UNDER HOME RULE. (continued 13)

"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.ToC

he 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.ToC

here 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:—

Name. Length in miles. Balfour's contribution.

Donegal and Killybegs 17¾ £115,000

Stranorlar and Glenties 24½ 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 7¼ £30,000

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 18¼ £131,400

To which is added the

Achil Island extension 8¼ 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 £150,000

Ballina and Killala 6½ 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% on 97,000

Ballinrobe and Claremorris 12 2% on 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 £8 15s., yet he and his friends could only get £3 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.ToC

y 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 £200 per week, and that they were increasing to £70 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 Phœnix 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.ToC

hat 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. Sæva 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 £590 for the tenant-right of forty-nine acres formerly held by J. Dore who was selling, as against £400 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 £50, 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 £50, 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 £34, being a reduction of thirty-two per cent. If he bought at fifteen years' purchase, rent £50, he would only pay £30 a year, a reduction of forty per cent. If he bought at twenty years, rent £50, he would have £40 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.ToC

hose 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."