch and work the registers the
+inspectors--swore that James Kelly, of Cross Roads, Killygordon, was
+the present tenant, the holder of the license, and the freeholder of a
+public-house at the spot mentioned. Besides this he swore that the
+name James Kelly was on the signboard. He therefore proposed to poll a
+James Kelly. Now the person in question went to America in 1888, and
+never returned. His name was not on the signboard, and the license was
+for another person. The Judge declined to hear any further evidence
+from Inspector Francis McLaughlin. That was the only penalty enforced.
+Such things happen every day in Irish Revision Courts.
+
+"A man named James Burns put in a claim for a vote on behalf of land
+held at Stroangebbah. He had none there. What he had was at
+Aughkeely, and this was not sufficient to entitle him to vote. Yes,
+his name should be spelt Byrnes, but the Irish often prefer the
+Protestant form of the name. Well, nobody believed that he was the
+tenant of Stroangebbah; he was said to be a lodger only. The Judge
+asked him for proof. He presented a paper purporting to be a receipt
+for rent for Stroangebbah, but in reality the receipt was for the
+ground at Aughkeely, which did not qualify. He curled up the paper so
+as to show that his name was on it, and the Judge instantly passed his
+claim, and placed him on the roll. A young fellow named Robert Ewing
+at once exposed the trick, but the Judge declared that having placed
+Burns on the roll, he must remain there until next revision. Judge
+Keogh was his name. Yes, you would think an Irishman and a good
+Catholic would have seen through such a trumpery trick.
+
+"When an illiterate declares for whom he will vote, we sometimes have
+from twenty to thirty outsiders in the polling-booth. In England the
+Court is cleared, and even the policeman has to go outside. But in
+this favoured country any blackguard who likes to fill up a
+declaration of secrecy, and go before a magistrate, can be present at
+the whole of the proceedings. There is no secrecy for the illiterates.
+Any corner-boy, any ruffian, any blackguard in the district can come
+in and hear for whom men vote. These corner boys all get declarations
+in their fists, and they march in gangs from one booth to another.
+It's intimidation, no less. Get some M.P. to mention this as having
+taken place at Stranorlar. The people of whom I complain were not even
+voters. Anybody could be present. Ridiculous to talk of the ballot-box
+in Ireland.
+
+"The Morley magistrates are in many cases a disgrace to the country.
+We used to have an idea in these parts that a small publican could not
+legally sit on the Bench. James McGlinchy, J.P., is a small publican
+of Brockagh. Barring his trade, he's not so bad, as he can read and
+write. But if you saw the lists, and if you knew the men
+recommended----! Englishmen have no idea what low scoundrels have been
+placed on the Bench in this country. Imperfect education we do not so
+much mind when conjoined with character. O'Donnell is not a bad sort,
+but he couldn't write 'adjourned.' Two magistrates were needed, and
+nobody else arrived. Therefore the difficult word was necessary, and
+O'Donnell felt it was beyond him. He called up a policeman, and
+ordered him to do it. Whereat the county makes merry. There should be
+an education test. Can all the English magistrates spell 'adjourned'?
+You think so? That's very good. Not right that a man who can't spell
+'adjourned' should give another man a spell of imprisonment."
+
+A Roman Catholic gentleman thus summed up the character of his
+particular neighbourhood:--"The upper classes of both sects are in
+every way equal. Among the lower classes I observe that the
+Protestants do as much work as they can, while the Papists do as
+little as they can. This accounts for the difference in their
+appearance and position. Then the Protestants are far better educated,
+and have arrived at the knowledge that everything that is good must be
+gained by exertion, and that there is for them at least no substitute.
+The others talk as if after the establishment of an Irish Parliament
+money would be found growing on the bushes. No one need try to change
+their opinion. When the time comes to vote they will vote as their
+priest tells them. Someone has said that the British Government might
+subsidise the Church, and so buy her off. It could not be done. The
+bishops want power. I do not agree with them, and I do not support or
+admit their claim to direct their flocks in political matters."
+
+The Marquess of Conyngham, whom I met at Strabane, said:--"The people
+of Donegal are pleasant, kind, and civil. Taking them all round, they
+are much more energetic than the Southerners, and we were making fair
+progress until these Home Rule Bills were brought in. The country was
+being opened up, and things were beginning to improve, when the bill
+came and blighted everything. Now the people are growing idle and
+discontented. They are all right when left alone. Everybody likes the
+Donegal peasants, and they deserve to be liked. Only leave them alone;
+that's what they want; and not Home Rule nor any other quackery."
+
+Strange things continue to happen in Ireland. This does not refer to
+the continuous cutting-off of cows' tails, the slitting of horses'
+tongues, and other similar expressions of impatience for the good time
+coming, but to some strange things that have happened in connection
+with agricultural affairs. Sir Samuel Hayes decided to abandon a farm
+which would not pay, although he had no rent to meet. He was his own
+landlord, but he did not work the farm. That was done by a bailiff,
+who, curiously enough, was the highest bidder for the land. He of all
+men should have known that if the farm would not pay expenses when
+there was no rent, it would not reward the man who had rent to pay.
+This reasoning proved fallacious. The farm which without rent proved a
+loss, in the same hands turned out when rent was charged a perfect
+gold-mine. In another case, a bailiff on leaving his employ expended
+on land the accumulated savings of his thrifty years, and--strange to
+say--his savings amounted to about three times the sum of his wages
+during his life's service. A man who, having a pound a week, can save
+three pounds, would in England be regarded as a prodigy. In Ireland
+such things happen every day. Particulars as to the cases
+hereinbefore-mentioned can be obtained from anybody in Killygordon,
+which is altogether a remarkable place--to say nothing of its name,
+which for obvious reasons has the misfortune to be unpleasant to the
+Grand Old Man. _Nomen, Omen?_
+
+An octogenarian J.P. said:--"They talk of gold and silver mines, and
+lead and copper mines, and iron and quicksilver mines, but mining in
+Ireland cannot, as a rule, be made to pay. Everything exists in
+Ireland, but in such small quantities. The seams and veins are so
+small. Mr. Ritchie, of Belfast, spent several fortunes in mining for
+coal, iron, and other things. There was iron at Ballyshannon, but what
+was the good? It cost less to bring iron to England from Algiers. We
+had no railway to Donegal, fifteen miles away, and cartage was too
+expensive. So far from Home Rule doing us any good, it would be a
+cruel blow to the country, and especially to the poor. Employment
+would become very scarce, as everybody who had money invested in
+Ireland would be in haste to realise and get it away. There would be
+no new enterprises, although the poor folk say, "We'll get employment
+in big factories and mines." Where's the money to come from? From the
+Irish Parliament, they say. And where will they get it from? Oh, a
+Parliament always has money. All the money comes from Parliament,
+which, in fact, actually makes money. The English Parliament makes all
+the goold sovereigns, and when the Irish Parliament commences to
+manufacture goold sovereigns at Dublin, then Ireland must be rich. Did
+not Mr. Gladstone say there would be too much money? Did not he say
+that in Parliament? That's what the poorest and most ignorant people
+of Donegal say. The English Home Rulers, by their support of the
+movement are inflicting injury on the Irish poor. We want the country
+opening up with railways. The tourist district is unequalled in
+Europe. Good hotels now, but you reach them mostly by cars. Balfour
+was giving us rails. That one man in five years did more good to
+Ireland than all other agencies operating for the previous forty
+years. I have thought the thing out, and I can speak for that period
+with certainty. Why could not they let him alone? The blackguards of
+these parts still shout 'Hell to Balfour.'
+
+"Home Rule means to England a weakening, a loss of prestige, a new and
+a terrible danger. The _Independent_ says, 'When Ireland next fights
+England she will not fight alone?' Very true. There is a strong
+anti-English feeling among the lower American classes, who are largely
+Irish, who have votes, and by their votes can influence American
+policy. Let me point out the opinion of Lieutenant-Colonel Butler as
+recorded in 'The Great Lone Land.' Here it is:--
+
+"You will be told that the hostility of the inhabitants of the United
+States is confined to one class, and that class, though numerically
+large, is politically insignificant. Do not believe it for one
+instant; the hostility to England is universal, it is more deep-rooted
+than any other feeling, it is an instinct and not a reason, and
+consequently possesses the dogged strength of unreasoning antipathy. I
+tell you, Mr. Bull, that were you pitted to-morrow against a race that
+had not one idea in kindred with your own, were you fighting a deadly
+struggle against a despotism the most galling on earth, were you
+engaged with an enemy whose grip was around your neck and whose foot
+was on your chest, that English-speaking cousin of yours over the
+Atlantic, whose language is your language, whose literature is your
+literature, whose civil code is begotten from your digests of law,
+would stir no hand, no foot, to save you, would gloat over your
+agony, would keep the ring while you were being knocked out of all
+semblance of motion and power, and would not be very far distant when
+the moment came to hold a feast of eagles over your vast, disjointed
+limbs. Make no mistake about it, and be not blinded by ties of kindred
+or belief." And, further, "You will find them the firm friend of the
+Russian, because that Russian is likely to become your enemy in Herat,
+in Cabul, in Kashgar, in Constantinople. Nay, even should any
+woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore strait by indiscriminate and
+ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's friend for the simple
+reason that he is your enemy." Without accepting the gallant Colonel's
+dictum, it is as well to bear it in mind.
+
+A pensive youth in Ballybofey was deeply engaged with a scrap of
+ballad literature, not by any means without literary merit. For and in
+consideration of a Saxon sixpence I became the proprietor of the lay,
+which is being circulated by thousands throughout Ireland. Those who
+uphold the reputation of their Irish allies for loyalty to the Queen,
+and friendship to the English nation, will, doubtless, find their
+convictions deepened and strengthened by the following sample verses
+addressed to intending recruits:--
+
+    Ye whose spirits will not bow
+      In peace to parish tyrants longer,
+    Ye who wear the villain brow,
+      And ye who pine in hopeless hunger,
+    Fools, without the brave man's faith,
+      All slaves and starvelings who are willing
+    To sell yourselves to shame and death,
+      Accept the fatal Saxon shilling.
+    Ere you from your mountains go
+      To feel the scourge of foreign fever,
+    Swear to serve the faithless foe
+      Who lures you from your land for ever,
+    Swear henceforth its tools to be
+      To slaughter trained by ceaseless drilling,
+    Honour, home, and liberty
+      Abandoned for a Saxon shilling.
+    Go--to find 'mid crime and toil
+      The doom to which such guilt is hurried,
+    Go--to leave on Indian soil
+      Your bones to bleach, accursed, unburied,
+    Go--to crush the just and brave
+      Whose wrongs with wrath the world are filling,
+    Go--to slay each brother slave,
+      Or spurn the blood-stained Saxon Shilling.
+    Irish hearts! why should you bleed,
+      To swell the tide of English glory?
+    Aiding despots in their need,
+      Who've changed our green so oft to gory?
+    None save those who wish to see
+      The noblest killed, the meanest killing,
+    And true hearts severed from the free,
+      Will take again the Saxon Shilling.
+
+The British soldier is the meanest killing the noblest. The poet's
+name is Buggy. All this is very surprising. Painted by Paddy Mr. John
+Bull, J.P., will hardly recognise himself. Throughout the Nationalist
+literature he is represented as a liar, a coward, a bully, a
+hypocrite, a tyrant, and a robber. If he now consented to be made the
+instrument of persons whose ascertained opinions exactly harmonise
+with those enunciated above, the epithets of Fool and Idiot will
+doubtless be added to the list. And in this instance the evil speakers
+would be quite right. _Quod demonstrandum est._
+
+Killygordon, July 29th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 55.--A TRULY PATRIOTIC PRIEST.
+
+
+The rhythmical rocking of the little engine of the West Donegal line
+running across from Killygordon seemed to say ceaselessly--
+
+    Here's a health to ye, Father O'Flynn,
+    Slainthe (health), and slainthe, and slainthe agin--
+    Powerfullest pracher, an' tinderest tacher,
+    An' kindliest crature in ould Donegal!
+
+Father O'Flynn must have been like a priest I met on Sunday, a
+Loyalist and a Conservative. Priests of the old school are becoming
+scarcer and scarcer every year, but one or two still exist. They do
+not "get on." It is understood that their political attitude forbids
+promotion. A priest who confesses to a respect for the Queen is not
+likely to be acceptable to the multitude. A priest who believes that
+the British laws are just and equitable, and that things would be
+better remaining as they are, is looked upon as a _lusus naturć_. He
+said:--"I am a South of Ireland man, and was educated at Douai. I have
+no sympathy with the great bulk of the Maynooth men, who are mostly
+peasants and the sons of peasants. I do not think that the Maynooth
+course is sufficient in one generation to lift the sons to any great
+intellectual height above the besotted ignorance of the parents. I
+believe in heredity, and I say that most of my colleagues are only
+shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years. The low-bred men are now
+the dominant power. Instead of tranquillising the people, which I hold
+to be the duty of the clergy, they have done all they could to awaken
+and keep alive their most dangerous passions. And to rouse the Irish,
+especially the Southern Irish, is a matter of the greatest facility. I
+hold that the clergy by degenerating into mere political agents are
+strangely short-sighted. Their spiritual influence will in time be
+dangerously undermined, and in the long run they will take nothing by
+their motion. The Parnellite party will grow stronger and stronger,
+and the extreme party, the party of Revolution, which now lacks a
+leader, would on the passing of a Home Rule bill become the dominant
+power. That is a great and salient factor of which up to the present
+English politicians have taken no account. The party of Revolution is
+the party which under an Irish Parliament would be master of the
+situation. Leaders will not be lacking. But at present the party must
+from the necessity of the case be amorphous, and therefore,
+politically and as a power, practically non-existent. Pass the bill,
+and then you will see something. A new party, the party of
+Independence, or, as they will call it, of Freedom, will take shape
+and formidably influence events. The temptation to take the lead will
+be great. Independence and Separation will be a most popular cry. The
+present men must either join the swim or be denounced as traitors, and
+as Healy cannot now visit Dundalk without two hundred policemen to
+protect him, while William O'Brien was nearly torn to pieces at
+Cork--would, in fact, have been murdered but for the police--you may
+conceive what would be the state of things when we have a
+Revolutionary party and when the police were no longer under the fair
+and judicial control of the British Government. Pass the bill and look
+out for the Revolutionary party. They will have an immense backing in
+point of numbers. And numbers rule in Ireland, not intelligence. The
+bill will, of course, give nothing that the peasants expect. The fault
+will assuredly lie with John Bull. The expectations of the ignorant,
+that is, the great mass of the people, will be woefully disappointed.
+Who is to blame? they will ask. Numbers of politicians are waiting to
+tell them. Who but the brutal, greedy, selfish, perfidious Saxon? An
+agitation will succeed, compared with which the worst times of the
+Land League were preferable. I shudder to think of the chaos, the
+seething and weltering confusion of the time to come. The Irish
+people, the poor ignorants, will suffer most. And yet they are
+innocent in this matter. They have, indeed, been blamed with the
+excesses of a few of their number, but they are, if left to
+themselves, a most kindly and law-abiding people. The Donegal peasants
+are the best in the country. You will see poverty, but the degradation
+of filthiness and laziness is not nearly so marked as in the South and
+West, where the climate is warm, moist, enervating.
+
+"What, then, are my opinions, expressed in a concise form? I will tell
+you. They are what _you_ would call sound. They are the opinions of
+Balfour, of Lord Salisbury. I hold Mr. Balfour in profound esteem as a
+wise and sagacious administrator, a terror to evil-doers, and an
+encourager of those who do well. I have a real affection for Mr.
+Balfour, as for a great benefactor of my beloved country. For I love
+my country so well that I feel the keenest personal interest in her
+welfare. Perhaps I have a deeper affection for Ireland than even Tim
+Healy or Sexton or Harcourt or O'Brien. What do I think of Gladstone?
+I think him a scourge of Ireland, a curse, a destroyer far worse than
+Oliver Cromwell. A heaven-born statesman? Do his followers call him
+that? Well, I can only say that I hope and trust that heaven will not
+be blessed with any further family."
+
+A military officer resident in this region, an Irishman bred and
+born, said, "It's all a matter of religion. I was the other day
+reading Maxwell's account of the Irish rebellion of 1798, and I
+observed that although the Northern rebellion, which was the most
+dangerous, as being the best organised, was mainly led by Protestants,
+yet in other parts of Ireland, when a suspected person was captured by
+the rebels, the first question was, not are you in favour of the Irish
+Republic, but what is your religion? And the Protestants generally had
+their throats cut. The same thing would occur again, under similar
+circumstances. Religion would be the test. If a general state of
+lawlessness should at any time arise, the Protestants in lonely
+districts would not be safe from murder. Yes, I _do_ say it, and I
+stick to it. A very large number of outrages have been committed which
+would not have taken place but for the religion of the offending
+party. It is a virtue to lie to a heretic, to cheat him, to damage
+him, to keep him out of heaven if possible. Anybody who knows Catholic
+Ireland would agree with this most heartily. They believe that
+whosoever killeth heretics doeth God service.
+
+"Irish folks are better than the people of other nations, and also
+much worse. When they are good they are very good, and when they are
+bad they are very bad. They run to extremes in a way which cool-headed
+Britons do not understand. They are impulsive, and they jump to
+conclusions. Their great disadvantage is a crushing clerical
+influence. What's the use of thinking about anything when Father Pat
+does it for them? What's the use of listening to argument when you
+must in the end vote as Father Pat orders?
+
+"Englishmen have no idea what a splendid fellow the Irish peasant
+really is when his mind is not poisoned and his unfortunate ignorance
+exploited. I could give you instances of fidelity, affectionate
+self-sacrifice and devotion which would astonish you. Not isolated or
+sporadic cases, but arising from the average level of the Irish
+character. After considerable travel, and a painstaking study of the
+characteristics of various nations, I have come to the conclusion
+that, taking one consideration with another, I prefer Paddy, ignorant
+as he is. For after all his ignorance is not his own fault. He sees no
+newspapers except an occasional local sheet, which is almost certain
+to be a wretched, lying, priest-inspired rag. If he were seen looking
+at any other it would be bad for him. But newspapers are practically
+unknown in the agricultural districts. And men do not meet in crowds
+as in England. They have not the attrition which wears away the
+angularities. They live solitary among the mountains, or away in the
+fields, and they never hear lectures, have no Institutes, get no
+chance of improvement. The priest is their Clan Chieftain, their
+spiritual adviser, their temporal adviser, their newspaper, their only
+channel of superior information." At this point a tall, red-bearded
+man who was passing touched his hat to the Colonel, who said, "My
+gamekeeper. A fine, rough-coated Scotsman. Came over here a mad
+Gladstonian. Pinned his faith to the G.O.M. Followed him blindly, and
+owned he was content to do it. Get into conversation with him. Observe
+the change, the decided change in his opinions."
+
+Soon I had Velveteens in full cry. His opinions were indeed decided.
+Having admitted that they had boxed the compass during a six months'
+residence in this down-trodden country, he went on to say, "The only
+way ye could cure the discontent is to make no attempt at it. Then the
+agitation would stop. The people are the biggest fules I ever saw.
+Instead of returning a sound, advanced Radical like Emerson T.
+Herdman, a man who pays them thirty or forty thousand a year, and who
+spends all his money in their midst, the fules go and vote for a thing
+like Arthur O'Connor, who never was here but once, and who never did
+them the compliment of issuing an address. When Mr. Herdman came to
+Stranorlar the people stoned him and his friends. And yet nobody ever
+said, or could say, a word against the Herdmans, who are among the
+most popular people in Ireland, and who deserve the best that can be
+said of them. O'Connor costs these poor folks two hundred pounds a
+year. They raise it in the constituency. Mr. Herdman would have cost
+them nothing, and might have spent even more than he does at present.
+He has opened up the greatest industry in the North-west of Ireland,
+keeps a whole country-side going, and is an out-and-out Liberal. The
+greatest exertions were made to secure his return, and the Catholics
+promised to vote for him. He stumped the country, and left no stone
+unturned. The Nationalist candidate never came here till the last
+moment, and, as I said, issued no address. The people knew nothing of
+him, and had never heard of him. But they voted as the priests told
+them, and they would have voted for a stick. Ought such people to have
+the franchise?
+
+"What would I do to settle the Irish question? I've heard that
+somebody proposed sinking the country for twenty-four hours. That
+might do. Or you could withdraw the police and military, and in every
+market town open a depôt for the gratuitous distribution of arms and
+ammunition. In ten days there would only be a very small population,
+and you could then plant the country with people who would make the
+best of it, and mind their work, instead of spending their time
+standing about waiting for Home Rule to make them rich without work.
+Or you could make a law which required every priest in the country to
+clear out in twenty-four hours, on penalty of death. That is as
+impossible as sinking the island, but it would be quite as sure a
+cure. Those are my opinions, and those must be the opinions of every
+man who has lived here and looked about him for a reasonable length of
+time. The Scots Gladstonians are very decent folk. They mean well, and
+they are friendly to Ireland. Their only fault lies in following their
+hero, and in thinking that he cannot do wrong. If they knew what I
+know, they would be of my mind. For I was as great a Gladstonian as
+any of them."
+
+A Presbyterian farmer said:--"On this estate the whole of the tenants
+are Presbyterians. The agent told me that early in June the whole of
+the rents up to May were paid, and that he would think that there was
+not such another case in Ireland. How is that? Well, if the tenants
+had been Romanists they would have so many things to pay. The priests
+live like fighting cocks. Father McFadden, of Gweedore, makes from a
+thousand to fifteen hundred a year. That is the man on whose door-step
+Inspector Martin was murdered. The crowd beat out his brains with
+palings, and when he tried to get into the priest's house, the door
+was shut in his face. The clergy live well, and drink like troopers.
+The easiest job in Ireland, and--if your conscience would allow
+it--the best in every way. You are treated with great respect, you
+have great influence, you have nothing to do, and you are extremely
+well paid for it. Sometimes I think that humbug pays better than hard
+work. The priests do _not_ look after the poor. They do _not_ work
+among the destitute and ignorant after the fashion of the English
+clergy. They are always extracting, extracting, extracting. The poor
+are ground down by their exactions till they can't pay their rent. And
+that is why the agent said that probably no other estate in Ireland
+could show such a record as ours.
+
+"Home Rule will not satisfy the people. An Irish Parliament will do
+them no good, no, nor fifty Irish Parliaments. They are unfriendly to
+England because she is Protestant. People of the only true faith
+cannot bear to be governed by a heretic nation. The laws are all
+right, and they know it, but their animosity is excited by stories of
+wrong-doing in their forefathers' days, and while on the one hand they
+feel that they might easily be better off, on the other they are told
+that the brutal Saxon keeps them poor. All this is done by the
+priests. They actually admit that the English laws are excellent, but
+then they fall back on the allegation that their administration is
+corrupt. In vain you point to the Roman Catholic judges. In vain you
+go over England's successive attempts to pacify Ireland by
+conciliatory measures. The priest ruins all, for while your friend
+seems to agree with you--they are so easily led--yet the priest will
+secure his vote to a certainty. So long as a heretic power is at the
+head, so long Ireland will be discontented. If the country were under
+the rule of a Roman Catholic power, the people of Ireland would be
+satisfied with any laws whatever. They would not grumble at anything.
+The only alternative is the spread of education, and that goes on very
+slowly in Ireland. We are very, very backward in Donegal, but not
+nearly so bad as in the south and west. We have a bad name for poverty
+and ignorance, but we do not deserve it in the same degree as the
+Munster and Connaught folks. We dislike the Connaught people just as
+much as you do in England. We hate dirt, and lawlessness and disorder,
+and therefore we claim to be superior to the rest of the poor
+counties. This is, of course, the civilised part of Donegal. But
+wherever you go, you see nothing like the dirt of counties Galway and
+Mayo.
+
+"We want railways to open up the country. Balfour was building them
+for us, and his institution of the Congested Districts Board did
+wonderful things for us. Why, if he had done nothing but improve the
+breed of fowls he would still have been worthy of remembrance as a
+benefactor of this country. Before the Congested Board Committee
+introduced superior breeds of fowls, the chickens were like
+blackbirds. You could sit down and eat half-a-dozen of them. They were
+no bigger than your thumb. But now we can get fowls equal to anything
+you have in England. The same may be said of the horses, the pigs, the
+cows, and all kinds of domestic animals and poultry. The fishing
+industry has saved whole districts from starvation, and has done good
+all round. When we get an Irish Parliament the grants for all these
+purposes will be discontinued, and the tide of progress will be
+checked. The poor folks are quite unable to see that by sticking to
+England we have a wealthy neighbour to borrow from, and that this is
+an inestimable advantage to a poor country like Ireland. Not long ago
+I mentioned this to a priest, but he said, 'When we have a Parliament
+of our own we'll not need to borrow money, for we'll have more than we
+know what to do with. Did not Mr. Gladstone say we should have a
+chronic plethora of money? John Bull certainly sends some money over
+here, but he had it from here to begin with. He stole it from Ireland,
+and he is only like a thief whose conscience urges him to restore a
+portion, a very small portion, of the stolen goods. When we get
+Independence--he used the word Independence--we shall be in a position
+to lend money instead of needing to borrow!' The person who said all
+this is the most influential politician of this district. His word to
+his flock is law. Not one of them dare for his life vote otherwise
+than as he tells them. They do not think this a hardship. They have no
+political convictions, and would just as soon vote any one way as any
+other."
+
+A Donegal Home Ruler said that the poor folks were quite right in
+following the priests, and wanted to know if they would be right in
+following the Tories. He said:--"They are no more ignorant than the
+British working men, and not less independent. Don't the working
+classes follow their leaders, voting in heaps, just as they are told,
+without any notion of the Empire's greatness, and entirely with a view
+to their own interests? Could anybody be more stupid, more totally
+incapable of giving a valid reason for his action than your vaunted
+British workman? Why, if the specimens we get over here are any guide,
+if the samples are anything like the bulk, you might as well poll a
+flock of sheep as a crowd of British working men. I say the Irish
+peasantry are superior in intellect, conduct, and chayracther, and
+that in following the priest they are acting as reasonable as your
+British working-man, who follows his strike leaders and trade
+agitators, and is perpetually cutting off his nose to spite his face.
+No, we shall not get Home Rule now, but we must have it later on. Then
+we shall demand more. Every time we have to ask we shall want more
+and more. We shall wring it from England, and we shall make her pay
+for the trouble she gives. She must be charged a sort of war
+indemnity."
+
+The Dundalk press is on my track. I heard of this in Newry, but the
+Dundalk papers do not reach the next town to Dundalk, and not a sheet
+could be had for love or money. A friend having told me that the
+_Gazette_ was reviled, great efforts were made to obtain the reviling
+print, but in vain. At last I saw the _Dundalk Democrat_, which in a
+two-column comment on its colleague's maledictions of your humble
+commissioner cleared me of the charges brought by the original
+thunderer, which I have not yet been able to see. One of the said
+charges is based on the statement that I asked to be allowed to be
+present at the meeting, which permission was readily accorded. The
+meeting was public and was placarded from one end of Dundalk to the
+other. The public were invited to assemble in their thousands, and to
+join in the onward march to freedom. Not more than twenty people
+answered to the call, and the meeting was therefore a dead failure.
+The idea of asking leave to be present at a public meeting is absurd.
+The vituperative print says that I was _not_ asked to deliver an
+address, but was told that I could "do so if I liked." The truth is
+manifest by the admitted fact that I declined, as being no speaker.
+Such is the minute hair-splitting of Irish argumentation. The quips
+and cranks of Tipperary Humphreys will be remembered, the paltry
+quibbles by which he sought to establish a case, and his final retreat
+under cover of the statement that he could not have believed that
+"such a state of things was possible." The Dundalk marchers to freedom
+(to the number of twenty) were not precisely the pick of the local
+respectability, and my escape must be regarded as providential. As to
+their outpourings of abuse, my philosophy resembles that of the old
+whipper-in of the Meynell-Ingram Hounds:--"I bain't a cruel chap, I
+bain't. But when I puts the lash among the hounds I _dew_ like to hear
+'em yowl; I _dew_ like to see 'em skip, and writhe, and look mad. For
+if ye don't make 'em feel, and if ye can't hear 'em yowl, there's
+railly no pleasure in thrashin' of 'em."
+
+Donegal, August 1st.
+
+
+
+
+No. 56.--DO-NOTHING DONEGAL.
+
+
+Donegal improves on acquaintance. At first dull, dreary, and
+disappointing, a more extended examination reveals much that is
+interesting. The river Eske runs through the town, rippling over a
+rocky bed of limestone like the Dee at Llangollen. Mountains arise on
+every hand, some in the foreground, green and pleasant, backed by
+sterile ranges having serrated summits, dark and frowning. The harbour
+has an old-world look, with its quaint fishing boats and groves of
+trees running down to the water's edge. The land is decidedly humpy,
+and the sea meanders among the meadows in long fillets like trout
+brooks, sometimes tapering off to narrow ditches over which you can
+easily step at highest tide. The land is fertile, mostly grazing, and
+the cattle are of large and superior breed. The country is well
+wooded, and the hedgerows are tall and well-kept. The ancient abbey,
+like Mr. Gladstone's reputation, is in ruins. There is a ruined castle
+on the river bank, and on the other side, exactly opposite, a
+Methodist church, bearing the legend, ALL ARE WELCOME. The principal
+"square" is triangular, and has some good shops, which do most of
+their business on market-days. An enormous anchor, half embedded in
+the mud of the harbour, was left there by the French fleet during "the
+throubles of the ruction." It is rather in the way, but three
+generations of Irishmen have not found time to remove it. "Like
+ourselves and our counthry it will stick in the mud until the end of
+time," said a native. There is much lounging at corners by men who are
+probably waiting for the Home Rule Bill, but the people compare
+favourably with those of the South and West. They have more grit, more
+industry, more perseverance. They are simple, civil, and obliging.
+They are also cleaner and more tidy than the Southerners, though
+decidedly poorer. "They get no price for their produce, no reasonable
+wages for their industry. Their patience and contentment are
+surprising, considering their circumstances. You can get work done for
+twopence a day. The Southerners get thrice the money for their farm
+produce. We have no ready means of getting things on the market. I
+have thirty tons of hay to sell, and nobody in the district would give
+me a pound for it." Thus spake one of the leading citizens, a Roman
+Catholic, dead against Home Rule. "The resident gentry are all we have
+to depend upon. Once plant a Parliament in Dublin, and there will be a
+general exodus of the moneyed classes. Then the poor folks will have
+nobody to look to, and they must follow them to England--which will
+certainly be overrun with destitute Irish. Things have grown worse and
+worse during the last ten years. Under a steady Government the country
+would gradually improve until the comfort of the people would give the
+agitators nothing to work upon. But with change upon change, with one
+final settlement upon another final settlement, we don't know where we
+are, nor what is going to happen next. How can we settle down to work?
+How can we launch out into industrial enterprises? Every man who has
+anything holds his hand for fear of loss. An Irish Parliament would be
+a Parliament of confiscation, and nobody knows where they would draw
+the line. Mr. Gladstone's land legislation has been a succession of
+swindles. The principle of judicial rents is an atrocious violation of
+the principles of business, one of which lays down the dictum that a
+thing is worth as much as it will fetch. Surely the landlord ought to
+be allowed to accept the offer of the highest bidder. And if you take
+from him that right, and say to him you shall only accept such a
+price, then you should at least guarantee the payment. But no, Mr.
+Gladstone says you shall only have a certain price, and you must
+recover the money as best you can. The judicial rent law, so much
+vaunted, is not so good as it looks. It is often a premium on
+indolence and a punishment of industry, and therefore grossly unjust.
+Let me tell you how it works in Donegal.
+
+"Thirty years ago two men took contiguous farms of exactly the same
+extent, at the same rent. There was not a pin to choose in the land,
+either. One of them worked continuously, improving the farm until he
+almost wrought himself to pieces. He and his children were at it night
+and day, and their industry did wonders, as it always does. The other
+was a lazy fellow, who lay in bed till mid-day and spent half his
+waking hours at fairs and dances. The land in his occupation
+deteriorated until it seemed to want reclaiming. The rent of both
+farms was ten pounds a year. The Land Commission had both cases before
+them, and, of course, based their estimate on the present value of the
+land, without reference to any other considerations. Now mark what
+happened--
+
+"The industrious man, who should have received a premium as a
+benefactor of his country, had his rent raised from ten pounds to
+eighteen.
+
+"The lazy man, who should have been kicked out of the country as
+worthless, and an enemy to progress, had his rent reduced from ten
+pounds to two pounds fifteen shillings.
+
+"The judicial reductions have hardly ever been of real benefit. The
+average Irish peasant is so constituted that when he has less to pay
+he simply makes less effort, or spends the difference, and more than
+the difference, in extra whiskey.
+
+"The Donegal peasantry derive much benefit from the Irish practice of
+con-acre. Con-acre means that the land is rented for one crop. It pays
+the landowner well, and he always gets his money. The man who has no
+land hires a piece for his potatoes, or for his oats, takes possession
+when he puts in his seed, and delivers up possession when he gets his
+crop off the ground. They pay, I think, because they have not the land
+long enough to long for it altogether."
+
+I climbed the hill behind the Arran Hotel in company with the
+proprietor, Mr. Timony, who also runs several large shops in Donegal.
+The view is magnificent, extending in one direction to Carnowee and
+the Blue Stack mountains, in another far over the wood-fringed bay,
+and southward to the Benbulben range, terminated by a steep descent
+like the end of a house. Mr. Timony is a Romanist, but is strongly
+opposed to Home Rule, which in his opinion would lead to endless
+trouble and confusion, and would, bring distress on the district, and
+not prosperity. The hill was covered with mushrooms, which were
+rotting unregarded. Mine host confessed that he did not know the
+edible from the poisonous fungi, and said that the peasants of Donegal
+were in the same case. "There are tons of these things on the
+mountains, but no one gathers them. They would be afraid to go near
+them for fear they would drop down dead on the spot." He showed me a
+large stock of hand-woven cloth made by the peasantry, who, to their
+credit, have mastered the process from beginning to end, and with
+their rude appliances produce a good-looking article, of which the
+only fault is that it can never be worn out. Irishmen will not buy it,
+but England is an excellent customer, and the trade, already large, is
+rapidly increasing. Good tweed, twenty-seven inches wide, may be
+bought in Donegal for a shilling a yard, and stout twills for
+one-and-sixpence. The people shear the wool, card it, spin it, dye the
+yarn made from herbs growing on the sea-shore, on the rocks, in the
+meadows, and weave it into cloth, which is much in vogue for shooting
+suits and ladies' dresses. The pieces run from twenty to seventy yards
+long, and whole families are engaged on the work, which commands a
+ready sale at the wholesale depôts, the price being regulated by the
+fineness, evenness of texture, and equality of tint throughout. The
+Nationalist advice to burn everything English except English coals, is
+as hollow as other patriotic utterances. But for England the Donegal
+peasantry would have no market for their goods. "It isn't fine enough
+for Irishmen," said Mr. Timony. "They prefer English shoddy. They like
+the smooth-looking cloth such as I have seen made in Yorkshire,
+manufactured out of rags. There's not ten pounds of wool in a thousand
+yards of it. It looks more eyeable, but there is no length nor
+toughness in the thread, which is made out of old worn-out cloth. Our
+folks couldn't spin it. They must use good new yarn, or they couldn't
+work at all. The Yorkshire folks have machinery, and you can do
+anything with machinery."
+
+A good old Methodist said:--"The English people ought now to realise
+the pass their Grand Old Gagger has brought them to. The finest
+assembly of gentlemen in the world are bandying evil names and
+punching each other's heads. Just what you might expect when the Prime
+Minister has allied himself with blackguards and law-breakers. I used
+to be one of his staunchest supporters, but I draw the line at lunacy.
+When I saw him truckling to low-bred adventurers who are not worth
+sixpence beyond what they can wring from their dupes, I thought it
+time to change my course. When I saw the class of men with whom he
+acts and under whose orders he works, I changed my opinion of the man.
+For evil communications corrupt good manners, and a man is known by
+the company he keeps. The whole session has been a degradation of the
+British Parliament. Things have been going from bad to worse until we
+have reached the climax. If Mr. Gladstone remains in power we must
+change the qualifications of our members, and send the best fighting
+men and the hardest hitters. We must heckle candidates as to their
+'science,' and ascertain if their wind is good, and whether they are
+active on their pins. And in course of time, if the G.O.M. still
+presides, we shall have the Speaker acting as referee, and calling out
+'Time, gentlemen, Time!' Some Gladstonian or other will doubtless
+accept the post, and in that case we may expect him to sport a long
+churchwarden and a glass of beer. That is what Mr. Gladstone is
+bringing on the House, and the tendency has been visible for a long
+time. When you hear of people continually shouting 'Judas, Judas,'
+without a word of protest from the Prime Minister, you must admit that
+the dignity of the House is a thing of the past. When you see the
+general trend, you can judge what will be the result. When you see in
+which direction a man is going, you can judge where he will arrive at
+last.
+
+"For my part, and I can speak for all my friends, we have the greatest
+confidence in the English people's commonsense, and in the long run we
+know it will not fail. The Scotsmen, who are honest politicians and
+keen, are throwing over Mr. Gladstone and all his works, although he
+was for so long their greatest pride. And we are sure that the few
+Englishmen who at the last election followed in his wake will see
+their error, and that they will joyfully seize the first opportunity
+of repairing their mistake. What would happen if the bill became law?
+Nothing but evil. The Methodists would leave these parts in a body. We
+could not remain with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin. We should not
+be safe but for the English shield that covers us. The people, as a
+whole, are quiet enough--when left alone. But they are very excitable.
+Kind and civil as they may seem, they turn round in a moment. They
+will believe anything they are told, their credulity is wonderful, and
+their clergy have them entirely in their hands. The people might be
+tolerant, but the clergy never. And Irish priests are very bitter and
+very prejudiced. They say that we have bartered eternity for time, and
+that, although we all thrive and do well, we have sold our souls for
+earthly prosperity. My mind is made up. Once that bill becomes law you
+must find room for me in England. We shall be able to live in peace on
+the other side of the Channel."
+
+Another Methodist believed that the poverty of the people was somehow
+due to their religion. He knew not precisely why this was the case,
+but his observations left him no other conclusion. He instanced
+Strabane, the Scots settlement over the border, and although in
+Tyrone, yet only divided from Donegal by the river Mourne. "They have
+at Strabane an annual agricultural and horticultural exhibition, which
+does a great amount of good in educating the people. Last week they
+distributed eight hundred pounds in prizes, and there were two
+thousand two hundred entries. We have talked about a similar show in
+Donegal, but we never do more than talk. We shall never have a show
+until we get a sufficient number of Scotsmen to organise it and work
+it up. The necessary energy for such a big affair seems to be the
+private property of people holding the Protestant faith, for when we
+see an energetic Romanist we look upon it as something so remarkable
+as to merit investigation, and in nearly every case we find the person
+in question is, although Catholic, either Saxon or half-breed. Nearly
+all the Papists are Kelts. Is their want of energy due to breed, to
+religion, or to both? We hardly know. But I know a man's religion a
+mile off, so to speak. Only let me see him at work in a field. His
+religion comes out in his action. A Papist never works hard. He seems
+to be always doing as little as ever he can. Then he's very much
+surprised to find himself so poor, when the hard-working Protestant is
+getting on. Presently the Black-mouth gets a farm, while the other
+remains a labourer. Then the agitator comes round and says, 'Look how
+heretic England favours Protestants. _You_ are the children of the
+soil, but who has the farms?' 'Begorra,' says Michael, 'an' that's
+thrue, bedad it is now,' and thenceforward he cherishes a secret
+animosity against the successful man, instead of blaming his own want
+of industry. That's human nature. So he votes for Home Rule, for
+anything that promises the land to himself, as the son of the soil. He
+looks on the other man as an interloper, and his priest encourages
+that view. That is their feeling, as they themselves express it every
+day, and are we to believe against the evidence of our senses that
+when they have the power to injure us, to drive us out of the country,
+by making it too hot to hold us--are we to believe that they will not
+exert their power, but on the contrary, will treat us considerably
+better than before? That is what English Home Rulers ask us to
+believe. That is what Irish Nationalist speakers say in England: they
+would be laughed at here. Do not trust these men. They are what the
+Scripture calls 'movers of sedition'--and nothing better."
+
+After some search I found a fine young Parnellite, who roundly
+denounced the clergy of his own faith as enemies of their country. He
+said:--"I _was_ a Home Ruler, but although I hold the same opinion in
+theory, I would not at this juncture put it into practice. I am
+convinced that it would be bad for us. We are not ripe for
+self-government. We want years of training before we could govern
+ourselves with advantage. The South Meath election petition finally
+convinced me. When I saw how ignorance was used by the clergy for the
+furtherance of their own ends, I decided that we were not yet
+sufficiently educated to be entrusted with power; and if Home Rule
+were now offered to us, and the Home Rule that we ourselves have
+advocated, I for one would dread to accept it. We must serve an
+apprenticeship to the art of self-government. We must have a Local
+Government Bill, and see how we get on. Then it can from time to time
+be made larger and more liberal, entrusting us as we grow stronger
+with heavier tasks. Give us Home Rule at this moment and you ruin us.
+We should have several factions, more intent on getting power and in
+damaging each other, than on solving all or any of the very
+complicated and difficult questions which would come before them.
+There would be no spirit of mutual accommodation such as prevails in
+English assemblies. And our troubles would be your troubles. Keep it
+back for a few years, and lead us up to Home Rule by easy gradations.
+
+"My anti-Parnellite friends say they will not return the members now
+representing them. I believe they will. And if not, then they will
+send others of no better social standing, and with no Parliamentary
+training at all. They will send worse men, extreme men, men who have
+not pledged themselves to the British Government. The pledges of
+Dillon and Davitt--what are they worth? Surely nobody is so foolish as
+to rely on such 'safeguards' as these.
+
+"I am sure that three-fourths of the educated Catholics of Ireland are
+at this moment opposed to Home Rule in any shape or form, but--they
+dare not say so. Ireland is a land of tyranny, clerical tyranny.
+Ireland will not be free until the clergy withdraw their influence
+from politics. If they continue in their present course, there will be
+a reaction as education advances, and their last state will be worse
+than the first. I know that some of them would gladly drop politics,
+but they have to look to their bishops."
+
+A Nationalist tradesman said:--"The Protestants are favoured in every
+way. Statistics recently given in the _Freeman_ show that the money
+annually paid to the favoured few, who hold appointments which ought
+to be open to all, amount to five pounds a head for every Protestant
+man, woman, and child in the country. The same favouritism runs
+through everything. If a Catholic bids for a field of grass a
+Protestant bid is taken, even if lower. I saw it done yesterday."
+
+My friend lost his temper when I asked him to say why the heretic
+farmers were thriving while those of the true faith were starving, why
+the heretics were clean while the others were dirty. He at last said
+that the British Government subsidised all Soupers out of the secret
+service money, and making a contemptuous grimace, to express his
+opinion of such miscreants, curled up his hand and passed it behind
+his back, thus dramatically indicating the underhand way in which the
+money is conveyed to the favoured recipients.
+
+These people _will_ believe anything. But who tells them this? And why
+do not the clergy undeceive them?
+
+A final Black-mouth must be quoted. He said that the seller of the
+standing grass preferred the heretical bid, although lower, "because
+he felt more sure of the money," and pointing across the triangular
+square, yclept the Diamond, said:--"All those corner-men are Home
+Rulers. You never see a Unionist idling the day away at
+street-corners. We have no Protestant corner-boys in Donegal, nor
+anywhere else, so far as I know." The townsfolk are fairly
+industrious, that is, when compared with the people of Southern Irish
+towns, but there is a residuum--a Home Rule residuum. It sometimes
+happens that jaded men, worn out with overwork, are recommended to go
+to some quiet place and to do absolutely nothing. They can't do
+nothing, they don't know how to begin. They should go to Donegal. The
+place is silent as the tomb, and if they would learn to do nothing
+they will there find many eminent professors of the science, who,
+having devoted to it the study of a lifetime, have attained a virtuoso
+proficiency.
+
+Donegal, August 3rd.
+
+
+
+
+No. 57.--BAREFOOTED AND DILATORY.
+
+
+"The Ballyshannon foundered on the coast of Cariboo, And down in
+fathoms many went the captain and his crew. Down went the owners,
+greedy men whom hope of gain allured. O, dry the starting tear, for
+they were heavily insured."
+
+And thereby hangs a tale.
+
+Professor Crawford, of Trinity College, Dublin, says that when walking
+down Regent Street, London, with William Allingham, then editor of
+_Fraser's Magazine_, and a native of this Donegal town, the pair met
+Charles Dickens, who advanced with beaming countenance, and taking
+both Allingham's hands in his own, said in a hearty voice:
+
+"Well done, Ballyshannon!"
+
+This was in allusion to a recent article written by the _Fraser_
+editor, who among his intimate friends and brother litterateurs was
+playfully named after his birthplace. W.S. Gilbert was especially fond
+of the sonorous appellation, and in the above-quoted Bab Ballad, his
+gem of gems, named the ship Ballyshannon in remembrance of Allingham.
+
+The Ballyshannon folks are "going to" erect a memorial to Allingham,
+of whose poems they have often heard. They are "going to" advertise
+their town, and make its beauties known to the world--some day. They
+are "going to" charter a steam dredger, and so improve the harbour,
+which is dangerous. They are "going to" utilise the enormous
+water-power of the River Erne, which runs to waste from Lough Erne to
+the sea. They are "going to" run a few tweed and blanket factories
+when they see their way quite clearly. They are "going to" start a
+fishery fleet and a number of fish-curing sheds, to give employment to
+the poor folks of the district. They need almost everything that man
+_can_ need, and they have especial facilities for supplying needs, but
+as yet they have lacked time and opportunity. The town is only a
+thousand years old, and its inhabitants have not yet had time to look
+about them. A number of English anglers stroll about with long salmon
+rods, or float their little barks on the broad bosom of the Erne, the
+population looking dreamily on from the long bridge over the river,
+which, like the Shannon at Athlone, flows through the heart of the
+town. Nobody seems to be doing anything, except a few old beggar woman
+squalid and frowsy as the mendicant hordes of Tuam, Tipperary,
+Limerick, and Galway. The beggars are pertinacious enough for
+anything, but theirs is the only enterprise the stranger sees.
+Compared with that of Donegal the salmon-fishing seems expensive. The
+landlord of the Arran Hotel in that town offers the Eske at
+half-a-crown a day, but in Ballyshannon you must pay four pounds a
+week and give up all the take except two. Salmon are scarce all over
+Ireland this year. Three English fishers on the Erne shared the
+universal bad luck, for in three days they had only captured one
+five-pounder. The unusual drought has made the water low. The weather
+of the past five months has been finer and dryer than any season for
+sixty years. Ballyshannon looks dirty and dingy in any weather. It
+lacks the smartness, the cleanliness, the width of thoroughfare, which
+mark the heretic towns. It lacks the factories, the large shops, the
+shipping which would infallibly be to the fore if its inhabitants were
+mainly of Teuton origin. On the other hand, the Ballyshannon folks are
+religious. They go to mass regularly, and confess themselves at
+frequent intervals. The confessional box is their only place to spend
+a happy day, and the act of confession, with the following penance,
+their pleasantest mode of passing away the time. They are mostly Home
+Rulers, and are deferring special effort to better themselves until
+the Irish Parliament does away with the necessity. That blessed
+institution once fairly settled at College Green will spare them the
+pains of enterprise, and will show how large industries can be created
+and sustained without capital, without business knowledge, without
+technical skill, and for the sole purpose of affording the shiftless
+population of Ballyshannon regular wages at the week's end. The
+gentlemen who lean over the quaint bridge, with its twelve arches and
+sharply-pointed buttresses, are merely waiting for the factories,
+which are to spring from the earth fully-equipped at a wave of the
+enchanter's hand, to be a blessing to the whole world while fulfilling
+their chief mission of finding employment for the people of Ireland.
+Meantime the Ballyshannoners are bitterly wroth with England because
+she has not hurried up with the desired factories long ages ago. They
+smoke thick twist and expectorate into the river, talking moodily of
+the selfish Saxon, who instead of looking after them looks after
+himself, and praising Tim Healy, whose spare cash is invested in a
+factory in Scotland. Tim knows his countrymen; but, although his
+cleverness is by them much admired, they do not know how really clever
+he is. If they could realise the fact that Tim declines to invest in
+Ireland they might admire him still more. The great drawback to Irish
+enterprise lies in the fact that Irishmen who have brains enough to
+make money have brains enough to invest it out of Ireland. They will
+not trust Irishmen, nor will they rely on Irish industry. Ballyshannon
+is waiting for the impersonal Somebody or the shadowy Something that
+is to come forward and put everything right. Galway is so waiting,
+Limerick is so waiting, Cork is so waiting, Westport, Newport, Donegal
+are so waiting. It never occurs to them to do something for
+themselves. When the suggestion is made they become irate, and
+excitedly ask, What could we do? How are we to begin? Where are we to
+find the money? Who is to take the first step? They fail to see that
+the settlement towns have long since answered these queries, and that
+the capacity to do so marks the difference in the breeds. These
+hopeless, helpless, Keltic Irishmen are unfit for self-government.
+They require the india-rubber tube and the feeding-bottle. They want
+to be spoon-fed and patted on the back when they choke. To instance
+the Scots settlements is to madden them. These thriving communities
+are a standing reproach, and cannot be explained away. Saxon Strabane
+flourishes, while Keltic Donegal declines, the latter having all the
+advantages of the former with the addition of a harbour and good
+fishing grounds. "Look at the condition of the country," say the Home
+Rulers. "Behold the poverty of the peasantry," they continually do
+cry. The visible nakedness of the land is their chief and most
+effective argument. The Unionist answer is conclusive, and of itself
+should be enough to demolish the Nationalists. See the Protestant
+communities of Ireland,--all, without exception, advancing in
+prosperity. They have no advantages which are denied to the
+Nationalists. On the contrary, they live in the comparatively bleak
+and unfertile North, which by their unceasing industry they have
+developed to its fullest extent. They have tilled the ground until it
+resembles a garden, they have deepened the rivers, built harbours,
+created industries, been in every way successful. And all under
+precisely the same laws, the same government. The richest spots of
+Ireland, if inhabited by Keltic Irish, are steeped in poverty. The
+poorest spots, if inhabited by men of Saxon blood, become fat and
+well-liking. The fate of men lies mostly in themselves. This comes out
+forcibly in Ireland. Race, breed, heredity, call it what you will, in
+Ireland thrusts its influence on you, whether you will or no.
+Neighbouring towns, neighbouring farms, neighbouring cottages, present
+a series of striking contrasts, ever in favour of the Saxon, ever
+against the Kelt. The latter has not yet discovered that the secret
+word, the open sesame of the difficulty, the charm which only can give
+permanent comfort, is--Work. Nor has his race the spirit of mechanical
+invention or industrial enterprise, without which College Green
+Parliaments may sit in vain. The pure-blooded Kelt is easily
+discouraged, and no man sooner knows when he is beaten. More than
+this, he always expects to be beaten, so that he is beaten before he
+begins. As a talker he is unequalled, and in this long-eared age, when
+the glibbest gabbler is reckoned the greatest man, his agitators have
+floated to the front. The Ballyshannon people can talk with the
+volubility of a Hebrew cheap Jack, but their jaw-power, like their
+water-power, mostly runs to waste. They have the silly suspicion and
+the childish credulity of the Donegal rural districts. A fluent
+politician said, "Why are all the Protestants Unionists? Perfectly
+simple, that. Because they are all well off. There you are. And being
+well off, they want no change. That's their selfishness. Now we, who
+are not Protestants (thank God), are for the most part poor. Our
+living is precarious. We don't know where to look, nor what to do, to
+improve our worldly position. We think it likely that an Irish
+Parliament would do something for us. In what way? Why, in the
+direction of public works and in the building of factories. Also in
+the protection of Irish industries. Where would the money come from?
+Why, from England, to be sure. And if England wouldn't lend it, plenty
+of other nations would; America, for instance. We shall have heaps of
+money. Mr. Gladstone has said it, and he is famous as a financier.
+There you have the reason why we want Home Rule, while the Protestants
+don't. They are well enough off already.
+
+"_Why_ are they well off, you ask? Also easy to answer. They have been
+the spoiled children of fortune. They have been petted and pampered by
+England for more than two hundred years. And although you will not of
+course admit it, yet we know, everybody here knows, that they have
+been secretly subsidised by every Tory Government. If they pay their
+rents, where do they get the money? From the Tory party. And Tory
+landlords give the best farms to Protestants, who having the pick of
+the land, ought to be well off. Wherever you go you will find the
+Protestants living on good land."
+
+I submitted that authentic records show that Ulster was formerly the
+most sterile, barren, unpromising part of Ireland, and that the change
+was entirely due to the two centuries of unremitting labour which the
+Scots settlers and their descendants had bestowed on the land; but,
+waiving this point, I asked him why the Unionist, that is, the
+Protestant, party were so much better educated, and why the heretics
+were so much cleaner. He had stated that the Black-mouths were
+subsidised by the Tory Party. Did the British Government also supply
+them with soap?
+
+At this point my friend's explanations became unintelligible, but his
+general drift seemed to indicate that the people were too downtrodden,
+too much oppressed, were groaning too painfully under the cruel
+British yoke, to have the spirit to look after the duties of the
+toilet. In other words, the Irish people will wash themselves when
+they get Home Rule. At the next election Mr. Gladstone will doubtless
+bring forward this aspect of the case as a sop to the soap-making
+interest.
+
+Another Ballyshannoner was of a diametrically opposite opinion. "We
+are poor because we have no notion of making money by modern methods.
+We have always lived on the land, selling our superfluity to pay the
+rent, and now that our arrangements are disturbed, we don't know which
+way to turn. The blame rests with America, whose competition has so
+lowered the price of produce that the farmer's superfluity, that is,
+what he does not consume himself, will no longer suffice to pay the
+rent. That is a general statement only. Landlords are generally
+reasonable, and meet their tenants fairly enough when the tenants are
+well-disposed and honest. The tenant-farmers of Ireland have no more
+to complain of than the tenant-farmers of England--much less in
+fact--but they have an army of agitators, an ignorant English press,
+and the G.O.M. on their side. That makes all the difference. We have
+occasional cases of unfair landlordism, but they are so rare as to be
+the talk of a county or two.
+
+"A Mrs. Hazlitt holds, with her farm, about twenty or thirty acres of
+slobland reclaimed from the Atlantic. Slobland is land reclaimed from
+the sea. This piece is on Donegal Bay. It was protected by a great
+dyke after the Dutch style. But the Atlantic is sometimes angry, and
+then he becomes unmanageable. He was ill-tempered one night (being
+troubled with wind), and he just washed down the dyke and inundated
+the reclaimed meadows, upon, which I have seen the most beautiful
+crops. The landlord, the Reverend James Hamilton, a Protestant rector,
+insists on rent being paid for this washed-away land. He does not
+rebuild the dyke, and the land lies waste--the widow paying rent for
+acres of useless salt marsh. That is pointed to by all the malcontents
+in Donegal as a specimen of landlordism, and Protestant landlordism,
+and more especially reverend Protestant landlordism. Nobody but a
+parson would exact the rent. These isolated examples are cited to
+bring discredit on Protestant landlords in general.
+
+"This town is asleep, and it will not awake till the last Judgment. In
+1885 we had a manufacturer from Belfast looking about for the best
+place for a big cloth mill on the river. The town was in a ferment of
+excitement, and everybody began to wonder what he would do with his
+additional income. The shop-keepers expected that their customers
+would have twice the money to spend in future, and the working folks
+began to be cocky with their employers, saying that they would get
+much better wages at the great factory. Then Mr. Gladstone brought out
+his '86 bill, and the Belfast man drew in his horns. He told me that
+he would not risk a farthing in any speculative venture while the
+threat of Home Rule was held over us. He was quite right. The
+Ballyshannon men were relieved from the trouble of deciding how they
+would spend their surplus money, and they ranged themselves on the
+bridge or at their usual corners, where you may now see them, propping
+up the old houses with their lazy backs, and discussing the wrongs of
+Ireland. What they would do without their supposed, wrongs nobody
+knows. In English hands this would be a money-making place. We have
+enormous advantages of situation, and the water power is almost
+unequalled in Ireland. Yet from here to Belleek, a distance of four
+miles, there is nothing whatever being done with it.
+
+"The backwardness of the Irish and their poverty are, in my opinion,
+due to their inferiority as a race of men. Wherever there is a
+factory, you will find all the foremen Protestants--that is, Saxons.
+And Irishmen expect it. They will not work under Irish foremen, if
+they can help it. The Catholic labourer will work for the Protestant
+farmer, for choice, every time. The Catholic housekeeper goes to the
+Protestant shop, by preference. Where their own personal and earthly
+interests are concerned, the Papist population always prefer the
+guidance of the cursed heretic. And yet they express for the
+Black-mouths the greatest contempt and aversion, and would willingly
+put them out of the country to-morrow. That is because they wish to
+possess our goods. They vote for Home Rule in the belief that they are
+paving the way for a dismissal of Protestants, and the division of
+their property. They do not know the name of the man who represents
+them, the title of the Parliamentary division for which he sits, or
+even, in many cases, the name of the county in which they themselves
+reside. To talk reason to such people would be absurd. Trained from
+their infancy to regard England as an enemy, they would not listen to
+anyone speaking on her behalf. They declare that they are barefoot
+because England wears their shoes, that they are starving that England
+may be over-fed. The how, the why, the wherefore are not within their
+ken, but they are sure of the facts. They had them from Father Dick,
+Tom, or Harry, and the holy man would not tell a lie. Stupid people
+over the Channel, listening to this iterated complaint, are acting as
+though it were true. Gladstone took it up, and his followers followed.
+No doubt it was all that most of them could do. Result,--tumult,
+disturbance, confusion worse confounded. Home Rule means that the
+country will be deluged with blood, that civilisation will receive a
+shock which will send back the island for a century. The causes of
+Ireland's poverty are laziness and lack of enterprise, the latter
+accentuated by everlasting disturbance. Before the Nationalists we had
+the Fenians, the Whiteboys, the Ribbon-men, the United Irishmen, the
+Defenders, the goodness-knows-what, running back in continuous line up
+to the dawn of history. No wonder we are poor. Cannot Gladstonians
+read the records? If they did so, and if they were acquainted with the
+character of the Irish when in their native land, they would agree
+with my cook, herself a Kelt of Kelts, who says that Irishmen are
+leather, good leather, but fit only for the sole, and not for the
+uppers.
+
+"I used to regard Mr. Gladstone as an honest man. Now I think
+otherwise. As for the ruck that follow him--well, if they were
+intelligent when honest, or honest when intelligent, nobody could
+understand their deviation from the path of reason and rectitude. But
+the rogues will of course do anything they think will suit them best,
+no matter what befalls their country; and as for the rest, why of
+course no reasonable man would blame people for not thinking, when
+Providence has not provided them with the requisite machinery."
+
+Ballyshannon, August 5th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 58.--THE TRUTH ABOUT BUNDORAN.
+
+
+There is no railway between Donegal and Ballyshannon, fifteen miles
+away. The largest town in the county is not connected with the
+principal port. But you can steam from Ballyshannon to Bundoran, the
+favourite watering-place of Donegal, quaint and romantic, with a deep
+bay and grassy cliffs. The bathing-grounds have a smooth floor of
+limestone, and the Atlantic rolls in majestically, sending aloft
+columns of white spray as its waters strike the outlying islands of
+rock, each with a green crown of vegetation. The bare-headed and
+bare-legged natives walk side by side with the fashionably-dressed
+citizens of Dublin, Belfast, and Londonderry. The poorest folks are
+tolerably clean, and, unlike the Southerners, occasionally wash their
+feet. The town is small, but there is plenty of good accommodation for
+holiday makers. Bundoran is Catholic and intolerant. Although
+depending on their Protestant countrymen for nine-tenths of their
+livelihood, the people of Bundoran object to Protestantism, and the
+intensity of their antipathy to the Black-mouths has impelled them to
+quarrel with their bread-and-butter. Of late the question of tolerance
+has been much discussed. Sapient persons whose assumption is equal to
+their ignorance of the subject, affect to despise the fears of the
+scattered Protestant population whose alarm is based on the experience
+of a lifetime. English Home Rulers who wish to create effect
+unblushingly affirm that the Protestants are the only intolerants, and
+that the Papists are as distinguished for affectionate toleration as
+for industry and honesty. In direct opposition to daily experience and
+the evidence of history, they assert that the Papists are the
+persecuted party, and that they only practise their religion with fear
+and trembling. Notwithstanding the well-known doctrine of the Roman
+Church, which preserves heaven exclusively for those within its own
+pale, these eccentric politicians aver that under a Roman Catholic
+Parliament, elected by the clergy alone, the isolated Protestants of
+Catholic Ireland, known in the Papist vernacular as Black-faces,
+Black-mouths, Heretics, Soupers, and Jumpers, would be treated with
+perfect consideration, would enjoy the fullest freedom, the most
+indulgent toleration, would, in short, be placed in a position of
+equality with the predestined inhabitants of Paradise, or, to quote
+Catechism, the inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. The persons most
+nearly concerned know better. The shrewd farmers of Ulster, like the
+Puritan brethren of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, are entirely
+devoid of faith in the promised Papist toleration. Protestant equality
+under a Home Rule Parliament! You might as well tell them to plant
+potatoes and expect therefrom a crop of oats. Men do not gather grapes
+off thorns nor figs off thistles.
+
+The Bundoran Protestants have evidence to offer. The date is recent.
+Not two hundred years ago, but in the year of grace
+eighteen-hundred-and-ninety-three. Seeing that the little seaside
+resort was full of holiday-makers from the Protestant counties of
+Fermanagh and Tyrone, two young Protestant clergymen determined to hold
+Gospel services in a tent which was pitched in a field the property of
+Mr. James A. Hamilton, J.P. For about a week beforehand handbills
+announcing the services for July 21 had been distributed in the town
+and suburbs, but no controversial topic was mentioned, nor was it
+intended that the services should be other than strictly evangelical.
+The tent was erected solely to accommodate the great influx of
+visitors, after the manner so familiar in England. Here was a test of
+Papal toleration. The tent was on private ground, and if Papists did
+not like it they could easily keep away, making a wry face and spitting
+out the abomination as they passed, after their liberal custom. This,
+however, was not enough. No sooner had the handbills been issued, than
+a most scurrilous placard appeared, calculated to inflame the passions
+of the ignorant, and to make them act after their kind. The Gospellers
+were accused of an attempt to poach on the Papal preserves, and it was
+mockingly stated that they had at last come to Christianise the
+benighted Papists. The effect of this placard was soon evident. It
+became known that the Roman Catholics of the district had determined
+that they would allow no Gospel services in Bundoran. The police
+authorities, who know all about Papist "tolerance," increased the small
+village force to twenty-five men, but, as the result proved, these were
+absolutely useless. A mob of more than a thousand pious ruffians
+gathered early in the evening, and attacked in a brutal and merciless
+manner every person they suspected of being on the way to the meeting.
+The two Evangelists went to the tent under the escort of the
+twenty-five policemen, but before they could commence the service the
+apostles of toleration made a desperate rush on the congregation, most
+of whom were struck with bludgeons and stones, knocked down, kicked,
+and otherwise maltreated. The constabulary with great determination,
+but with much difficulty, protected the two young clergymen, upon whom
+a most venomous attack was made. The Protestants defended themselves
+with umbrellas, walking-sticks, and the like, but being strongly
+charged these proved of little avail against the wild onslaught of the
+party of toleration. Well may the local paper say that "a regular panic
+pervades the resident and visiting Protestant families."
+
+Mr. Morley, replying to a question in the House, said the reports were
+exaggerated. The hapless Irish Secretary, unable to meet this and
+similar charges with denial, always relies on the plea of
+"exaggeration." The statement given above is derived from
+eye-witnesses of both creeds, and from an official source. One word as
+to the plea of exaggeration.
+
+When I had investigated the fifteen moonlighting atrocities of four
+weeks in County Limerick, the County Inspector, who had just returned
+from a conference with Mr. Morley, said to me:--
+
+"Everything is ve-ry quiet. We're going on very nicely now." But the
+_Gazette_ gave particulars of the shooting in the legs of the four
+members of the Quirke family, and Mr. Morley was obliged to admit the
+fifteen outrages which constituted County Inspector Moriarty's idea of
+"quiet." Subordinates will say there is peace when there is no peace,
+if the master requires it. The Bundoran outrage is not susceptible of
+exaggeration. Call another witness.
+
+The _Sligo Independent_, which being published on the spot can speak
+with authority, says that "the intolerant and bigoted Roman Catholics
+of Bundoran and surrounding districts look upon Protestantism as a
+kind of leprosy which ought at all hazards to be stamped out," and
+further states that "even the ladies did not escape their fanatical
+hatred and fury. Several people were severely injured, and a clergyman
+who was coming to the meeting with his Bible in his hand, was thrown
+down and badly beaten, the Book being torn from him and destroyed.
+What may Protestants expect should the Home Rule Bill ever become law,
+when such disgraceful outbursts of religious bigotry are quite common
+under the existing _régime_? The natural conclusion is that all such
+Gospel meetings would be put down with a strong hand, and Protestant
+religious liberty trampled under foot by their unscrupulous Roman
+Catholic fellow-countrymen. And yet Loyalists are told to trust in
+them and all will be well!" Thus the Sligo journal; and its editor may
+perhaps, under the circumstances, be pardoned for suggesting that "it
+were better for Loyalists not to put themselves in the power of men
+who have proved themselves unfit even to associate with civilised
+beings. Bundoran will feel the evil effects of these insane attacks
+upon defenceless people next season when tourists and pleasure-seekers
+will avoid this seat of stupid bigotry, and visit some other summer
+resort where they will at least be allowed to worship their Maker
+according to their own desires." Exactly. Many visitors left at once,
+and will never return. During my six hours' stay I heard complaints of
+the falling-off of business. If the place be empty next summer the
+people will attribute the loss to the British Government, and
+especially to the machinations of the Tory party. An old fisherman
+said the fish had left the bay. I assured him they would return under
+a Dublin Parliament. He refused to be comforted, because they were
+not.
+
+There is no railway from Bundoran to Sligo, that is, no direct
+railway. The great lines mostly run from east to west, but the west
+lacks connecting links. Look at the map of Ireland. Cast your eye on
+the west coast. If you would go by rail from Westport to Sligo, you
+must first go east to Mullingar. If you would go by rail from Sligo to
+Bundoran, you must first go east to Enniskillen. If from Bundoran to
+Donegal, less than twenty miles, you must again go to Enniskillen,
+thence to Strabane, where you arrive after the best part of a day's
+journey, ten miles further away than when you started, thence to
+Stranorlar, changing there to the narrow-gauge railway for your final
+trip. Travelling on the west coast is tedious and expensive, whether
+you go round by rail or drive direct. Many of the most attractive
+tourist districts are almost inaccessible. To open them up is to
+enrich the neighbourhood. Few Englishmen know what the Balfour
+railways really mean. The following statement gives particulars
+respecting the Light Railways authorised by the Salisbury Government,
+and constructed either wholly or in part by the nation. These
+railways introduce tourists to those parts of Ireland which are best
+worth visiting, and the economy of time, money, and muscular tissue
+effected by them would be hard to overestimate. But this is not all,
+nor was this their primary purpose. They gave and still give
+employment to the people of the district, and besides bringing the
+money of the tourists into the country, enable the natives to send
+their produce out of it, to place it on the market, to turn it into
+gold. There is no railway from Dugort, in Achil, to any market. Fish
+caught in Blacksod Bay are therefore worth nothing except as food for
+the fisherman's family. Large crabs were offered to me for one
+halfpenny each. Does this fact impress the usefulness of Balfour's
+railways? Here they are complete:--
+
+                              Length in    Balfour's
+              Name.           miles.       contribution.
+  Donegal and Killybegs        17-3/4       Ł115,000
+  Stranorlar and Glenties      24-1/2        116,000
+
+On this line you run for twelve miles from Stranorlar without seeing a
+single cottage. There are none within sight on either side.
+
+  Downpatrick and Ardglass      7-1/4        Ł30,000
+  Galway and Clifden           50            264,000
+
+This will run in connection with the splendid system of the Midland
+and Western Railway, opening up the grand scenery of Connemara, which
+to the average Britisher is like a new world. No end of fishing here
+among virgin shoals of trout and salmon, and nearly always for
+nothing. It was along the first sixteen miles of this line, still
+unopened, that I ran on the engine to Oughterard.
+
+  Westport to Mulranney        18-1/4       Ł131,400
+      To which is added the
+  Achil Island extension        8-1/4         65,000
+
+This will enable travellers to steam from Dublin to Achil Island viâ
+Midland and Western, instead of the ten hours on an open car, which on
+their arrival at Westport now awaits visitors to Dugort. It was on
+this line that I had the startling adventures on a fiery untamed bogey
+engine, lent to the _Gazette_ by Mr. Robert Worthington, of Dublin.
+But I must condense.
+
+  Claremorris and Collooney                   47         Ł150,000
+  Ballina and Killala                          6-1/2       44,000
+  Bantry extension                             2           15,000
+  Baltimore extension                          8           56,700
+  West Kerry and Valentia                     27           85,000
+  Headford and Kenmare                        20           50,000
+  Milltown, Malbay, Kilkee, and Kilrush       26   2% on  120,000
+  Tuam and Claremorris                        17   2  "    97,000
+  Ballinrobe and Claremorris                  12   2  "    71,664
+
+Besides these, similar lines have been constructed, and are now
+working between Tralee, Dingle, and Castlegregory; Skibbereen and
+Skull; Ballinscarty, Timoleague, and Courtmacsherry. The Cork and
+Muskerry Railway, which runs through the groves of Blarney, owes its
+completion and success to Mr. Balfour's administration.
+
+Driving from Bray to the Dargle, my jarvey pointed to the ruins of a
+light railway undertaken without the aid of the British intellect.
+"'Tis a nice mess they made iv it, the quarrelin' pack o' consated
+eejits! They must run a chape little thing to the Dargle, about two
+miles away, along the roadside, just as Balfour showed them the way.
+What have they done? Desthroyed the road. Lost all the money they
+could raise. Got the maker to take back the rails (for they bought
+thim afore they wanted thim), an' the only thing they now have in the
+shape of shareholders' property is a lawsuit wid the Wicklow folks
+about desthroyin' the road. Faix, an iligant dividend is that same.
+An' them's the chaps that's to rule the counthry. That's the sort of
+thim, I mane. Many's the time I seen the Irish mimbers. Sorra a thing
+can they do, barrin' dhrink an' talk. I wouldn't thrust one of thim to
+rub down a horse, nor wid a bottle of poteen. Divil a one of thim but
+would dhrink as much whiskey as would wash down a car, an' if they
+could run as fast as they can talk, begorra, ye might hunt hares wid
+thim. Rule the counthry, would ye. Whe-w-w-w!" He whistled with a
+"dying fall," like the strain in _Twelfth Night_.
+
+I drove from Bundoran to Sligo, the sea on the right, the Benbulben
+mountains on the left, singularly shaped but splendid. The round
+towers and ancient Irish crosses, the lakes and rivers of Sligo, are
+full of interest and beauty. The Abbey ruins are exceptionally fine.
+The town is fairly well built, but it is easy to realise that once
+more it is Connaught. During a turn round Bridge Street, a country
+cart heaves alongside, steered by a stalwart man in hodden gray. He
+notes the stranger, and politely says,
+
+"Can I be of any use? I see you are a visitor."
+
+We fell into conversation. Presently I said, "Everything will be well
+when you get Home Rule."
+
+He stopped the cart and protested against this statement. Unknowingly
+I had tapped a celebrity. My hodden-gray friend was none other than
+the famous Detective James Magee, who arrested James Stephens, the
+Number One, the Head Centre of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood;
+also John O'Leary, editor of the Fenian _Irish People_, of which
+O'Donovan Rossa was business manager. O'Leary was a doctor hailing
+from Tipperary. He asked Magee if he might have his "night-cap," and
+his captor allowed him to call for the whiskey at a well-known Dublin
+resort, on parole of honour. Later, as a crowded street was reached,
+O'Leary said, "There are three thousand of my friends there. If you go
+that way I cannot save you. Better try a back street." "That was
+handsome," said Mr. Magee. "O'Leary was a gentleman. Stephens was only
+a 'blower.'" My friend was unalterably set against Home Rule, which he
+regards as an empty, foolish cry. Being a pensioner he wishes to be
+reticent, but his opinion is pronounced, and the Sligo people know it.
+He has a high opinion of the law-abiding instincts of his compatriots,
+and believes that "if they were left to themselves" the district
+would need no police. "A better-hearted, kinder, more obliging people
+never lived," said this excellent judge, who after twenty-seven years
+of police service, returned to end his days among them. And my short
+experience of the Sligo folks confirms this statement. They were not
+all so reserved as Detective-sergeant Magee. A thriving shopkeeper
+said:--"The majority, if you count noses, are for Home Rule, but if
+you count only brains and intelligence you would find an overwhelming
+majority against it. Mr. Gladstone and his set of blockheads seem
+quite impervious to reason, and even the constituencies of England
+seem to lack information. The reason is plain. While we have been
+minding our work the Nationalists have been agitating. For thirteen
+years they have been on the stump, and have stolen a march on us and
+they take a lot of catching up. We allowed them to empty their
+wind-bags, forgetting that the English people were not so conversant
+with the facts or with the character of the orators as we are. We
+thought that no precautions were required, and that their preposterous
+statements would be received in England as intelligent, enlightened
+people would receive them here. Their strength in Ireland is almost
+entirely among the illiterates, who in the polling booths are coerced
+by their priests. I have seen a man crying because he had not been
+allowed to vote for the candidate supported by his employer. Such a
+ridiculous thing could not happen in England, and Englishmen who do
+not know Ireland and the Irish will scarcely credit it. This shows how
+unable most Saxons are to understand Irish character and motive.
+
+"All our civilisation is from England, all our progress, all our
+enlightenment, and nearly all our money. As a poor, helpless,
+semi-barbaric country, we ought to cleave to England with all our
+might and main. A more and more complete and perfect unity is our best
+hope. To ask for separation is the wildest absurdity. And just as we
+were beginning to go along smoothly! That was entirely due to the just
+but firm administration of the Balfour period.
+
+"Among Irishmen justice with firmness is always appreciated in the
+long run. An Irish Secretary needs the hand of iron in the velvet
+glove. Paddy spots the philanthropic fumbler in a moment, and uses
+him, laughing the while at what he rightly calls his 'philandering.'
+Morley means well, but nobody here respects him. He knows no more of
+Irish character than a blind bull-pup. His master in my opinion is
+worse, if possible. He is deaf to all the arguments of Irish sense and
+Irish culture, and proposes to finally resolve the unresolvable, to
+settle the Irish difficulty by a Catholic Parliament. As well go out
+with a net to catch the wind. He listens to the representatives of
+ruffianism, counting them first. We kept silent too long. We thought
+the donkeys might bray for ever without shaking down the stars. We
+were wrong. Now we are almost powerless. For what are a handful of
+reasonable men against a crowd of blackguards with big sticks?"
+
+While conversing with Detective Magee, that astute gentleman pointed
+out The O'Connor, lineal King of Connaught, and a staunch Unionist! A
+devout Catholic and intensely Irish, yet the uncrowned King is a
+loyalist. But The O'Connor is a man of superior understanding. After
+this I saw three Home Rulers--yea, I conversed with four, one a
+positive person whom I mistook for a farm labourer, but who proved to
+be a National schoolmaster who absorbed whiskey like the desert sands.
+A decent farmer who thought the Land League the finest thing in the
+wuruld, complained that while the British Government have contracted
+for hay at Ł8 15s., yet he and his friends could only get Ł3 for "best
+saved." His idea of Home Rule was--No Rent to pay. A ferocious
+commercial traveller, whose jaw and cheekbones were as much too large
+as his eyes and forehead were too small, wanted to know "what right
+had England to rule Ireland? Ye have no more right to rule Ireland
+than to rule France." This was his only idea. He was a patriot of the
+sentimental type, and wished that Ireland might take her place as an
+independent nation with Belgium, Switzerland, Holland. His hero was
+Paddy O'Donnell, of Bedlam--_clarum et venerabile nomen_--who for five
+days held his house, since called the Fort, against a strong force of
+police. "If all was like O'Donnell, we'd soon have the counthry to
+ourselves," said my commercial friend. "An' if ye don't let us go,
+we'll make ye wish ye did. Wait till ye get into throuble with France.
+The Siam business may yet turn up thrumps." He was very voluble, very
+loud, very illiterate, and I declined to discuss the question except
+in Irish, which he did not speak. Like most of the patriot orators of
+Ireland, he was as ignorant of his native language as of his native
+literature, and every other. This is the class from whom the political
+speakers who infest country places are drawn. At first sight they seem
+unworthy of notice, but contempt may be pushed too far. Even wasps
+become dangerous when in swarms. And Hatred is like fire: it makes
+even light rubbish deadly.
+
+Sligo, August 8th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 59.--IRISH NATIONALISM IS NOT PATRIOTISM.
+
+
+My tour through Ireland having now come to an end, I propose to sum up
+the conclusions I have formed in this and the three following
+articles. In connection with the Home Rule Bill, we have heard much of
+the "aspirations of a people." Mr. Gladstone has taken up the cry, and
+his subservient followers at once brought their speeches and facial
+expressions into harmony with the selected sentiment. These
+anti-English Englishmen would fain pose as persons in advance of their
+time, determined to do justice though the heavens should fall. They
+agree with Mr. Labouchere that John Bull is a tyrant, a robber, and a
+hypocrite, and that it is high time justice should be done to Ireland.
+As no substantial injustice exists, it is necessary to fall back on
+sentiment, and to quote the "aspirations of a people." The desire for
+a system of Irish autonomy is praised as a manifestation of patriotism
+which in all ages of the world has been honoured by worthy men. The
+English supporters of Mr. Gladstone, with their assumption of superior
+virtue, their Pharasaic We are not as other men, nor even as these
+Tories, would have us believe that with the granting of self-rule
+Ireland will be satisfied, that the gratification of a laudable
+sentiment is all that is now required to bind together the peoples in
+an infrangible Union of Hearts, and that peace and prosperity will at
+once follow in the wake of this merely sentimental concession.
+
+The great mass of the Irish electorate know nothing of all this. Tap
+them wherever you will, north, south, east, or west, and you find one
+dominant thought--that of pecuniary gain. They know nothing of the
+proposed bill, and are totally incapable of comprehending its scope
+and effect. The peasantry of Ireland are actuated by motives entirely
+different from those affecting the rural constituencies of England.
+The Briton is proud of his country, believes in its might, justice,
+supremacy; and despite occasional grumbling is satisfied that the
+powers that be will do him right in the long run. The Irish peasant is
+essentially inimical to England. He is always "agin the
+Government"--that is, the rule of England. He regards the landlord as
+trebly an enemy--firstly as a heretic, secondly as the representative
+of British rule, and last, but by no means least, as the person to
+whom rent is due. He desires to abolish the landlord, not in the
+interests of religion--I speak now of the peasantry, and not the
+clergy--and not in the interests of patriotism, for if a Dublin
+Parliament were to cost him sixpence, the priests themselves could
+hardly drag him to the poll; but purely and simply to avoid any
+further payment of what he regards as the accursed impost on the land.
+Phillip Fahy, the leading light of Carnaun, near Athenry, is exactly
+typical of rural Irish Patriotism. "Did ye hear of the Home Rule Bill?
+What does it mane, at all, at all? Not one o' us knows more than that
+lump o' stone ye sit on. Will it give us the land for nothin', for
+that's all we hear? We'll be obliged av ye could explain it a thrifle,
+for sorra one but's bad off, an' Father O'Baithershin says 'Howld yer
+whist,' says he 'till ye see what'll happen,' says he. Will we get the
+bit o' ground widout rint, yer honner's glory?" Mr. Tynan, of Monivea,
+said that his landlord was liberal and good, and admitted that his
+land was not too highly rented, but, said he, "We have no objection to
+do better still." The run on the Irish Post Office Savings Banks at
+once illustrates the patriotism of the people and their confidence in
+the proposed Dublin Parliament. It was well known and understood, so
+far as the poorer classes are capable of understanding anything, that
+the floating balance of the Post Office Banks would constitute the
+only working capital of the Irish Legislature. Here was an
+opportunity for self-sacrifice. Here was a chance of manifesting the
+faith animating the lovers of their country. But at the same time it
+was made known that the Post Office would pass from the British
+control to that of the Irish people's chosen representatives. It might
+have been supposed that the electors would rejoice thereat with
+exceeding great joy, and that in order to show their trust in an Irish
+Parliament they would increase their deposits, and at considerable
+personal inconvenience refrain from withdrawals. Nothing of the kind.
+The "aspirations of a people" were at once strongly defined, but this
+time not in the direction of patriotism. It availed not to urge upon
+them the argument that the four millions of the Post Office Savings
+Banks were absolutely necessary to the successful administration of an
+Irish Parliament. In patriotic Dublin the run on the Post Office was
+tremendous. The master of a small sub-office told me that the
+withdrawals over his counter had for some time amounted to Ł200 per
+week, and that they were increasing to Ł70 per day. There was not
+enough gold in Dublin to meet the demands, and cash was being
+forwarded from London. The patriots who had no money deposited in the
+Post Office made no secret of their indignation, stigmatising their
+fellow-countrymen as recreants and traitors, but without perceptible
+effect. The Dublin Savings Bank became the trusted depositary of the
+money. This institution is managed by an association of Dublin
+merchants, not for profit, but for the encouragement of thrift, and
+the confidence reposed in them was doubtless due to the fact that the
+directors, on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, had publicly
+announced their intention, on the bill becoming law, to pay twenty
+shillings in the pound and at once to close the bank. The patriot
+depositors were not deterred by this announcement, nor by the
+directors' letter to Mr. Gladstone, in which they declared that their
+determination to wind up the affairs of the bank was due to the fact
+that in the interest of their depositors they felt themselves unable
+to accept the security of an Irish Legislature. Patriotism would
+surely have resented this imputation. But Nationalism in its present
+phase is nothing more than selfish cupidity and lust of gain. This is
+made abundantly manifest by the freely-uttered sentiments of all
+classes of the Nationalist party. The first answer I received to an
+inquiry as to what advantages would be derived from a patriot
+Parliament was elicited from an ancient Dubliner, whose extraordinary
+credulity was equal to anything afterwards met with in the rural
+districts:--"The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv
+us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay sojers to grind us down, we'll
+put into our own pockets, av you plaze." The complaint about the
+British Government veto on Irish mining, which I fondly believed to be
+sporadic, proved to be chronic, universal. Here again the notion of
+easily acquired wealth was the impulse, and not the pure and
+self-denying influence of patriotism. "The British Government won't
+allow us to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get
+the bill every man can take a shpade, an', begorra! can dig what he
+wants. The Phaynix Park is all cram-full o' coal that the Castle folks
+won't allow us to dig, bad scran to them! Whin we get the bill we'll
+sink them mines an' send the Castle to blazes." The coal under the
+Phoenix Park is a matter of pious belief with every back-slum
+Dubliner. The gold of the Wicklow mountains is proverbial all over
+Ireland. There is not a nobleman's demesne that does not cover untold
+wealth in some shape or form. It may be gold, silver, copper, lead, or
+only coal or iron. But it is there, and the people of the
+neighbourhood want an Irish Parliament in order that the treasures may
+be turned into money. The more intelligent Nationalists foster these
+beliefs, although they know them to be without foundation. They know
+that the treasures do not exist in paying quantities, and also that if
+they did exist their fellow-countrymen are too lazy to dig them up.
+The Nationalist orators never rely on patriotic sentiment. They
+promise the land for nothing. Mr. William O'Brien has unceasingly
+offered as a bribe the promise of prairie rents for the farmers, but
+Tim Healy went one better when at Limerick he said that "The people of
+this country never ought to be satisfied so long as a single penny of
+rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of Ireland." Well might
+Sir George Trevelyan say that Irish agitators have done much to
+demoralise the country, and that in many parts of Ireland they gained
+their livelihood by criminal agitation. The same authority tells us
+that "an Irish Parliament will be independent of the Parliament of
+this country, but will be dependent on the votes of the small farmers,
+who have been taught that rent is robbery." That is a precise
+statement of the position so far as the agricultural voters are
+concerned. Their patriotism is nothing more nor less than a sure and
+certain hope of pecuniary advantage. The green flag of Ireland has no
+charms for them. The ancient glories of Hibernia are sung to them in
+vain. They care not for the Onward march to Freedom. They will make no
+sacrifices on the shrine of their country. The subscriptions furnished
+by the Irish peasantry for the furtherance of the cause amount to
+almost nothing, although extorted partly by compulsion and partly by
+the hope of future profit. The following facts will show how
+spontaneous is their patriotism. At a Sunday meeting at Gurteen in
+1887, the Very Reverend Canon O'Donohoe in the chair, it was resolved,
+"That a collection for the defence of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien be
+made during the ensuing week in this locality, and that not less than
+sixpence be accepted from any person. _Anyone not subscribing will be
+considered not in sympathy with the Branch._" Those only who know
+Ireland well will be able to appreciate the terrible significance of
+the last sentence of this resolution, which for the information of the
+peasantry was made public in the Nationalist _Sligo Champion_. A
+similar incentive to patriotism seems to have been required by the
+Kilshelan Branch, for at another Sunday Meeting, the Reverend Father
+Dunphy in the chair, it was unanimously resolved, "That all members
+who do not pay in subscriptions on or before the next meeting, which
+will be held on the last Sunday of this month, shall have their names
+published and posted on the chapel gate for two consecutive Sundays."
+This quotation is from the _Munster Express_, published in Limerick.
+At a meeting reported by the _Kerry Sentinel_ "the conduct of several
+members, who had not renewed their subscriptions, was strongly
+condemned, the reverend president, Father T. Enright, giving orders to
+have a list, with their names, sent to him before the next meeting."
+The chapel doors are used as instruments of boycotting. The priest
+sits in judgment on all who are not sufficiently patriotic. The people
+are compelled to subscribe to the cause, whether they like it or not.
+These cases could be multiplied to infinity. They not only give an
+excellent illustration of the conduct of the Irish clergy in political
+affairs, but they also furnish a curious commentary on the enthusiasm
+which is supposed to mark the Aspirations of a People, who, as Mr.
+Gladstone might say are "rightly struggling to be free." I have
+conversed with hundreds of Irish farmers and I never yet met one who
+was willing to sacrifice a sixpence on "the altar of his country," or
+to trust an Irish Parliament with his own property, or to invest a
+penny on purely Irish security. He loves his ease, no man likes it
+better, and No Rent means less exertion. Mr. O'Doherty, of County
+Donegal, a Catholic Home Ruler, said the landlords were all right now
+under compulsion, but what the tenantry demanded was to be released
+entirely from the landlords' yoke. The farmers, he said, cared nothing
+for Home Rule, but the Nationalists had preached prairie value, and
+the people expected to drive out the landowners and Protestants. Mr.
+John Cook, of Londonderry, a Protestant Home Ruler and a man of
+culture, did not claim patriotism for the Nationalists, and
+unconsciously put his finger on the real incentive when he said:--"The
+landlords will be wronged under the present bill. It is a bad bill, an
+unjust bill, and will do more harm than good. England should have a
+voice in fixing the price of the land, for if the matter be left to
+the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants were
+buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found that
+their two-and-three-quarter per cent. interest came lower than their
+rent. But they have quite ceased to buy, because they expect the Irish
+Legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land
+for nothing." Patriotism had meanwhile received another sop. Mr. Healy
+advised the farmers to think twice before they bought their land, and
+hinted that their patience was likely to be well rewarded. Father J.
+Corcoran at Mullahoran, when consulted by a body of tenant farmers
+whose landlord offered to sell, distinctly advised them not to
+purchase, and gave a practical instruction on the subject, in which he
+endeavoured to prove that seventeen or eighteen years' purchase was at
+present unworthy of consideration, and advising the greatest caution
+in buying at all under present circumstances. The farmers' conception
+of Nationalism is plunder and confiscation. They vote for Home Rule
+because they thereby expect to make money, to become freeholders,
+landlords themselves, in short. They are taught that they have an
+inherent right to the land, and that an Irish Parliament will restore
+them their own. Father B. O'Hagan, addressing a meeting in company
+with William O'Brien, said:--"We have two classes of landlords, in
+brief. We have the royal scoundrels who took the land of our
+forefathers. I ask any of those noble ruffians to show me the title by
+which they lay claim to the soil of my ancestors. Then we have the
+landlords who have purchased their estates in the Land Courts. But
+they bought stolen goods, and they knew that the land was stolen. We
+must get rid of the landlords." Paddy is perfectly safe. The landlords
+who claim in descent and those who buy in the open market are equally
+denounced. Let him support the Nationalist party, and the land becomes
+his own. He does so, and his motive is by the unthinking called
+patriotism and by Mr. Gladstone the Aspirations of a People.
+
+There are of course other classes of Nationalists, but in comparison
+with the immense preponderance of rural voters they do not count for
+much. Mr. McGregor, of Anglesea Street, Dublin, once an earnest
+Gladstonian, said:--"The corner-men are Home Rulers because they want
+to spend what they never earned, and the farmers because they hope to
+get the land for nothing." The Dublin hotel-keepers are mostly Home
+Rulers, and the proprietor of Jury's, next door to the proposed House
+in College Green, is supposed to be consumed with patriotic fire. The
+hotel has recently been refitted. The Dublin shopkeepers, "those of
+the largest size," are strangely lacking in patriotism, and mostly
+support the Union. Patriotism is claimed for the Nationalist members,
+who, according to Nationalist sheets, were lifted from bog-holes,
+tripe shops, and small whiskey shops to decide the destinies of
+empires, to revel in comparative luxury, to enjoy a certain social
+distinction, to exchange their native bogs for the British metropolis,
+and to draw a salary beyond their wildest dreams. These questionable
+gentlemen, with the horse's tongue and cow's tail cutters, the
+firebrand priests and landlord-shooters, the moonlight marauders who
+shoot old women and children in the legs, burn the haystacks of their
+neighbours, refuse coffins and decent burial for the dead, apply the
+fiendish tortures of boycotting to innocent women and children,
+refusing them the means of subsistence, and poisoning their water
+supply with human filth--these _are_ patriots. Only their patriotism
+must cost them nothing, It must be cultivated at the expense of
+others. The patriots subscribe only under compulsion, and yet hope to
+make a profit by the transaction. As of a certain party of old, it may
+be said of them, "License they mean when they cry Liberty." Plunder
+they mean when they cry Patriotism. The sober and industrious portion
+of the Irish people, the pick of every part of Ireland, being opposed
+to Nationalism, are denied the virtue of patriotism. The merchants and
+manufacturers of Dublin and Belfast, the leading professional men of
+Ireland, the most learned scholars of her great University, her great
+soldiers, White, Wolseley, Roberts, her greatest living authors, the
+whole of her Protestant clergy of whatever sect, with their
+congregations, the pith and marrow of everything that is strong,
+stable, cultured, enlightened, prescient, must be pronounced
+unpatriotic--if Nationalism is Patriotism. Contrary to all human
+experience and to the course and constitution of nature, the people of
+England are asked to believe that love of their native land and desire
+to do the best for the commonweal, are the sole possession of the
+ignorant and rowdy classes of Irishmen, and notwithstanding the
+undeniable fact that Nationalist Irishmen of every colour accuse the
+Nationalist members of self-seeking, and of absolute indifference to
+everything: outside their own interests, we are asked to give to them
+exclusively the honour due to men who sacrifice all for their country
+and care for nothing but her welfare. Gladstonians themselves, in the
+deepest depths of their credulity, cannot in their hearts believe in
+Nationalist patriotism, except, perhaps, such as that of Mr. Kelly, of
+Athenry, who said, "I'm a Home Ruler out and out. The counthry's
+within a stone-throw of hell, and we may as well be in it altogether."
+
+Birmingham, August 11th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 60.--LAND HUNGER: ITS CAUSE, EFFECT, AND REMEDY.
+
+
+That Irish Nationalism is not Patriotism has been demonstrated by an
+appeal to admitted facts. The farmers hope to be relieved from payment
+of rent, the labourers hope to be employed in the mining of treasure
+at remunerative wages, the agitators hope for place and power, and
+everyone who has nothing hopes in the general confusion to make off
+with something. There is, in short, a shrewd popular notion that the
+foundering of the British ship of state would yield good wreckage. The
+false lights have done excellent service. Dillon, Davitt, O'Brien.
+Healy, and the rest of the would-be wreckers are shivering with
+excitement at the prospect of the crash which they fondly believe to
+be imminent. The helmsman is under their orders--will he be heaved
+overboard before he has done his work? If so, farewell to hope of
+plunder, farewell to hope of religions domination, to freehold farms
+for nothing, to gold mines, to every hope that made life pleasant, to
+all the fatuous beliefs that are the basis of Irish Nationalism. It
+has been shown that "patriotic" subscriptions could only be raised by
+threats, that the names of non-subscribers were posted on chapel
+gates, that resolutions fixing the minimum were passed, with a rider
+to the effect that persons not subscribing would be considered "out of
+sympathy," and that this fund was for the defence of the patriots
+Dillon and O'Brien, who afterwards ran away. The rush of the "patriot"
+depositors on the Post Office Savings Banks so soon as it was known
+that in the event of Home Rule the floating balance would constitute
+the working capital of the new Parliament, and would therefore be in
+the hands of brother "patriots," has been adduced as a fair measure of
+patriotic sincerity, and endless minor examples might have been given.
+We might have mentioned Delany, the principal clothier and outfitter
+of intensely patriotic Limerick, who had not a yard of Irish tweed in
+his stores; or the Dungannon folks, who think foul scorn of their own
+coal, and persist in buying the English product at double the cost; or
+Mr. Timony, of "patriotic Donegal," might have been quoted.
+"Irishmen," said the great draper, "will not wear Donegal tweed. But
+for England we should have no market at all." The patriots will not
+"part." "I'm sorry for you," said the kind old lady. "_How much_ are
+you sorry?" said the tramp. Tried by this test, Irish patriotism comes
+out very small. If "patriot" members had to live on the voluntary
+offerings of their constituencies, the trade would expire of
+inanition. The members would return to their bogs, their tripe shops,
+their shebeens, and patriotism would become a lost art. Irishmen will
+applaud with enthusiasm. They like a red-hot patriotic speech. But,
+like the crowd listening to the harp and fiddle at the street corner,
+they begin to shuffle off when the bag comes round.
+
+Irish land hunger is easy to understand and simple to define. The bulk
+of the population are agricultural, and closely wedded to custom.
+Their fathers lived on the land and by the land, and they expect to do
+likewise. _Sćva paupertas, et avitus apto cum lare fundus._ Their
+ideas of existence are inseparably connected with the land. Whatever
+knowledge they have relates to the land. Their farming skill is very
+limited; indeed, it may almost be said that they have none beyond that
+possessed by savages--but it is their only possession. They have no
+turn for mechanics. The rural Irishman is uneducated, and knows little
+beyond what he sees around him. So far as his experience goes, to be
+without land is to be without the one means of livelihood. The English
+small farmer is differently situated. If farming will not pay he has
+other resources. He can migrate to fifty towns having factories or
+great public works. And besides this, the Saxon is not crippled by an
+ignorant conservatism and a congenital inability to adapt himself to
+changed circumstances. Paddy is content with little, if he have his
+ease. He loves to put in the seed and then to sit down and wait for
+the crop, varying the proceedings with fairs and festive gatherings.
+Such is his conception of life. The ding-dong regularity of factory
+work does not suit him, so he clings to the land, which provides him
+with a bare subsistence, and that is all he wants. No ambition to be
+more luxurious than his father troubles him at all. Short spells of
+work, and long spells of play, are ensured to the fortunate holder of
+land. This is Paddy's conception of Paradise. Suppose the land held
+were at first sufficient to maintain his family. The boys grow up,
+and, according to custom, the paternal farm is divided, in the next
+generation again subdivided, until at last the amount of land
+remaining to each family is insufficient for its maintenance. Then the
+district becomes congested. The poverty of the people is attributed to
+the landlords, who are denounced as non-resident, notwithstanding the
+demonstrations of an affectionate tenantry, who now and then shoot one
+or two, _pour encourarger les autres_. If the people have food they
+have little or no money. The agitator comes and promises No Rent, the
+opening of gold mines and mighty factories, paying liberal wages,
+under the fostering wing of an Irish Parliament. The people are
+ignorant and credulous. They are, however, certain as to their own
+poverty, and they desire a change. The Roman Catholics regard
+themselves as the chosen people, the true sons of the soil, but they
+see that most of the great landowners are Protestant, that the
+Protestant farmers often hold uncommonly good land, and that if these
+were once dispossessed the righteous might again flourish as green bay
+trees. For while Papal Ireland is largely rock and bog, the heretical
+portion is reclaimed and tilled, the bogs drained, the primeval
+boulders rolled away, broken up, and made into fences. All this is
+tempting. Irish land hunger is foreshadowed in the story of Naboth and
+his vineyard.
+
+And Irish land hunger is largely responsible for Irish rents. Friends
+and neighbours--aye, even relatives near as brothers and sisters,
+compete against each other, and eagerly force up the price. Every
+Irish land agent will tell you of underhand intrigue in connection
+with land. Not only do brothers secretly strive to obtain advantage
+over each other by means of higher bidding, but bribery is tried. Mr.
+Robert Hare, of the Dublin Board of Works, said:--"My father was an
+agent, and on one occasion he was weighing the respective claims of
+two brothers to a piece of land which was about to become vacant and
+perhaps considering their respective offers, when one sent him a
+ten-pound note. He cut it in two and returned one-half, with an
+intimation that on receiving a receipt he would forward the other." I
+never met anyone in Ireland who would not readily admit that high
+rents were mainly due to the action of the tenants themselves, who,
+being actuated by what is called land-hunger, which is nothing more in
+the majority of cases than the necessity to live, had in their
+desperation bid more than the land was worth. Mr. Thomas Manley, of
+Trim, County Meath, said:--"The tenant farmer has cried himself up,
+and the Nationalists have cried him up as the finest, most
+industrious, most self-sacrificing fellow in the world. But he isn't.
+Not a bit of it. The landlords and their agents have over and over
+again been shot for rack-renting when the rents had been forced up by
+secret competition among neighbours and even relations. Ask any
+living Irish farmer if I am right, and he will say, Yes, ten times
+yes." As an Irish farmer and the son of an Irish farmer, living for
+sixty years on Irish farms, and from his occupation as a horse-dealer,
+claiming to have an intimate acquaintance with the whole of Ireland,
+and with almost every farmer who can breed and rear a horse, Mr.
+Manley is worth a hearing. Continuing, in the presence of several
+intelligent Irishmen, some of them Home Rulers, but all agreeing with
+the speaker, Mr. Manley said:--"Rents have been forced up by people
+going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their
+eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. Landlords are
+human; agents, if possible, still more human. They handed over the
+land to the highest bidder. What more natural? The farmers offered
+more than the land could pay. But why curse the landlords for what was
+their own deliberate act?" Mr. Manley's knowledge of England enabled
+him to say that "the Irish farmer is much better off than the English,
+Scotch, or Welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but also in
+the matter of soil." The legal point is demonstrable. Let us see how
+the Irish tenant stands. The disinclination of the Irish for factory
+work, as exemplified in the closing of the Galway jute factory,
+because of irregularity of attendance, and the refusal of the starving
+peasantry of congested Donegal and Connemara to accept regular
+employment in the thread factory of Dunbar, MacMaster and Co.,
+notwithstanding the most tempting inducements, as set forth in my
+letters from Ireland, has strangled enterprise, except in the North.
+The ceaseless agitation of the revolutionary party has given rise to a
+feeling of insecurity which deters capitalists from investing money in
+Ireland. And it is only fair to say that a large majority of the most
+intelligent men of every political colour concur in attributing much
+of the poverty of Ireland to unrestricted Free Trade. Thus a variety
+of causes have created land hunger, with its resulting land clamour,
+which has brought about extraordinary legislation--extraordinary
+because going far beyond the principles recognised by Republican
+America, which in the first article of its Constitution draws the line
+thus:--"_No State shall pass any law impairing the obligation of
+contracts._" Well might Lord Salisbury, in extending the Land Purchase
+Act, carefully dissociate the Conservative party from the principle of
+interference with free contract in the open market. In England a thing
+is worth what it will fetch. It is not so in Ireland.
+
+A tenant can never be evicted unless a whole year's rent is due. The
+landlord might want the land for himself or for his son, but he cannot
+have it. The tenant must have six months' notice of eviction, and when
+actually evicted can recover possession by paying what he owes, and in
+that case the landlord becomes liable to the tenant for the crops on
+the land, and for the profits he (the landlord) _might_ have made. In
+America the length of notice preceding eviction varies from three days
+to thirty, the latter only in the State of Maine. Yet in Ireland, where
+we hear so much of brutal evictions, six months' notice is required, a
+year's rent being due, this boon having been conferred by a "Coercion"
+Government. An Irish tenant even when voluntarily leaving his farm must
+be compensated by the landlord for all improvements made by himself or
+his predecessors, or must be permitted to sell his improvements to the
+incoming tenant. The tenant-right of a small farm is sometimes a
+surprising sum. The moonlighting case I investigated at Newcastlewest,
+Co. Limerick, arose from a tenant-right transaction, William Quirke
+having bid Ł590 for the tenant-right of forty-nine acres formerly held
+by J. Dore who was selling, as against Ł400 bid by Dore's cousin.
+Quirke and three of his family were therefore shot in the legs, by way
+of impressing the advisability of joining in the Onward march to
+Freedom. But although the tenant is settled on the land for ever, and,
+so long as he owes less than a year's rent, cannot be molested, it must
+not be supposed that the rent he agreed to is unchangeable. Suppose the
+tenant to be paying a judicial rent, which is decided by three persons,
+one of them a lawyer, the other two acting respectively in the
+interests of landlord and tenant, having examined and valued the farm.
+Assume that the tenant gets more than a year behindhand. The landlord
+desires to evict. Even then the tenant, by applying for another "Fair
+Rent," can stay eviction. But while the rent may be lowered, the
+landlord can never raise it under any circumstances. The law is
+decidely one-sided. Leases may be broken. All leaseholders whose leases
+would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the Land Act
+of 1887 may go to Court, have their contracts broken, and a judicial
+rent fixed. No countervailing advantage is given to the landlords. When
+a tenant's valuation does not exceed Ł50, the Court before which
+proceedings are being taken for the recovery of any debt, whether for
+beef, bread, groceries, clothes, or whiskey, is empowered to stay
+eviction, can allow the debtor to pay by instalments, and can extend
+the time for such payment without limit. To the average British mind
+this will smack of over-legislation, and serious Irishmen make the same
+complaint. And still, to quote Father Mahony, of Cork, "still the Irish
+peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke." The fact
+is, he is almost killed with kindness. He is weighed down by the
+multitude of benefactions. He reminds you of the tame sparrow you once
+suffocated by overfeeding. So much has been done for him that he
+naturally expects more, and instead of being grateful he grumbles more
+than ever. He regards Mr. Gladstone as having acted under compulsion,
+and as being an opportunist. The peasantry of Ireland have no respect
+for the Grand Old Man. "Shure, we bate the bills out iv him. Shure, he
+never gave us anythin' till we kicked it out iv his skin. Divil thank
+him for doin' what we ordhered him to do."
+
+But perhaps the Tory Land Purchase Acts are most promising in, the
+direction of finality. Lord Ashbourne's Act, as it was called (1885),
+conferred on Irish tenants opportunities of purchasing their holdings
+of quite an exceptional kind, and its scope and advantages were
+enormously increased under the Land Purchase Act passed in 1891. If a
+tenant wishes to buy his holding and arranges with his landlord as to
+terms, he can change his position from an ordinary rentpayer into that
+of a payer of an annuity, terminable in forty-nine years, and actually
+less in amount than the rent! Most Irish landlords are willing to take
+less than twenty years' purchase, but the tenants are by their leaders
+advised not to buy. Otherwise the Government is prepared to advance
+the necessary purchase money, to be repaid at the rate of four per
+cent. per annum, which covers both principal and interest. Suppose the
+tenant's rent to be Ł50, and that he agreed to buy at the seventeen
+years' purchase so strongly discountenanced by the priest quoted in my
+last. His rent or rather the annual payment substituted for rent,
+would amount to Ł34, being a reduction of thirty-two per cent. If he
+bought at fifteen years' purchase, rent Ł50, he would only pay Ł30 a
+year, a reduction of forty per cent. If he bought at twenty years,
+rent Ł50, he would have Ł40 a year to pay, being a reduction of twenty
+per cent. In forty-nine years the holding would belong to him, or to
+his children. In any case he must largely benefit. His rent is lower,
+his share in the ownership is always becoming larger, and, if he
+chooses, he can at any time sell his interest in the concern. Mr.
+Palmer, of Tuam, said that those who had purchased under this Act were
+happy and prosperous. Lord Shannon's tenants bought at twelve years'
+purchase. In other words they exchanged their rent for one-half the
+amount, payable to Government, the land to be their own in forty-nine
+years. Lord Lansdowne's tenants agreed to buy at eighteen years'
+purchase, all arrears to be forgiven on payment of half a year's rent.
+These buyers are quiet and apparently contented. Their payments are
+regular, and if they were left alone they would doubtless continue in
+the path of rectitude. But the agitators, who find nick-names for
+everything, have already begun to call this repayment of
+purchase-money a Tribute to England; and the past history of Irish
+leaders leads honest Irishmen, as well as Englishmen, to the
+conviction that, once an Irish Parliament were established, with an
+Irish constabulary under its rule, a No Tribute campaign would ensue,
+which would lead to deplorable results. The privileges of Irish
+tenants are far more numerous than I have space to indicate, but
+perhaps enough has been said to give a clear idea of the chief causes
+and effects of land hunger in Ireland.
+
+The remedy, in the opinion of many advanced and enlightened Home
+Rulers, must come from a Tory Government. From the multitude of
+counsellors I met in the thirty-two counties of Ireland, I will select
+two who represent the vast majority of able men of every political
+party. Mr. Thomas Manley said:--"Settle the land question, reform the
+Poor Laws and the Grand Jury laws, and reclaim the land, which would
+pay ten per cent." Mr. Mason, of Mullingar, said:--"The whole
+agitation would be knocked on the head by the introduction of a
+severe land measure. Previous legislation has been very severe, and I
+do not say that a further measure would be just and equitable. I
+merely say that the people do not want Home Rule, but that they want
+the advantages which they are told will accrue from Home Rule." And so
+said everyone.
+
+To settle the land question is to settle everything. Religious
+animosity would be silenced by self-interest. The operation of the
+Land Purchase Act has undoubtedly done much to turn the people using
+its provisions into good Conservatives--law-abiding and
+law-supporting, as having a stake in the country. The people have not
+the land for nothing but they look forward to its becoming honestly
+their own, and meanwhile they enjoy the security insured by the
+Government of England. In any attempt to settle this great problem, a
+Conservative Government would probably be largely supported by the
+landlords themselves, while the rank and file of Ireland would look
+with respect and confidence on any bill bearing the honoured name of
+Balfour. But how shall we decide the scope and character of such a
+final Land Bill? I do not hesitate to say that it must contain a very
+strong infusion of the compulsory element. The great measure of 1891
+is generous to a fault, but it is voluntary, and the result is that
+the tenants who give greatest trouble--the poor, idle, ignorant dupes
+of a scheming priesthood and a corrupt political conspiracy--never
+come under its benefits, because they unquestioningly accept the
+advice given them to wait until an Irish Parliament lets them have the
+land for nothing.
+
+Compulsion is not required for the landlords half so much as it is for
+the tenants. The conclusion arrived at may be stated in a few words.
+Perhaps it may be worthy the consideration of our brilliant and
+far-seeing Unionist leaders:--
+
+    The Land Purchase Act, 1891, should be amended by a Bill
+    providing (1) That the existing Land Commission shall be
+    strengthened in order to form a Court to which either Landlords
+    or Tenants shall have the right to apply for an order of the
+    Court placing them under the provisions of the Act of 1891, or
+    such extension of that Act as may hereafter be made. (2) It
+    should be the duty of the Court to inquire into the relations of
+    landlord and tenant, the condition of the estate and of the
+    tenants, and such other circumstances as may in the wisdom of the
+    Court seem necessary. (3) If the Court decides to issue an order,
+    the parties shall at once be placed in the same position as if
+    they had entered into a mutual agreement under the Land Purchase
+    Act, 1891; but it shall be the duty of the Court to fix the
+    number of years' purchase; and it shall have power either to
+    restrict or to enlarge the number of holdings over which its
+    order shall take effect.
+
+This is offered as the mere germ of a suggestion. I am familiar with
+the arguments that may be brought against it. For the most part they
+can be urged with equal effect against the whole system of
+interference with that freedom of contract which prevails in England
+and Scotland, but which, as I have pointed out, has already been
+destroyed in Ireland. What I claim is that there _must_ be a means of
+defeating such a conspiracy to make the law inoperative as that
+practised--to the grave detriment of Irish tenants' interests--by the
+omnipresent agencies of the National League, ever since the Unionist
+party set itself to solve the agrarian sources of Irish discontent.
+
+Birmingham, August 14th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 61.--CLERICAL DOMINATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
+
+
+Those who play at bowls must expect rubbers. The Roman priesthood of
+Ireland having assumed the manipulation of Irish politics, have laid
+themselves open to mundane criticism. Said Mr. Gladstone:--"It is the
+peculiarity of Roman theology that by thrusting itself into the
+temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a
+frequent theme of political discussion." Priestly pretensions to
+authority are without limit. The Catholic clergy of Ireland claim the
+right to coerce the laity in political matters, themselves remaining
+exempt from public criticism. They also claim to be exempt from civil
+jurisdiction, and to have the right of overruling the law of the land,
+with every moral obligation, when clashing with the interests of the
+Church. They distinctly teach that every political question is a
+question of morals, and that to vote against the priest's instructions
+is a deadly sin. Such being a few of the claims advanced by the Irish
+priesthood, let us see on what rests the hope of these extraordinary
+demands being recognised. A.M. Sullivan, a Roman Catholic Nationalist
+M.P., says:--"Of all Catholic nations or countries in the world--the
+Tyrol alone excepted--Ireland is perhaps the most Papal, the most
+ultramontane. In Ireland religious conviction--what may be called
+active Catholicism--marks the population, enters into their daily life
+and thought and action. The churches are crowded as well by men as by
+women, and in every sacrament and ceremony of their religion
+participation is extensive and earnest. Reverence for the sacerdotal
+character is so deep and strong as to be called superstition by
+observers who belong to a different faith; and devotion to the Pope,
+attachment to the Roman See, is probably more intense in Ireland than
+in any other part of the habitable globe, the Leonine city itself not
+excluded." In other words, the Irish are more Roman than the Romans
+themselves. Here we have on the one hand the claims of the Romish
+priesthood, and on the other the disposition of the Irish people. But
+as the alleged claims will to the majority of Englishmen appear
+monstrous and incredible, it becomes necessary to prove that these
+claims are actually made.
+
+The fall of Parnell brought the clergy into striking prominence. The
+powerful personality of the Irish leader, his great popularity, and
+his determination to rule alone, had to some extent forced the Church
+into the background. Parnell once removed, the Church at once aimed at
+undivided rule, directing all her energies to this end mercilessly and
+without scruple. Her instruments were worthy of the work. The modern
+Irish priest is usually low-bred, vulgar, and ignorant. The priest of
+Lever's novels, brimming over with animal spirits, full of _bonhomie_,
+sparkling with wit and abounding with jovial good-nature, is nowhere
+to be found. The men of the olden time were educated in France, and by
+rubbing against the cultured professors of Douai or Saint Omer, had
+acquired a polish, a breadth of view, a _savoir faire_, denied to the
+illiterate hordes of Maynooth. The olden priest was loyal, just as
+cultured Irishmen who have travelled, whether in America, England, or
+elsewhere, are loyal and averse to Home Rule. The modern priest,
+usually the son of an Irishman such as visits England at harvest time,
+brought up amidst squalor and filth, is in full sympathy with the
+limited ideas of the peasantry among whom he was reared. The
+conversation of his parents and associates would relate to the burden
+of the Saxon yoke, and his surroundings would perpetually re-echo the
+stories of Ireland's wrongs and woes. Any literature he might absorb
+would be a priest-written history of Ireland, with the rebel doggerel
+of 1798 and the more seductive sedition of later years. At Maynooth he
+meets a crowd of students like himself, crammed to the throat with his
+own prejudices, viewing everything from the same standpoint. He
+returns to the people a full blown ecclesiastic, saturated with a
+sense of his own importance and the absolute supremacy of the Church
+he represents; knowing nothing of mankind outside his own narrow
+sphere, profoundly ignorant of the world's political systems, and
+intensely inimical to England. Average Keltic priests fully bear out
+the description furnished by a loyal priest of Donegal, who, on
+alluding to their social status and Maynooth course, said:--"They are
+merely shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years."
+
+As to their exceptional claims. The attitude of omniscience and
+omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the Catholic hierarchy.
+Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin, has declared that there is no dividing
+line between religion and politics. Dr. Walsh has also laid down the
+dictum that, "As priests and independent of all human organisations,
+we have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide our people in
+every proceeding where the interests of Catholics as well as the
+interests of Irish nationality are involved." This prelate rescinded
+the wholesome rule enforced by his predecessors, forbidding the clergy
+to take part in political demonstrations. He went further. He ordered
+that at all political conventions an _ex-officio_ vote should be given
+to the priests. It is in view of this fact that the Unionists of
+Ireland not unreasonably declare that under a Home Rule Bill the Roman
+Catholic clergy would become endowed with civil privileges which
+would make them absolute rulers of Ireland. It may be urged that
+Bishop Walsh is discredited at Rome, and that therefore his utterances
+may be somewhat discounted. But what of the new Irish Cardinal,
+Archbishop Logue, of Armagh? He agrees with Dr. Walsh, and with
+reference to the Parnellite split, thus delivers himself:--"We are
+face to face with a grave disobedience to ecclesiastical authority!
+The doctrines of the present day are calculated to wean the people
+from the priests' advice, to separate the priests from the people, and
+_to let the people use their own judgment_!" Surely nothing could be
+clearer or more uncompromising than this. Bishop Nulty, alluding to
+the refusal of Mr. Redmond's political party to accept without
+question the political commands of the Church, thus hinted at the
+consequences to recalcitrant Papists:--"It is exclusively through us
+that the clean and holy oblation of the mass is offered daily for the
+living and the dead on the thousands of altars throughout our country.
+It is through our ministry that the poor penitent gets forgiveness of
+his sins in the Sacrament of Penance. The dying Parnellite will hardly
+dare to face the justice of his creator till he has been prepared and
+anointed by us for the last awful struggle and for the terrible
+judgment that will immediately follow it." This threat of eternal
+damnation was eagerly taken up and re-echoed by the inferior clergy.
+Father Patrick O'Connell speaking from the altar at Ballinabrackey
+said that no Parnellite could receive the sacrament worthily, and
+warned all parents against allowing their sons or daughters to attend
+a Parnellite meeting, as it was not a merely political matter, but a
+matter of their holy religion. In his sermon he referred to a meeting
+of the political party favoured by the Church, and said that every
+man, woman, and child must be present. All must assemble at the
+chapel, and all must be in time to walk in procession to the place of
+meeting. He would be there with Father McLoughlin, and the pair would
+go round to see who was absent. All absentees must let him know the
+reason why, and if the reason did not satisfy him he would meet them
+in the highways and in the byways, at the Communion rails, and would
+"set fire to their heels and toes." He would make it hot for them.
+There would be no compromise. All voters against clerical instruction
+he denounced as "infidels and heretics." Mr. Edward Weir, who was
+suspected of having opinions of his own, was denounced in Castlejordan
+Chapel as a 'Pigotted Guardian.' He was a member of the Poor Law
+Board. He was threatened to be 'met at the communion rails,' by which
+he understood that the sacrament would be refused to him. Two nights
+afterwards the hedge around his house was set on fire, and fire was
+placed on the gate in front of it. This was a gentle hint that the
+people were backing the priest, and that unless he complied his house
+might be next destroyed. When Mr. Michael Saurin, J.P., a member of
+the Ballinabrackey congregation, went to vote, the door of the booth
+was crammed to keep him out. The crowd booed and shouted at him, and
+he was spat upon. The priests were present in force. Nicholas Cooney
+was also spat upon, and so was his brother, both on their clothes and
+in their faces. Father Woods was looking on. Matthew Brogan, who was
+also thought to be against clerical dictation, was refused admission
+to mass; and not only poor Matthew himself, but his son,
+daughter-in-law, her children, and two friends who were suspected of
+sympathy. The woman insisted on entering the chapel, when one of the
+crowd of true believers "near cut the hand off her." Michael Kenny and
+Peter Fagan were served with the same sauce by these enthusiastic
+preachers of the Onward March to Freedom, poor Fagan exhibiting the
+touching devotion of the Irish peasantry by kneeling outside during
+the whole of the service. Englishmen do not realise what these
+refusals mean to Irish Catholics. They constitute the cruellest and
+most effective coercion possible. To be refused the sacraments, to be
+turned away from the door of his chapel, is to the Irish peasant a
+turning away from the gates of Paradise, a denial of the Kingdom of
+Heaven, a condemnation to everlasting torment, to say nothing of the
+accompanying odium in which he is held by his neighbours and
+associates, and the ever present dread of boycotting. Thomas Brogan
+dare not leave the polling-booth for his life, until Mr. Carew took
+him on his car. He had been threatened by the priest, who drew a
+circle round him with a walking stick, to show that he was cut off
+from his fellows, and that contamination must be feared. Patrick
+Hogan, whose views were not in accordance with those of the priest,
+was afraid to vote. He went to the booth, but feared to proceed.
+Thomas Dunn was more plucky, but his temerity resulted in a cut face
+and a black eye for his wife at the hands of a patriot named James
+Mitchell. Father McEntee tore down a party flag belonging to the
+station-master of Drumree, a Parnellite, and jumped on it, in a
+towering rage, saying that the owner must follow the instructions of
+the Bishop. He then threw the flag into a field. Father Crinnion, of
+Batterstown, standing in his vestments at the altar, called out the
+names of all persons supposed to be disaffected to the clerical cause,
+and ordered them to meet him in the vestry after mass. He asked for
+their votes, and showed a ballot paper. He had previously read in
+chapel the opinion of Bishop Nulty, quoted above. Father Tynan told
+Patrick King that unless he voted "straight" he would not receive the
+sacraments on his deathbed. The same priest told John Cowley, of
+Kilcavan, that unless he voted for the right candidate he would be
+expelled from the Church, and would be deprived of Christian burial
+when he died. Cases of this kind might be multiplied _ad infinitum_.
+Father Shaw, of Longwood, accentuated the horrible condition of the
+party who refused to vote under his orders by asking his congregation
+to pray for them. Father Cassidy sailed on the same tack, and besides
+thanked God that the "wrong 'uns" were so few. Father Fay, of Cool,
+said (between the Gospels) that his political opponents should be
+"treated like wild beasts," and that he would never forget the men who
+voted against his orders. Thomas Darby was canvassed by his priest,
+who, on finding that his parishioner was pledged the other way, curtly
+said, "Then you'll go to hell," to which Darby replied that he would
+at any rate have a few companions. James Guerin has no confidence in
+the secrecy of illiterate voting, for after voting in the presence of
+a priest he had to jump a wall and hide in a wood to escape the
+vengeance of the people. When he came out, at ten o'clock at night, he
+was stoned. Father O'Donnell, presumably in the interests of peace,
+advised his congregation to take their sticks to a certain meeting,
+and promised to be there with his own faithful blackthorn. The peasant
+Fagan, who said his prayers outside the chapel, was burned in effigy,
+but priestly displeasure was not satisfied until his cowshed, with a
+cart and harness were also destroyed by fire. To have independent
+opinions costs something substantial in Ireland. The aspirations of a
+People and the Onward March to Freedom are not kept up for nothing.
+The patriots are not afraid of their trouble. They will not spoil the
+Union of Hearts for want of a little incendiarism. Now and then, but
+very seldom, the priests meet their match. They presume on their
+spiritual immunity. The priest who refused to leave a house into which
+he had intruded was threatened by Colonel Dopping with expulsion.
+"Dare to touch my consecrated body," said the "shaved labourer." "Your
+consecrated body be hanged!" said the Colonel, and out went Father
+McFadden. Father Fay, of Summerhill, said in a sermon delivered at
+Dangan:--"You must not look upon me as a mere man! The priest is the
+ambassador of Jesus Christ, and not like other ambassadors either. He
+carries his Lord and master about with him, and when the priest is
+with the people, Almighty God is with them!" Father Fagan, of
+Kildalkey, was so vexed with the refusal of John Murtagh to vote
+according to clerical instructions that he said:--"May the landlords
+come and hunt the whole of ye to hell's blazes." Murtagh said, "Ye
+wish yer neighbour well, Sorr!" The man of God threatened to kick poor
+Murtagh into the ditch, to which the erring parishioner replied that
+in that case he would kick the good shepherd like a puppy. "Ah," said
+Father Fagan, "you ruffian, you'll want me at the Last Day," and
+refused to hear his wife's confession. The woman was dying, the
+husband had been for the priest, and on the way to what proved a
+death-bed, Father Fagan improved the shining hour by trying to nobble
+a straying vote. The clergy make the most of their opportunities. At
+Boardmills Father Skelly spread out a ballot paper on the altar at
+Sunday service. Having described the situation of the names, he
+pointed out where they were to make the cross. He then went on with
+the mass. He thought of something else! Some of them, he hinted, were
+pledged to the other side. They could shout for this candidate, but
+when they went to vote they must "wink the other eye," as advised by
+the music-hall song. Colonel Nolan, M.P., when canvasing at Headford,
+was violently assaulted by a priest, who cut open the Parnellite head
+with a stout blackthorn. Like a good Catholic, the Colonel would fain
+have endured this clerical argument; but the police authorities
+insisted on the matter seeing the light.
+
+Clerical domination and the means by which it is attained are
+therefore proven by undeniable evidence. The Papal hierarchy and their
+subordinates are resolved to be supreme. _Aut Cćsar, aut nullus._ And
+it is a striking fact that by none is this doctrine so strongly
+deprecated, so bitterly resented, as by the educated and enlightened
+portion of Roman Catholic Ireland. _Their_ aspirations are all on the
+side of toleration, harmony and peaceful progress. _They_ are not only
+law-abiding, but loyal, and unlike the ignorant clergy and their still
+more ignorant dupes, are ever ready to join in singing "God Save the
+Queen." From an English, even a Conservative point of view, the
+educated Catholics of Ireland, like all classes of English Catholics,
+are everything that can be desired. But what are they among so many?
+
+The consequences of clerical domination, obtained by spiritual and
+physical intimidation, are obvious enough. I have not space to show
+how the system has been carried into the confessional, but numerous
+examples are on record. Neither was it within the scope of this
+article to prove, as could easily be done, that the clergy of Rome
+claim to be above and outside the action of the statute law, and that
+their action is calculated to make the position of Protestants
+untenable. The moral degradation of the people, as exemplified by
+their dread of the priest, who escorts them in hundreds to the
+polling-booth, and by his persistent action and untiring vigilance
+exploits their electoral power for his own aggrandisement, and for the
+acquisition of Papal supremacy in Ireland, is to Englishmen of all
+considerations the most important. Recent events have demonstrated the
+fact that the politics of Ireland--and therefore the politics of
+England--can be almost completely controlled for any purpose by the
+thirty prelates who practically command the votes of an entire people.
+A Roman Catholic barrister said to me:--"I do not blame the priests
+for doing the best they can for themselves. They have the power, and
+they use it for their own purposes. I say they use it unfairly, and
+the Meath election petition has proved that they use it illegally.
+They think otherwise, but without arguing this point, I say that
+clerical domination will ruin the country. Irish election returns are
+for the most part worthless as an expression of public opinion."
+Another talented Irishman said:--"The glorious British Empire is now
+bossed by a party of priests." And that this is unhappily true must be
+conceded by every observant and impartial Englishman.
+
+Yet some there are, blind followers of the blind, obtuse to every
+argument, impregnable to incontrovertible facts, who have cast in
+their lot with the avowed enemies of England. They have their
+day--every dog has it--but their day is far spent, and their night is
+at hand. For England will never again submit to Romish rule. Nor will
+Ireland when her eyes are opened.
+
+Birmingham, August 16th.
+
+
+
+
+No. 62.--CIVIL WAR A CERTAINTY OF HOME RULE.
+
+
+English supporters of Mr. Gladstone affect to ridicule the fears of
+armed and organised conflict between the rival races and religions of
+Ireland. Their attitude in this respect is doubtless due to a slavish
+following of their master. They keep their eye upon their figure-head.
+When it frowns they become serious. When it smiles they try to be
+funny. When it assumes an aspect of virtuous indignation, the tears
+immediately spring to their eyes, and they go about saying what a
+shame it is. They remind you of Professor Anderson and his
+Inexhaustible Bottle. Like Paddy Byrne's barometer, they are "stuck
+fast at Changeable." They are always on the move. Like Virgil's lady,
+they are _varium et mutabile_. Like Shakespeare's gentlemen, they are
+Deceivers ever, One foot on shore and one foot on sea, To one thing
+constant never. Every morning they nervously scan the journals to see
+what change of sentiment is required. Without this precaution they
+would run the risk of meeting their political friends with the wrong
+facial expression. The reason for all this is well known. Their motto
+is _ad exemplum regis_. To-day Mr. Gladstone believes (or says he
+believes) that if Ireland were left to herself, and the disturbing,
+domineering, tyrannising influence of England were removed, the rival
+races and religions would live together in perfect harmony and
+brotherly love. His followers eagerly adopt this belief. But yesterday
+Mr. Gladstone believed (or said he believed) "That the influence of
+Great Britain in every Irish difficulty is not a domineering and
+tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were
+Ireland left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife
+of parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike
+horror through the land." His followers believed that too, and they
+would believe it again to-morrow if their leader harked back. The
+quotation is from Hansard, and commences, "It is my firm belief." What
+do Mr. Gladstone's infirm beliefs resemble?
+
+Putting aside the changeable Premier, gyrating like a dancing dervish,
+and his Penny-in-the-slot party, let us call respectable evidence; let
+us hear the opinion of competent and trustworthy witnesses; let us
+examine the character of the forces which will be brought into
+antagonism; let us observe what steps have been taken in view of
+possibilities more or less remote; and then let us form our own
+conclusions. And first as to opinions and evidence, let us hear Mr.
+J.A. Froude, of all English historians the most famous expert on Irish
+subjects. "The effect of Grattan's Constitution was to stimulate
+political agitation and the conflict of the two races." That was a
+Home Rule Parliament. And again Mr. Froude says:--"Ireland is
+geographically and politically attached to this country, and cannot be
+allowed to leave us if she wishes. In passing over the executive power
+to an Irish Parliament we only increase the difficulty of retaining
+Ireland. We shall alienate the loyal part of the population, who will
+regard themselves as betrayed. The necessity of reconquest will
+remain, but the evils of it and the bloodshed to be occasioned by it
+will be infinitely enhanced. Such respect for law and order as exists
+in Ireland is entirely due to English authority. Remove it, and the
+old anarchy will and must return. If the Home Rule Bill is passed
+there will be a dangerous and desperate war, in which other countries
+may take part who would gladly see our power broken." In Mr. Froude's
+opinion, there would be war between England and Ireland, as well as
+between Ulster and the South. His last sentence is curiously confirmed
+by the _Irish Daily Independent_, which says:--"What England forgets
+is the fact that when next Ireland fights she will not fight alone."
+This is not a warning, like the prophecy of Mr. Froude, it is a
+threat, for the _Independent_ is not only a Nationalist, but an
+intensely anti-English paper. Another great historian, Mr. Lecky, thus
+expresses himself:--"The Parliament Mr. Gladstone proposes to set up
+would be in violent hostility to the richest and most industrious
+portion of the community. It is regarded with horror by nearly every
+man who is a leader of industry in Ireland. All the great names in
+Irish finance, manufacture, and trade are against it, and the men who
+would undoubtedly lead it are men whom Mr. Gladstone not long ago
+described with great justice as preaching the doctrine of public
+plunder." The state of feeling here indicated could have but one
+result; but Mr. Lecky is still more precise. "The assertion that Irish
+Catholics have never shown any jealousy of Irish Protestants is of a
+kind which I find it difficult to characterise with proper moderation.
+Jealousy, unhappily, is far too feeble a word to describe adequately
+the fierce reciprocal animosity which has dislocated Ireland for
+centuries. It blazed into a furious flame in the religious wars of
+Elizabeth, in the great rebellion of 1642, in the Jacobite struggle of
+1689, in the religious war into which the rebellion of 1798 speedily
+degenerated. These facts are about as conspicuous in the history of
+Ireland as Magna Charta and the Commonwealth in the history of
+England. No one who knows Ireland will deny that the policy of Mr.
+Gladstone has contributed more than any other single cause to revive
+and deepen the divisions which every good Irishman deplores." Mr.
+Lecky believes that history repeats itself, and that the establishment
+of an Irish Parliament would lead to a great Irish convulsion, similar
+to those which he refers. My experience among Irish Churchmen
+convinces me that their feeling is understated in the petition signed
+by nearly fifteen thousand select vestrymen, and adopted by the
+general Synod, "That we regard the measure as fraught with peril to
+our civil and religious liberties, which are our prized inheritance;
+that conflicts of interest and collisions of authority would create a
+condition of frequent irritation and intolerable strain." The
+Methodists in full Conference gave it as their opinion "That in the
+judgment of this committee the bill, if it were to become law, so far
+from being a message of peace to Ireland, would be a most fruitful
+occasion of distressing discord and strife; that class would be
+arrayed against class and party against party with a virulence now
+rare and unknown; and that the inevitable result would be the
+overturning of all order and good government." What does this mean if
+not civil war? Be it understood that the existing feeling is now being
+demonstrated by appeal to the most reliable authorities, all speaking
+under a due sense of responsibility, and therefore with a studied
+moderation. The Presbyterians, a numerous and powerful body, speaking
+in the General Assembly, after declaring that the proposed measure
+imperils their civil and religious liberties, and expressing their
+determined opposition to an Irish Legislature and Executive,
+controlled by men "marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the
+Empire," whom a Special Commission found to be guilty of a criminal
+Conspiracy, and who invented, supported, and tried to justify the Land
+League, the Plan of Campaign, and boycotting--after this preamble, the
+Presbyterians declare that the bill is "calculated to embitter the
+hostility of conflicting creeds and parties in Ireland." The United
+Presbyterian Church of Scotland resolved at a meeting of its Irish
+Presbytery "that Home Rule would greatly intensify the antagonism now
+existing between the two peoples inhabiting Ireland." The Quakers come
+out pretty strong. They first ask to be believed. They hope that
+Englishmen will give credence to the sincerity of their convictions
+and the disinterestedness of their motives, and then they say that
+Home Rule "cannot fail to be disastrous to Ireland, and must tend to
+perpetuate and intensify the strife and discord which we have so long
+lamented and which we earnestly desire, so far as in us lies, to
+mitigate and allay." These protests are not all from Ulster. Every
+Grand Jury in Ireland has expressed itself in similar terms. The
+leading mercantile men of the three southern provinces of Ireland have
+declared in writing that "the Bill of the Government throws amongst us
+a new apple of discord, and plunges Ireland again into a state of
+political and party ferment." Pages of quotation might be added. But
+if those already adduced are not sufficient to satisfy my readers as
+to the feeling of the Irish Unionist party, they would hardly be
+persuaded though one rose from the dead.
+
+The feeling of the other party is still stronger, and has been so
+often and openly expressed as to stand in no need of proof. Mr. Dillon
+has threatened to "manage Ulster;" and others have over and over again
+declared that the Protestant settlers are not Irishmen, and therefore
+have no right in the country. The lower classes of Irish Nationalists
+regard an Irish Legislature as an instrument to secure ascendency and
+plunder. The ruling idea is loot. The Unionists are determined at all
+costs to maintain religious equality and to hold their own. In Ulster
+masters and men, landlords and tenants, are of one mind. They do not
+bluster and brag. Those who represent them as rowdies do them
+grievous wrong. They are sober, thrifty, industrious, pious. In
+character they resemble Cromwell's Puritans, or the Scottish
+Covenanters of old, and no wonder, for they are of the same stock.
+They are by nature kindly and peaceful, but they become dangerous
+indeed on the points of liberty, religion, and property. We can partly
+judge their future by their past. In the dark and troublous days of
+rebellion they held the country for England, established a police, did
+for Ireland all that Government neglected to do, and then, having
+restored order, the small but mighty minority threw aside their arms
+and went back to their work. They are before everything industrial.
+Wars and rumours of wars they detest, as injurious to trade, as well
+as to higher interests. But when they take off their coats they always
+win. They put into their efforts, whether in war or peace, such a
+strenuous determination, such an unwavering resolution to succeed,
+that they become invincible. They have the confidence inspired by
+invariable success. Their opponents have the flabbiness and the lack
+of self-reliance resulting from seven hundred years of whining and
+querulous complaint. If Mr. Gladstone were to offer complete
+separation to-morrow the Irish leaders dare not take it. They know
+what would happen if Ulster took the field. Spite of their boasting,
+Dillon & Co. know full well that their vaunted numbers would avail
+them naught.
+
+The venerable William Arthur, a Nonconformist minister, says:--"We
+will not be put under a Parliament in Dublin. The Imperial franchise
+and all which that guarantees is our birthright. No man shall take it
+from us. We will never sell it. If Englishmen and Scotchmen will not
+let us live and die in the freedom we were born to, they will have to
+come and kill us. On that ground stands the strongest party in
+Ireland. For as sure as the Home Rule party is the larger, so surely
+is the Unionist party the stronger. Ask any military man who has spent
+a few years in the country. Settle the Irish question by putting the
+stronger party under the weaker! You would only change a count of
+heads into a trial of strength. Instead of the polling-booth, where
+nothing counts but heads, you would set for the two parties another
+trysting place. There brains count, education counts, purses count,
+habits of hard work count, habits of command and habits of obedience
+count, habits of success count, delight in overcoming difficulties
+count, northern tenacity counts, and there are other things which I do
+not mention that would count. Let not the two parties be summoned to
+that trysting place!"
+
+During my visit to Belfast I had exceptional opportunities of
+ascertaining the probabilities of armed resistance to the authority of
+a Dublin Parliament. I visited what might fairly be called the Ulster
+War Department, and there saw regular preparation for an open
+campaign, the arrangements being under the most able and expert
+superintendence. The tables were covered with documents connected with
+the sale and purchase of rifles and munitions of war. One of them set
+forth the particulars of a German offer of two hundred and forty-five
+thousand Mauser rifles, the arm lately discarded by the Prussian
+Government, with fifty million cartridges. As I had frequent
+opportunities of observing the manufacture of a hundred and fifty
+thousand of these weapons by the National Arms and Ammunition Company
+of Sparkbrook, I noted the present quotation, which was 16s. each, the
+cartridges to be thrown in for nothing. Another offer referred to a
+hundred and forty-nine thousand stand of arms with thirty million
+cartridges. There were numerous offers from Birmingham, and a large
+consignment of rifles and bayonets were about to be delivered in
+Ireland, the entire freight of a small steamer, at a place which I was
+then forbidden to mention, but which I may now say was Portaferry. An
+enormous correspondence was submitted to me in confidence, and I was
+surprised to see how deep and sincere was the sympathy of the working
+men of England, who with gentlemen of position and influence, and
+rifle volunteers by thousands were offering their aid in the field
+should the bill become law. I saw a letter from a distinguished
+English soldier with an offer of five hundred pounds and two hundred
+men. Money was coming in plentifully, and all the correspondence was
+unsought. The office had over fifty thousand pounds in hand, and
+promises for more than half a million. The forces at that moment,
+organised and drilled, numbered 164,614, all duly enrolled and pledged
+to act together anywhere and at any time, many of them already well
+armed, and the remainder about to be furnished with modern weapons.
+The Government was becoming nervous. An order from headquarters
+required a complete survey of the three barracks of Belfast, with an
+exhaustive report as to their defensive capabilities. Plans of
+existing musketry loopholes were to be made, and commanding officers
+were to state if it would be advisable to add to them. Suggestions
+were invited, and Mr. Morley, who at that very moment was telling
+Parliament that no precautions were being taken, wanted to know if the
+said barracks could be held against an organised force of civilians,
+arriving unexpectedly, and when Tommy Atkins was taking his walks
+abroad. At the same time, military officers were being secretly sworn
+in as magistrates. Does this look like the fear of civil war? These
+statements, made in the _Gazette_ five months ago, have not been
+contradicted. The rank and file of the English Home Rule party know
+nothing of this--and by what their priestly allies would call
+"invincible ignorance" they may be excused their inability to believe
+in stern resistance to anything. The party of surrender are totally
+incapable of understanding that men exist who would lay down their
+lives for a principle. Mr. Gladstone and his Items, like the Irish
+leaders and their dupes, are easily overmastered. You have only to
+stand up to them, and they curl up like mongrel curs. But for this
+fact were would be no Home Rule Bill. Of the two parties the Irish
+were the stoutest, and the weakest went to the wall. The English Home
+Rulers cannot conceive that their conquerors could be easily beaten,
+or even that men can be found to meet them on the field. On the
+contrary, the men of Ulster who know these heroes hold them in deepest
+contempt, and in the event of an appeal to arms would treat them as so
+many mice. Spite of their Army of Independence, the Nationalists
+tacitly admit this, and would defer separation until they have first
+by legislative enactments driven away "the English garrison," or
+compelled Ulster in self-defence to declare against English rule. And,
+strange to say, they propose to use to this end the force of English
+arms. They calculate on the resistance of Ulster as a measure of
+assistance to their own ultimate purposes. "All we have to do is to
+stand by while British soldiers shoot them down like dogs." That is
+their expectation, as expressed by one of themselves. Their plans are
+well hid. But "The best-laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft agley,"
+as the priest-governed schemers may find to their cost.
+
+A second and more recent sojourn in Ulster deepened the impression
+given by my first visit. Throughout the province the feeling is still
+the same--an immovable determination to resist at all hazards the
+imposts of a Dublin Parliament. They will have no acts or part in it.
+They will send no members, they will pay no taxes, they will not
+accord to it one jot or tittle of authority. They will offer armed
+resistance to any force of police or Sheriff's officers acting under
+warrants issued by the College Green legislators. Resistance to the
+Queen's authority they regard as altogether out of the question. But
+it remains to be seen whether British troops will "shoot them down
+like dogs." The Ulstermen think not, and they have good reasons for
+this opinion. The mere threat of Home Rule in 1886 cost forty lives in
+the streets of Belfast alone. Who can say what would be the results of
+the bill becoming law? Surely every reliable test points in one
+direction. The Gladstonian party, without a shadow of reason, have
+affected to doubt the courage and resolution of the Northerners, but
+the breed of the men and their long history are a sufficient answer to
+these cavillers. True it is that their courage has not been
+demonstrated by murder, by shooting from behind a wall, or the
+battering out of a policeman's brains, a hundred against one, or the
+discharging of snipe-shot into the legs of old women and young
+children, after the fashion so popular with the party with whom Mr.
+Gladstone and his heterogeneous crew are now acting. But for all that,
+the pluck and tenacity of Ulstermen are undeniable. Their cause is
+good, and left to themselves they would win hands down.
+
+It is therefore demonstrated by a consensus of the weightiest
+authorities and by the results of personal investigation that not only
+would civil war between Irish parties be the inevitable result of Home
+Rule, but that there would also be war between Ireland and England;
+that Irish Unionists are determined to resist to the last, and that
+they possess the means of resistance. They are touched on the
+subjects they hold most sacred--religion, freedom, property; and
+despite the assurances of Mr. Gladstone, who desires to judge the
+Nationalist party by their future, the keen Ulstermen prefer to judge
+them by their past. And bearing these things in mind, it is not
+unreasonable to say that Englishmen who support the present policy of
+the Separatist party are at once enemies of Ireland and traitors to
+their native land.
+
+And now my task as your Special Commissioner in Ireland is at an end.
+Without fear or favour I have described the country as I found it, and
+have exposed the character and the motives of the men to whom Mr.
+Gladstone would entrust its future government. I was no bigoted
+partisan when my task began, but in a period of six months I have
+traversed the country from end to end, and at every step my first
+impressions have been deepened. It would be a folly--yea, it would be
+a crime--to withdraw from Ireland that mitigating influence of British
+rule which alone prevents a lovely island becoming the foul and
+blood-stained arena of remorseless sectarian strife.
+
+Birmingham, August 18th.
+
+
+FINIS.
+
+
+
+
+GENERAL INDEX
+
+
+ACHIL ISLANDS, 244.
+
+AGRICULTURE, Mr. Balfour's aids to, 179 and 370.
+
+"ALL YOU WANT," an Irish Programme, 331.
+
+AMERICAN Tourist's Opinion, 7 and 31;
+  Help for Ireland, 329.
+
+ARAN ISLANDS, 156.
+
+ARMAGH, 291.
+
+ASHBOURNE ACT, Happy results of, 133.
+
+ATHENRY, 177.
+
+
+BALFOUR, Right Hon. A.J., reception in Belfast, 20;
+  reception in Dublin, 40;
+  Galway Fisheries, 135;
+  Ditto, 140;
+  The Man for Ireland, 152;
+  Aids Agriculture, 179;
+  Secret of Success, 210;
+  List of his Light Railways, 387.
+
+BALLYMENA, Description of, 32.
+
+BANKS, Effects of Home Rule Bill on, 8.
+
+BEGGARS, Irish, 237, 360, and 378.
+
+BELFAST, Newcastle Miners in, 22;
+  Belfast and Dublin Corporations compared, 22;
+  Chamber of Commerce, 29;
+  Riots of 1886, 29;
+  Later Opinions, 317.
+
+BLARNEY STONE, The, 65.
+
+BODYKE, Visit to, 103;
+  History of Estate, 105;
+  Evictions at, 106 and 109;
+  Tenants could Pay, 118.
+
+BOYCOTTING (_see also_ Outrage, &c.).
+  The Darcy Family, 118;
+  Mr. Strachan, of Tuam, 130;
+  Children Starving, 151;
+  For expressing Political Opinions, 227;
+  Father Humphreys on, 264;
+  Mrs. Taylor's Case, 346.
+
+BOYNE, Battle of the, 307.
+
+BUNDORAN, Attack on Protestants at, 384.
+
+
+CABLES, Nationalists and Atlantic, 11.
+
+CHAMBERLAIN, Right Hon. J., and Mr. Dillon, 297.
+
+CAPPAWHITE, Assault, 53.
+
+CAPITAL, Idle Irish, 200.
+
+CATHEDRALS, Tipperary, 48;
+  Monaghan, 299.
+
+CATHOLICS, Roman, Opinion of Unionist, 14;
+  Hatred of Protestants, 14 (_see also_ Intolerance);
+  The Loyalist, 166 and 266.
+
+CATTLE in living rooms, 245.
+
+CHARACTER SKETCHES--A Kerry Shopkeeper, 69;
+  Philip Fahy, 125;
+  An Old Woman, 148;
+  Local Names, 175;
+  Ladies and their Boots, 178;
+  Bailiffs and Gangers, 182;
+  Achil Car Driver, 247.
+
+CHARITY, Effects of Home Rule Bill on, 7;
+  Hopelessness of helping the Irish by, 238.
+
+CHURCHYARD, an Irish, 223.
+
+CLARE, "Unmanageable Devils," 74;
+  the Curse of County, 81;
+  Civil War in, 102.
+
+COERCION, Irish Legislature and, 114.
+
+CONGESTED DISTRICTS, a precise definition of, 178;
+  Description of, 230.
+
+CORK, Sentiment in, 61.
+
+CREDULITY of Irish, 3, 13, and 119;
+  Belief in Fairies, 138;
+  Hill full of Diamonds, 150.
+
+CROKE, Archbishop, 351.
+
+CUSTOMS, Collection of, under Home Rule, 58.
+
+
+DE BURGHO, Lady, and Evictions, 113.
+
+DEGRADATION, Glimpses of Irish, 244.
+
+DILLON, John, convicted at Tipperary, 53.
+
+DISLOYALTY (_see also_ Union of Hearts); "To hell with Queen
+  Victoria," 4;
+  the Town Crier, 218;
+  Cursing the Queen, 262;
+  Father Ryan's Manifesto, 276;
+  Irish Press admits, 287;
+  Poem against joining the Army, 364;
+  T.D. Sullivan's Verses, 337.
+
+DONEGAL, Do-Nothing, 371.
+
+DUBLIN, Opinions in, 1;
+  compared with Belfast, 22.
+
+DUGORT, 251.
+
+DUNDALK, 278.
+
+DYNAMITE, Use of, justified, 235;
+  Daly, 275.
+
+
+EDUCATION, Catholic designs on, 301.
+
+ELECTIONS (_see also_ Voting) in Ulster, 342;
+  False Swearing, 360.
+
+ENGLAND, Apathy of Electors in, 6;
+  Effects of Home Rule on English Industries, 43, also 213 and 372;
+  English Ignorance of Ireland, 238;
+  Not Governed by Englishmen, 279.
+
+EVICTIONS (_see also_ Bodyke). Sadleir case, 57;
+  Ruane, 130;
+  What They Mean, 228;
+  In Queen's County, 334.
+
+
+FACTORIES, Galway Bag, 141;
+  Ditto, 182;
+  Flour Mills, &c., idle, 200.
+
+FAMINE in Achil, 253;
+  "Please God we'll have a Famine," 255.
+
+FARMERS, English and Irish compared, 99;
+  Irish Petted and Spoiled, 281.
+
+FENIANS, Opinion of, 260;
+  O'Leary and Stephens, 388.
+
+FISHERIES, Priests' Falsehoods about, 94;
+  Galway, 135;
+  Price of Fish, 139;
+  Aran Island, 158;
+  Curing Taught, 181.
+
+FLAX-Growing Neglected, 290.
+
+FOREST Planting in Congested Districts, 180.
+
+FOWL Breeding Encouraged, 370.
+
+FRANCHISE, Effects of lowering, 78.
+
+FREEMASONS, Archbishop Walsh and, 19.
+
+FUNERALS in Connaught, 214.
+
+
+GAG, _Irish Catholic_ on, 343.
+
+GALWAY, Board of Guardians, 140;
+  Harbour Folly, 175.
+
+GEOGRAPHICAL Necessity, 357.
+
+GLADSTONE, Right Hon. W.E., attacks Parnell, 96;
+  "Oi'm goin' across the Say," 134;
+  Mob Rule, 150;
+  As a "Jumper," 248;
+  his "firm belief," 309;
+  "the party of law and order," 325.
+
+GLADSTONIANS converted in Ireland, 137, 154, and 312.
+
+GORT, Description of, 116.
+
+GRUBB, Sir Howard, 1.
+
+GUARDIANS, Boards of, and Rates, 267.
+
+
+HARRINGTON, "Tim," 9.
+
+HARVEST Hands for England, Irish, 247, 251, 258;
+  _see also under_ England.
+
+HEALY, "Tim," his parentage, 64.
+
+HOLY WATER, 186.
+
+HOME RULE, a Coffin for, 3;
+  Nationalist Opinions of Bill, 8;
+  How Nationalists will work, 10;
+  A Peasant's View of, 54;
+  Not Yet, 70;
+  Home Rule from Mr. Balfour, 70;
+  Mr. Manley on, 98;
+  Praying against, 120;
+  Masses don't want, 137;
+  "Let us have Chaos," 164;
+  "Can we eat it?" 173;
+  An Irish Criticism of, 215;
+  Who oppose it? 249;
+  _United Ireland_ on, 291;
+  German View of, 305;
+  Its Friends and Enemies, 330;
+  Parnellites dread it now, 376.
+
+HOUGHTON, Lord, 272, 286, 316.
+
+HUMOROUS INCIDENTS narrated: The Phoenix Park Orator, 9;
+  An "Iligant" Tenant, 31;
+  "The Devil's Bite," 56;
+  The Timprance Man, 56;
+  A Lending Transaction, 80;
+  The Galway Fisherman, 124;
+  "When I'm sober," 148;
+  "'Tis Home Rule ye want," 160;
+  Mr. Morley and the Car-driver, 177;
+  The Wild Ass, 181;
+  Michael and the Postal Service, 208;
+  The Cattle Boat, 275;
+  A Question of Feet, 357;
+  An Irish Retort, 364;
+  Finn Water _v._ Purgatory, 354.
+
+
+IGNORANCE, the Kerry Folks', 68.
+
+IMMIGRATION, Effects of Home Rule on, 210.
+
+IMPROVIDENCE, in Connaught, 124;
+  Irish Farmers', 227.
+
+INTIMIDATION (_see also_ Bodyke), Sadleir's Case, 57;
+   How it is Done, 132.
+
+INTOLERANCE, Irish, 339, 349.
+
+IRELAND, Another Injustice to, 122.
+
+IRISH LANGUAGE, 203.
+
+IRISH NATIONAL FEDERATION, Commissioner attends a "Mass Meeting" of
+  the, 282;
+  Sequel thereto, 371.
+
+IRISH MEMBERS, Popular Opinions of, 8 and 57;
+  Protected by Police, 60;
+  Contempt for, 114;
+  Why Distrusted, 151;
+  Matt Harris, 205;
+  Fenians on, 260.
+
+
+JURIES, The Cork, 69.
+
+
+LANDLORDS Must Exist, 117;
+  Tim Healy on, 338.
+
+LAND (_see also_ Rent), Sub-division of, 58;
+  Land Hunger, 99 (_see also_ Summary Article, 396);
+  Tenants Real Owners, 192;
+  a Farmer's View, 225;
+  Must be Worth Something, 228;
+  Land Commission Rewards Idleness, 373.
+
+LAND LEAGUE, Defying the, 65;
+  Reign at Loughrea, 142;
+  Overmatched, 254;
+  Gladstone and Harcourt on, 315.
+
+LAND PURCHASE, Falsehoods about, 144.
+
+LAZINESS, Examples of, 36;
+  Mr. James Dunn on Irish, 123;
+  Mr. McMaster's Offer, 155;
+  In England Work, in Ireland Play, 229;
+  an Excuse for, 245;
+  Death and, 250;
+  "Going to," 378.
+
+LEGISLATION, with a Hard G, 330.
+
+LIES, Nationalist, about Daly, 279;
+  about Westminster, 316;
+  about Mr. Balfour, 344.
+
+LINEN TRADE of Londonderry, 34.
+
+LOCAL GOVERNMENT, A Nationalist on, 277.
+
+LOGAN, M.P., False Statements about Rents, 195.
+
+LOGUE, Cardinal, 293;
+  his Father, 357.
+
+LONDONDERRY, Description of, 34.
+
+
+MACADAM, Mr., Bodyke Agent, 103.
+
+MCFADDEN, Father, his income, 369.
+
+MAGEE, Detective James, 388.
+
+MANSIONS IN RUINS, 184.
+
+MARRIAGE Customs in Connaught, 213;
+  in Achil Islands, 246;
+  Juvenile, 257.
+
+MAYNOOTH, Enemy of England, 76, 326;
+  Dr. Wylie on, 350.
+
+MINES, Delusions about, 121, 145, 212, 233, 358, 362.
+
+MINORITY, The, 296, 312.
+
+MONAGHAN, 299.
+
+MORLEY, Right Hon. John, soliloquy, 89;
+  on the side of crime, 104;
+  tight-fisted, 153;
+  the cab-driver and, 177;
+  police on, 226;
+  philandering, 389.
+
+MULLINGAR, 191.
+
+
+NATIONALISM, its real nature, 4;
+  _see also_ summary article, 390.
+
+NEWRY, 285.
+
+NOLAN, Colonel, interview with, 126;
+  a Parnellite, 210;
+  assaulted by a priest, 281.
+
+
+O'BRIEN, WILLIAM, convicted at Tipperary, 53.
+
+O'CALLAGHAN, Colonel, 100.
+
+O'SHAUGHNESSY, Dr., on Home Rule, 115.
+
+ORANGE LODGES, their toleration, 33;
+  demonstrations, 319;
+  charged with rowdyism, 323;
+  constitution of the, 324.
+
+OUTRAGES: Two girls brutally assaulted, 60;
+  fifteen in County Clare, 83;
+  hushing up, 89;
+  dread of, 91;
+  Loughrea, 142;
+  a terrible list of, 167;
+  a fire, 198;
+  Mr. Moloney shot, 199;
+  Castle explosion, 218;
+  Mr. Blood fired at, 281.
+
+
+PARLIAMENT, an Irish, what it could do, 188;
+  fancy picture of, 268.
+
+PARNELLITES and Anti-Parnellites defined, 270.
+
+PARNELL, Mr., Priests and, 79;
+  secret of his success, 133;
+  still worshipped in Dublin, 277.
+
+PEACE, Ireland needs, 72.
+
+PLEDGES and Promises, Value of Irish, 97.
+
+POLICE, The Dublin, 5;
+  refuse protection at Bodyke, 107;
+  Mr. Morley and the, 226.
+
+PONSONBY Rents, 50.
+
+POST OFFICE Savings Bank, Run on, 8.
+
+POTATO Seed Wasted, 248.
+
+POVERTY, English and Irish, 255.
+
+PRESS, The Irish, 272;
+  on finality, 337.
+
+PRIESTS AND PEOPLE (_see also_ Voting): A terrible danger, 71;
+  priests' one idea, 73;
+  priests at Home Rule Convention, 164;
+  never denounced outrage, 167;
+  people believe anything priest tells them, 204;
+  present day priests, 211;
+  "I am responsible," 242;
+  "admit bearer," 263;
+  "pay, pay, pay, from the cradle to the grave," 325;
+  spiritual tyranny, 332;
+  refusing the sacrament, 348;
+  a loyal priest, 365.
+
+PROTECTIONISTS, 269.
+
+PROTESTANTS, Attack on, at Cappawhite, 53;
+  persecution of, at Tuam, 131;
+  colony at Dugort, 246;
+  why they are Unionists, 380;
+  Bundoran outrage upon, 384.
+
+
+RAILWAYS--Mr. Balfour's--Cork and Muskerry, 65;
+  the Connemara, 169;
+  a ride on a new line, 174;
+  an engine ride, 230;
+  building on a bog, 231;
+  a dangerous ride, 241;
+  full list of Balfour Light Railways, 387.
+
+REGISTRATION FRAUDS, 341.
+
+RENTS, the Ponsonby, 50;
+  rack renting, 100;
+  quite low enough, 143;
+  what rack rent means, 190;
+  land must be worth something, 228;
+  to whom is rent due? 335;
+  Dublin Corporation tenants and Clanricarde tenants compared, 335;
+  a Donegal rent book, 354.
+
+REPUBLIC, An Irish, 162;
+  could we reconquer? 185.
+
+RIBBONMEN and Nationalists compared, 276.
+
+ROSSMORE, Lord, and Monaghan Town Council, 301.
+
+RUINS, Irish, 310.
+
+
+SALTHILL, 149.
+
+ST. PATRICK, 307.
+
+SCOTCH and Irish Compared, 286 and 375.
+
+SECURITIES, Effect of Home Rule Bill on, 7.
+
+SECRET Societies, 148.
+
+SENTIMENT, a Priest on Irish, 188.
+
+SMITH Barry, Mr., 50.
+
+SOAP as a remedy for Ireland's ills, 95.
+
+SOLDIERS, Irish Girls and, 79;
+  complaint when withdrawn, 278.
+
+STRABANE Agricultural Show, 375.
+
+STRANORLAR, 352.
+
+STRIKE Leaders and Nationalists compared, 370.
+
+SULLIVAN, T.D., on India, 337.
+
+SUMMARY ARTICLES:--
+  1--Irish Nationalism is not Patriotism, 390.
+  2--Land Hunger: Its Cause, Effect, and Remedy, 396.
+  3--Clerical Domination and its Consequences.
+  4--Civil War a certainty of Home Rule.
+
+SUPERSTITION (_see also_ Credulity), the Holy Man, 62.
+
+
+TENANTS' Losses, 52.
+
+TERRORISM in Dublin, 10;
+  Rev. R. Eager, 12;
+  at Tipperary, 48.
+
+TIPPERARY, New and Old, 48.
+
+TOLERATION, would Catholics show? 300 and 303.
+
+TRADE, Home Rule effects on (_see also_ England), 7 and 65.
+
+TRADITION, Effects of, 76.
+
+TUAM, 128;
+  Indignation Meeting, 220.
+
+
+ULSTER, Feeling on Home Rule Bill in, 13;
+  Preparation for War, 13;
+  English Sympathy with, 15;
+  Loyalist Programme, 16;
+  Character of Ulstermen, 243;
+  Articles on, 285;
+  "tak a doom'd lot of managin'," 321.
+
+UNION of Hearts, Dublin mob on, 42;
+  "When England's bur-r-sted up," 74;
+  Miss Gonne, 93;
+  Union Jack cut down, 191;
+  "When Britons first at Hell's command" (_see also_ Disloyalty), 197.
+
+
+VICTORIA Disaster, Irish opinion of, 297.
+
+VOTING, Priests and, 263, 332;
+  Priests endowed with a thousand votes, 353;
+  Regulations wanted against priests, 360.
+
+
+WALSH, Archbishop, 274.
+
+WAR, Preparations for, in Ulster, 13;
+  Mr. Morley's precautions, 27;
+  Ireland's policy when England is at war, 314;
+  Danger of civil war, 409.
+
+WORTHINGTON, Mr. Robert, on ruin by Home Rule, 43.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page  33: Ballymera replaced with Ballymena               |
+    | Page  37: neighboughhood replaced with neighbourhood      |
+    | Page 103: McAdam replaced with MacAdam                    |
+    | Page 107: indentification replaced with identification    |
+    | Page 109: thelr replaced with their                       |
+    | Page 110: Goverment replaced with Government              |
+    | Page 163: "villager iu Ireland" replaced with             |
+    |           "villager in Ireland"                           |
+    | Page 211: estabblished replaced with established          |
+    | Page 232: "People offer to to swop" replaced with         |
+    |           "People offer to swop"                          |
+    | Page 259: enthusiam replaced with enthusiasm              |
+    | Page 260: fiasca replaced with fiasco                     |
+    | Page 270: indentify replaced with identify                |
+    | Page 270: indentified replaced with identified            |
+    | Page 297: "the rulings power" replaced with               |
+    |           "the ruling power"                              |
+    | Page 315: waa replaced with was                           |
+    | Page 320: againt replaced with against                    |
+    | Page 323: Rome Rule replaced with Home Rule               |
+    | Page 353: innnumerable replaced with innumerable          |
+    | Page 362: obained replaced with obtained                  |
+    | Page 370: "we should should have" replaced with           |
+    |           "we should have"                                |
+    | Page 378: Linerick replaced with Limerick                 |
+    | Page 378: "Tha beggars" replaced with "The beggars"       |
+    | Page 380: politican replaced with politician              |
+    | Page 381: "had stated that the the Black-mouths"          |
+    |           replaced with                                   |
+    |           "had stated that the Black-mouths"              |
+    | Index:    McAdam was replaced with MacAdam                |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland as It Is, by 
+Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IRELAND AS IT IS ***
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