[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN. ]

IRELAND UNDER COERCION

THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN

BY

WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT

VOL. I. 

_SECOND EDITION_. 

1888

"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire. "CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of thesevolumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmedthe views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs inIreland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for aPreface to this Second Edition. 

Upon one most important point--the progressive demoralisation of theIrish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations, which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution inIreland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August inthe Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, willbe found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in Juneby a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that "the Nationalists are strippingIrishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa. "

Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes ofWaterford, the Bishop says, in the report which I have seen of hissermon, "the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamedif they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt Iwitnessed, on that occasion. " As a faithful shepherd of his people, heis not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goeson to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian peopleto a level below that of the savages whom Cardinal Lavigerie is noworganising a great missionary crusade to rescue from their degradation. 

He agrees with Archbishop Croke in attributing much of thisdemoralisation to the excessive and increasing use of strong drink, striking evidences of which came under my own observation at more thanone point of my Irish journeys. But I fear Archbishop Croke wouldscarcely agree with the Bishop of Waterford in his diagnosis of theeffects upon the popular character of what has now come to pass currentin many parts of Ireland as "patriotism. "

The Bishop says, "The women as well as the men were fighting, and whenwe sought to bring them to order, one man threatened to take up a weaponand drive bishop, priests, and police from the place! On the Quay, Iunderstand, it was one scene of riot and disorder, and what made mattersworse was that when the police went to discharge their duty for theprotection of the people, the moment they interfered the people turnedon them and maltreated them in a shocking way. I understand that somepolice who were in coloured clothes were picked out for the worsttreatment--knocked down and kicked brutally. One police officer, Ilearn, had his fingers broken. This is a state of things that nothing atall would justify. It is not to be justified or excused on any principleof reason or religion. What is still worse, sympathy was shown for thosewho had obstructed and attacked the police. The only excuse I could findthat was urged for this shameful misconduct was that it was dignifiedwith the name of 'patriotism'! All I can say is, that if rowdyism likethis be an indication of the patriotism of the people, as far as I amconcerned, I say, better our poor country were for ever in politicalslavery than attain to liberty by such means. "

This is the language of a good Catholic, of a good Irishman, and of afaithful Bishop. Were it more often heard from the lips of the IrishEpiscopate the true friends of Ireland might look forward to her futurewith more hope and confidence than many of the best and ablest of themare now able to feel. As things actually are, not even the Papal Decreehas yet sufficed to restrain ecclesiastics, not always of the lowestdegree, from encouraging by their words and their conduct "patriotism"of the type commemorated by the late Colonel Prentiss of Louisville, ina story which he used to tell of a tipsy giant in butternut garments, armed with a long rifle, who came upon him in his office on a certainFourth of July demanding the loan of a dollar on the ground that he felt"so confoundedly patriotic!"

The Colonel judiciously handed the man a dollar, and then asked, "Pray, how do you feel when you feel confoundedly patriotic?"

"I feel, " responded the man gravely, "as if I should like to killsomebody or steal something. "

It is "patriotism" of this sort which the Papal Decree was issued toexpel from within the pale of the Catholic Church. And it is really, inthe last analysis of the facts of the case, to the suppression of"patriotism" of this sort that many well-intentioned, but certainly notwell-informed, "sympathisers" with what they suppose to be the cause ofIreland, object, in my own country and in Great Britain, when theydenounce as "Coercion" the imprisonment of members of Parliament andother rhetorical persons who go about encouraging or compelling ignorantpeople to support "boycotting" and the "Plan of Campaign. "

Yet it would seem to be sufficiently obvious that "patriotism" of thissort, once full-blown and flourishing on the soil of Ireland, must tendto propagate itself far beyond the confines of that island, and todiversify with its blood-red flowers and its explosive fruits the socialorder of countries in which it has not yet been found necessary for theHead of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the fundamental principles ofLaw and of Liberty. 

Since these volumes were published, too, the Agrarian Revolution inIreland has been brought into open and defiant collision with theCatholic Church by its leader, Mr. Davitt, the founder of the LandLeague. In the face of Mr. Davitt's contemptuous and angry repudiationof any binding force in the Papal Decree, it will be difficult even forthe Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney to devise an understanding between theChurch and any organisation fashioned or led by him. It may be inferredfrom Mr. Davitt's contemporaneous and not less angry intimation, thatthe methods of the Parnellite party are inadequate to the liberation ofIreland from the curse of landlordism, that he is prepared to go furtherthan Mr. George, who still clings in America to the shadowy countenancegiven him by the Cardinal-Archbishop of Baltimore, and that theNationalisation of the Land will ere long be urged both in Ireland andin Great Britain by organisations frankly Anti-Catholic as well asAnti-Social. 

This is to be desired on many accounts. It will bring the clergy inIreland face to face with the situation, which will be a good thingboth for them and for the people; and it should result in making an endof the pernicious influence upon the popular mind of such extraordinarytheological outgivings; for example, as the circular issued in 1881 tothe clergy and laity of Meath by the Bishop of that diocese, in which itwas laid down that "the land of every country is the common property ofthe people of that country, because its real owner, the Creator who madeit, has transferred it as a voluntary gift to them. "

Language of this sort addressed to ignorant multitudes must do harm ofcourse whenever and by whomsoever used. It must tend to evil ifaddressed by demagogues to the Congress of a Trade Union. But it must domuch more harm when uttered with the seeming sanction of the Church by amitred bishop to congregations already solicited to greed, cunning, anddishonesty, by an unscrupulous and well-organised "agitation. "

Not less instructive than Mr. Davitt's outburst from the Church is hisalmost furious denunciation of the Irish tenants who obeyed an instinct, thought honourable to mankind in most ages and countries, by agreeingtogether to present to their landlord, Earl Fitzwilliam, a token oftheir respect and regard on the celebration of his golden wedding day. 

These tenants are denounced, not because they were paying homage to atyrannical or an unworthy landlord, though Mr. Davitt was so transportedbeyond his ordinary and cooler self with rage at their action that heactually stooped to something like an insinuation of disbelief in theexcellence of Lord Fitzwilliam's character. The true and avowed burdenof his diatribe was that no landlord could possibly deserve well of histenants. The better he is as a man, the more they ought to hate him as alandlord. 

The ownership of land, in other words, is of itself in the eyes of Mr. Davitt what the ownership of a slave was in the eyes of the earlierAbolitionists--crime so monstrous as to be beyond pardon or endurance. If this be true of Great Britain and Ireland, where no allodial tenureexists, how much more true must it be of New York? And if true of theman who owns a thousand acres, it must be equally true of the man whoowns an acre. There could not be a better illustration than Mr. Davitthas given in his attack on the Fitzwilliam tenants of the preciseaccuracy of what I have had occasion to say in these volumes of the"irrepressible conflict" between his schemes and the establishment of apeasant proprietorship in Ireland. It is more than this. It is adistinct warning served upon the smallest tenants as well as upon thegreatest landlords in the United Kingdom that fixity of any form ofindividual tenure is irreconcilable with the Agrarian agitations. 

I anticipated this demonstration, but I did not anticipate that it wouldcome so fully or so soon. 

I anticipated also abundant proof from my own side of the water of theaccuracy of my impressions as to the drift of the American-Irish towardsProtection and Republicanism in American politics. This, too, has comeearlier and not less fully than I had expected. Mr. Patrick Ford, themost influential leader of the American-Irish, issued early in August astatement of his views as to the impending Presidential election. "Theissue to-day, " he says, "is the Tariff. It is the American system_versus_ the British Colonial system. The Irish are instinctivelyProtectionists. " And why? Mr. Ford goes on to explain. "The fact, " heobserves, "that the Lion and the Unicorn have taken the stump forCleveland and Thurnan is not calculated to hurt Harrison and Morton inthe estimation of the Irish, who will, I promise, give a good account ofthemselves in the coming Presidential election. " Hatred of England, inother words, is an axiom in their Political Economy!

Mr. Davitt's menacing allusion to Parnell as a landlord, and Mr. O'Leary's scornful treatment in a letter to me of the small-fry EnglishRadicals, [1] when taken together, distinctly prefigure an imminentrupture between the Parnellite party and the two wings--Agrarian andFenian--of the real revolutionary movement in Ireland. It is clear thatclerical agitators, high and low, must soon elect between following Mr. George, Dr. M'Glynn, and Mr. Davitt, and obeying fully the Papal Decree. 

It is a most curious feature of the situation in Ireland that much morediscontent with the actual conditions of life in that country seems tobe felt by people who do not than by people who do live in Ireland. Itis the Irish in America and Australia, who neither sow nor reap inIreland, pay no taxes there, and bear no burdens, who find the alienoppression most intolerable. This explains the extreme bitterness withwhich Mr. Davitt in some recent speeches and letters denounces thetameness of the Irish people, and rather amusingly berates the Britishallies of his Parnellite associates for their failure to develop anystriking and sensational resistance to the administration of law inIreland. I have printed in this edition[2] an instructive account, furnished to me by Mr. Tener, of some recent evictions on theClanricarde property in Galway, which shows how hard it is for the mostdetermined "agitators" to keep the Irish tenants up to that high concertpitch of resistance to the law which alone would meet the wishes of thetrue agrarian leaders; and how comparatively easy it is for a just andresolute man, armed with the power of the law resolutely enforced, tobreak up an illegal combination even in some of the most disturbedregions of Ireland. [3] While this is encouraging to the friends of lawand order in Ireland, it must not be forgotten that it involves also acertain peril for them. The more successfully the law is enforced inIreland, the greater perhaps is the danger that the Britishconstituencies, upon which, of course, the administrators of the lawdepend for their authority, may lose sight and sense of theRevolutionary forces at work there. History shows that this has morethan once happened in the past. Englishmen and Scotchmen will be betterable than I am to judge how far it is unlikely that it should happenagain in the future. 

As to one matter of great moment--the effect of Lord Ashbourne's Act--acorrespondent sends me a statement, which I reproduce here, as it givesa very satisfactory account of the automatic financial machinery uponwhich that Act must depend for success:--

 "Out of £90, 630 of instalments due last May, less than £4000 is unpaid at the present moment, on transactions extending over three years with all classes of tenants. The total amount which accrued, due to the Land Commission in respect of instalments since the passing of the Act to the 1st November 1887, was £50, 910. Of this there is only now unpaid £731, 17s. 9d. There accrued a further amount to the 1st May 1888 of £39, 720, in respect of which only £4071, 16s. 11d. Is now unpaid, making in all only £4803, 14s. 8d. Unpaid, out of a total sum of £90, 630 due up to last gale day, some of which by this time has been paid off. "

This would seem to be worth considering in connection with the objectionmade to any serious extension of Lord Ashbourne's Act by Mr. Chamberlainin his extremely clear and able preface to a programme of "UnionistPolicy for Ireland" just issued by the "National Radical Union. "

LONDON, _21st Sept_. 1888. 

CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 

CLUE MAP _Frontispiece_PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION vPROLOGUE xxi-lxvii

CHAPTER I. London to Dublin, Jan. 20, 1888, 1 Irish Jacobite, 1 Proposed Mass in memory of Charles Edward, 2 Cardinal Manning, 3 President Cleveland's Jubilee Gift to Leo XIII, 4 Arrival at Kingstown, 5 Admirable Mail Service, 5 "Davy, " the newsvendor, 6 Mr. Davitt, 7 Coercion in America and Ireland, 8 Montgomery Blair's maxim, 8 Irish cars, 9 Maple's Hotel, 9 Father Burke of Tallaght, 10, 11 Peculiarities of Post-offices, 12, 13 National League Office, 13 The Dublin National Reception, 14 Mr. T. D. Sullivan, M. P. , 14 Dublin Castle, 15 Mr. O'Brien, Attorney-General, 16 The Chief-Secretary, Mr. Balfour, 17-24 Fathers M'Fadden and M'Glynn, 18 Come-outers of New England, 18 Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, 19, 20 Sir West Ridgway, 24 Divisional Magistrates, 24 Colonel Turner, 25 The Castle Service, 25-29 Visit of the Prince of Wales, 27 Lord Chief-Justice Morris, 29-37 An Irish Catholic on Mr. Parnell, 31-33 Mr. Justice Murphy, 36 Lord Ashbourne, 37, 38 Unionist meeting, 39 Old Middle State type of American-Irish Protestant, 39 Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in America, 41 Difficulties of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 43 Dr. Jellett, 43 Dinner at the Attorney-General's, 43-46 Sir Bernard Burke, 46-49 Irish Landlords at Kildare Street Club, 49-52 The people and the procession, 53-55 Ripon and Morley, 54, 55

CHAPTER II. Dublin to Sion, Feb 3, 56 Poor of the city, 57 Strabane, 58-60 Sion flax-mills, 60-62 Dr. Webb, 63-65 Gweedore, Feb 4, 65 A good day's work, 65 Strabane, 66 Names of the people, 66 Bad weather judges, 67 Letterkenny, p 67, 68 Picturesque cottages, 67 Communicative gentleman, 68 Donegal Highlands, 68-70 Glen Veagh, 71 Errigal, 72 Dunlewy and the Clady, 72 Gweedore, Feb 5, 73 Lord George Hill, 74 Gweedore 1838 to 1879, 75-81 Gweedore 1879 to 1888, 81-91 Father M'Fadden, 83-104 A Galway man's opinions, 84-89 Value of tenant-right, 83 Condition of tenantry, 84 Woollen stuffs, 87, 88 Distress in Gweedore, 88, Do. In Connemara, 88 Mr Burke, 90 Plan of Campaign, 93 Emigration, 94, 95 Settlement with Captain Hill, 94 Landlord and tenant, 96-98 Land Nationalisation, 98 Father M'Fadden's plan, 98 Gweedore, Feb 6, 104 On the Bunbeg road, 104-110 Falcarragh, 111-123 Ballyconnell House, 112-123 Townland and Rundale, 118 Use and abuse of tea, 119 Lord Leitrim, 121 A "Queen of France, " 121 The Rosses, 123

CHAPTER III. Dungloe, Feb. 7, 124 From Gweedore, 124 Irish "jaunting car, " 125 "It will fatten four, feed five, and starve six, " 125 Natural wealth of the country, 125 Isle of Arran and Anticosti, p 12 The Gombeen man, 126-130 Dungloe, 126-131 Burtonport, 129 Lough Meela, 128 Attractions of the Donegal coast, 128 Compared with Isles of Shoals and Appledore, 129 Wonderful granite formations, 129 Material for a new industry, 129 Father Walker, 131 Migratory labourers, 133 Granite quarries, 133 Stipends of the Roman Catholic clergy, 134-137 Herring Fisheries, 137 Arranmore, 137 Dungloe woollen work, 138 Baron's Court, Feb 8, 139 Dungloe to Letterkenny, 139-141 Doocharry Red Granite, 140 Fair at Letterkenny, 142 Feb 9, 143 On Clare and Kerry, 143 A Priest's opinion on Moonlighters, 143 The Lixnaw murder, 143 Baron's Court, 144 James I. 's three castles, 145 Ulster Settlement, 146 Descendants of the old Celtic stock, 146 The park at Baron's Court, 146 A nonogenarian O'Kane, 148 Irish "Covenanters, " 150 Shenandoah Valley people, 151 The murderers of Munterlony, 151 A relic of 1689, 152 Woollen industry, 152-155 Londonderry Orange symposium, 156 February 11, 157 Sergeant Mahony on Father M'Fadden, 157-163

CHAPTER IV. Abbeyleix, Feb. 12, 164 Newtown-Stewart, 164 An absentee landlord, 164 "The hill of the seven murders, " 165 Newry, Dublin, Maple's Hotel, Maryborough, 165 "Hurrah for Gilhooly, " 166 Abbeyleix town, chapel, and church, 168 Embroidery and lace work, 169 Wood-carving, 170 General Grant, 171 Kilkenny, 172 Kilkenny Castle, 173 Muniment-room, 174 Table and Expense Books, 176 Dublin once the most noted wine-mart of Britain, 177, 178 Cathedral of St. Canice, 178 The Waterford cloak, 179 The College, 180 Irish and Scotch whisky, 180 Duke of Ormonde's grants, 181 The Plan of Campaign, 182-186 Ulster tenant-right, 186, 187

CHAPTER V. Dublin, Feb. 14, 188 The Irish National Gallery, 188-191 Feb. 15, 192 London: Mr. Davitt, 192 Irish Woollen Company, 193 Mr. Davitt and Mr. Blunt, 193 Mr. Davitt's character and position, 192-199

CHAPTER VI. Ennis, Feb. 18, 200 Return to Ireland, 200 Irish Nationalists, 200, 201 Home Rule and Protection, 202 Luggacurren and Mr. O'Brien, 204 Dublin to Limerick and Ennis, 204, 205 Colonel Turner, 205 Architecture of Ennis Courthouse--Resemblance to White House, Washington, 206 Number of public-houses in Ennis, and in Ireland, 207, 208 Innkeepers of Milltown Malbay, 208, 209 Father White (see Note E), 209 Sir Francis Head, 210, 211 Different opinions in Ennis, 212, 213 State of trade in Ennis, 213, 214 Edenvale, Heronry, 215 _seq. _ Feb. 19, 215 The men of Ennis at Edenvale, 216 Killone Abbey, 218-221 Stephen J. Meany, 220 "Holy Well" of St. John, 221 Superstition as to rabbits, 222 Religious practices under Penal Laws, 222 Experiences under National League, 223, 224 Case of George Pilkington, 224-226 Trees at Edenvale, 227 Moonlighters, a reproduction of Whiteboys, 227, 228 Difficulty in getting men to work, 228 A testimonial to Mr. Austen Mackay, 229-232 Effect of testimonials, 232 Feb. 20, 232 The case of Mrs. Connell at Milltown Malbay, 232 _seq. _ Estate accounts and prices, 240 A rent-warner, 245 Mr. Redmond, M. P. , 245 Father White's Sermon, 246 A photograph, 246

APPENDIX. 

 NOTES--

 A. Mr. Gladstone and the American War (Prologue xxix), 249 B. Mr. Parnell and the Dynamiters (Prologue xxxiii), 251 C. The American "Suspects" of 1881 (Prologue xlvii), 255 D. The Parnellites and the English Parties (Prologue l. ), 262 E. The "Boycott" at Miltown-Malbay (p. 209) 264

PROLOGUE. 

I. 

This book is a record of things seen, and of conversations had, during aseries of visits to Ireland between January and June 1888. 

These visits were made in quest of light, not so much upon theproceedings and the purposes of the Irish "Nationalists, "--with which, on both sides of the Atlantic, I have been tolerably familiar for manyyears past--as upon the social and economical results in Ireland of theprocesses of political vivisection to which that country has been solong subjected. 

As these results primarily concern Great Britain and British subjects, and as a well-founded and reasonable jealousy exists in Great Britain ofAmerican intromission in the affairs of Ireland, it is proper for me tosay at the outset, that the condition of Ireland interests me notbecause I believe, with Cardinal Manning, that upon the future ofIreland hangs the future of the British Empire, but because I know thatAmerica is largely responsible for the actual condition of Ireland, andbecause the future condition of Ireland, and of the British Empire, must gravely influence the future of my own country. 

In common with the vast majority of my countrymen, who come with me ofwhat may now not improperly be called the old American stock--by which Imean the three millions of English-speaking dwellers in the New World, who righteously resented, and successfully resisted, a hundred yearsago, the attempt--not of the Crown under which the Colonies held theirlands, but of the British Parliament in which they wereunrepresented--to take their property without their consent, and applyit to purposes not passed upon by them, I have always felt that theclaim of the Irish people to a proper control of matters exclusivelyIrish was essentially just and reasonable. The measure of that propercontrol is now, as it always has been, a question not for Americans, butfor the people of Great Britain and of Ireland. If Lord EdwardFitzgerald and his associates had succeeded in expelling Britishauthority from Ireland, and in founding an Irish Republic, we shouldprobably have recognised that Republic. Yet an American minister at theCourt of St. James's saw no impropriety in advising our Government torefuse a refuge in the United States to the defeated Irish exiles of'98. 

It is undoubtedly the opinion of every Irish American who possesses anyreal influence with the people of his own race in my country, that therights and liberties of Ireland can only be effectually secured by acomplete political separation from Great Britain. Nor can the right ofIrish American citizens, holding this opinion, to express their sympathywith Irishmen striving in Ireland to bring about such a result, and withEnglishmen or Scotchmen contributing to it in Great Britain, bequestioned, any more than the right of Polish citizens of the FrenchRepublic to express their sympathy with Poles labouring in Poland forthe restoration of Polish nationality. It is perhaps even less open toquestion than the right of Americans not of Irish race, and of Frenchmennot of Polish race, to express such sympathies; and certainly less opento question than the right of Englishmen or Americans to express theirsympathy with Cubans bent on sundering the last link which binds Cuba toSpain, or with Greeks bent on overthrowing the authority of the Sultanin Crete. 

But for all American citizens of whatever race, the expression of suchsympathies ceases to be legitimate when it assumes the shape of actiontranscending the limits set by local or by international law. It is ofthe essence of American constitutionalism that one community shall notlay hands upon the domestic affairs of another; and it is an undeniablefact that the sympathy of the great body of the American people withIrish efforts for self-government has been diminished, not increased, since 1848, by the gradual transfer of the head-quarters and machineryof those efforts from Ireland to the United States. The recent refusalof the Mayor of New York, Mr. Hewitt, to allow what is called the "IrishNational flag" to be raised over the City Hall of New York is vastlymore significant of the true drift of American feeling on this subjectthan any number of sympathetic resolutions adopted at party conventionsor in State legislatures by party managers, bent on harpooning Irishvoters. If Ireland had really made herself a "nation, " with or withoutthe consent of Great Britain, a refusal to hoist the Irish flag on theoccasion of an Irish holiday would be not only churlish but foolish. Butthousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption ofthe British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard, not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growingdisposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament tothrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about theseresults with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties byacquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordancewith the American doctrine of "Home Rule" that "Home Rule" of any sortfor Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago byexpatriated Irishmen. 

No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the mosteloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America. 

In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente, withwhom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which ended onlywith his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of theDominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholicannals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no manliving perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for thisallusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between thelawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions uponAmerican soil. 

While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having beeninvited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series oflectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr. Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go backto the days of the _Nemesis of Faith_, and I did not affect to disguisefrom him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World. That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, wasquite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that they woulddo a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife betweenthe Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States. 

That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion toaggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of thequestions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly Iurged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midstof his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply. What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be saidby him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuousobjections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionarydemanded all his thought and all his time; another that he was nothistorically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and athird that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions. It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did he give wayuntil he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highestauthorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and mostjudicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing thathis appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift aninevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion, and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers. 

How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought todo it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needfulnow than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did itshould be known and published abroad. In the interval between thedelivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston. A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude's arrival there, all the Irish servants of the friend with whom he was to stay hadsuddenly left the house, refusing to their employer the right to inviteunder his roof a guest not agreeable to them. I handed this letter, without a word, to Father Burke a few hours before he was to speak inthe Academy of Music. He read it with a kind of humorous wrath; and whenthe evening came, he prefaced his lecture with a few strong and stirringwords, in which he castigated with equal sense and severity themisconduct of his country-people, anticipating thus by many a year thespirit in which the supreme authority of his Church has just now dealtwith the social plague of "boycotting, " whereof the strike of theservant girls at Boston sixteen years ago was a precursory symptom. 

Father Burke understood that American citizenship imposes duties whereit confers rights. Nobody expects the European emigrant who abjures hisforeign allegiance to divest himself of his native sympathies orantipathies. But American law, and the conditions of American liberty, require him to divest himself of the notion that he retains any rightactively to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country of hisbirth. For public and political purposes, the Irishman who becomes anAmerican ceases to be an Irishman. When Mr. Gladstone's Government in1881 seized and locked up indefinitely, on "suspicion" of what theymight be about to do, American citizens of Irish birth, these "suspects"clamoured, and had a right to clamour, for the intervention of theAmerican Government to protect them against being dealt with as if theywere Irishmen and British subjects. But by the abjuration of Britishallegiance which gave them this right to clamour for Americanprotection, they had voluntarily made themselves absolute foreigners toIreland, with no more legal or moral right to interfere in the affairsof that country than so many Chinamen or Peruvians. 

Having said this, I ought, in justice to my fellow-citizens of Irishbirth, to say that these elementary truths have too often been obscuredfor them by the conduct of public bodies in America, and of Americanpublic men. 

No American public man of reputation, holding an executive office in theFederal Government, has ever thrust himself, it is true, so inexcusablyinto the domestic affairs of Great Britain and Ireland as did Mr. Gladstone into the domestic affairs of the United States when, speakingat Newcastle in the very crisis of our great civil war, he gave all theweight of his position as a Cabinet Minister to the assertion that Mr. Jefferson Davis had created not only an army and a navy, but a nation, and thereby compelled the Prime Minister of Great Britain to break theeffect of this declaration by insisting that another Cabinet Minister, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, should instantly make a speech counteringit, and covering the neutrality of the British Government. [4]

Nor has either House of the Congress of the United States ever beenguilty of the impertinence of adopting resolutions of sympathy with theHome Rule, or any other movement affecting directly the domestic affairsof the British Empire, though, within my own knowledge, very strongpressure has been more than once put upon the Foreign Affairs Committeesof both Houses to bring this about. 

But such resolutions have been repeatedly adopted by State Legislatures, and individual members, both of the Federal Senate and of the FederalLower House, have discredited themselves, and brought such discredit asthey could upon the Congress, by effusions of the same sort. The badcitizenship of Irish-American citizens, however, is not the less badcitizenship because they may have been led into it by the recklessnessof State Legislatures--which have no responsibility for our foreignrelations--or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved todemonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, noAmerican citizen would have any more right to take an active part infurthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of allthe Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet, when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to "boom"the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, hasgoverned the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and itis as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant ofthe Republic. 

I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that allmy observations and comments have been made from an American, not from aBritish or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall begoverned concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland mayaffect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, andthereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection betweenthe Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affectthe future of my country. This being my point of view, it will beapparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation tosee things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwisethan as I saw them. 

With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time sawthe end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded FrenchRevolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think "theapplication of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecilityin the human mind:" and it will be found that in this book I have donelittle more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what Iactually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as myobject. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I madestenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged myinterest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party orany theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, andpeople high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact bypreference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people ofwhom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes, only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress ofwhatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently writtenout in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what painsI could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where itseemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages asfinally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned. 

I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailedupon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains toread the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear whatI heard. 

I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may bebetter able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which theseconclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into afew pages at the end of the book. 

It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subjectof Home Rule for Ireland. Until it shall be ascertained what "Home Rulefor Ireland" means, that subject seems to me to lie quite outside thedomain of my inquiries. "Home Rule for Ireland" is not now a plan--norso much as a proposition. It is merely a polemical phrase, of littleimportance to persons really interested in the condition of Ireland, however invaluable it may be to the makers of party platforms in my owncountry, or to Parliamentary candidates on this side of the Atlantic. Itmay mean anything or nothing, from Mr. Chamberlain's imperialist schemeof four Provincial Councils--which recalls the outlines of a systemonce established with success in New Zealand--to that absolute andcomplete separation in all particulars of the government of Ireland fromthe government of Great Britain, which has unquestionably been the aimof every active Irish organisation in the United States for the lasttwenty years, and which the accredited leader of the "Home Rule" partyin the British Parliament, Mr. Parnell, is understood in America to havepledged himself that he will do anything to further and nothing toimpede. On this point, what I took to be conclusive documentary evidencewas submitted to me in New York several years ago by Mr. Sheridan, at atime when the fever-heat of British indignation excited by those murdersin the Phoenix Park, for which I believe it is now admitted by the bestinformed authorities that Mr. Sheridan had no responsibility, wasdriving Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates into disavowals ofthe extreme men of their connection, which, but for Mr. Sheridan'scoolness and consciousness of his well-assured domination over them, might have led to extremely inconvenient consequences to allconcerned. [5] But whatever "Home Rule" may or may not mean, I went toIreland, not to find some achromatic meaning for a prismatic phrase, which is flashed at you fifty times in England or America where youencounter it once in Ireland, but to learn what I could of the socialand economical condition of the Irish people as affected by therevolutionary forces which are now at work in that country. 

I have watched the development of these forces too long and too closelyto be under any illusion as to the real importance relatively with themof the so-called "Parliamentary" action of the Irish Nationalists. 

II. 

The visits to Ireland, of which this book is a record, were made on myreturn from a sojourn in Rome during the celebration of the Jubilee ofHis Holiness Leo XIII. What I then and there learned convinced me thatthe Vatican was on the eve of grappling in Ireland with issuessubstantially identical with those which were forced, in my own country, two years ago, upon a most courageous and gifted member of the AmericanCatholic hierarchy, the Archbishop of New York, by the open adhesion ofan eminent Irish American ecclesiastic, the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, to thesocial revolution of which Mr. Henry George is the best-equipped andmost indefatigable apostle. Entertaining this conviction (which eventshave since shown to have been well-founded), I was anxious to survey onthe spot the conditions under which the conflict so vigorouslyencountered by the Archbishop in New York must be waged by the Vaticanin Ireland. 

To suppose that the Vatican, in dealing with this conflict, either inIreland or in America, is troubling itself about the balancing ofpolitical acrobats, British or American, upon the tight-rope of "HomeRule, " is as absurd as it would have been to suppose that in 1885 theVatican concerned itself with the subterranean intrigues which there isreason to believe the Irish Nationalists then sought to carry on withthe wire-pullers of the two great British political parties. To get acorrect perspective of the observations which I came from Rome this yearto make in Ireland, my readers, as I have already said, must allow me totake them across the Atlantic, and must put aside as accessory andincidental the forensic and polemic phenomena of Irish politics, withwhich they are perhaps only too familiar. 

It is as easy to go too far back as it is not to go back far enough inthe study of such a revolutionary movement as that of which Ireland isjust now the arena. 

Many and sore are the historical grievances of the Irish people. Thatthey are historical and not actual grievances would seem to be admittedby so sympathetic and minutely well-informed a writer as Dr. Sigerson, when he gives it as his opinion, that after the passage of the Land Actof 1870, "the concession in principle of the demands of the cultivatorsas tenants" had "abolished the class war waged between landlords andtheir tenantry. "

The class war between the tenantry and their landlords, therefore, whichis now undoubtedly waging in Ireland cannot be attributed to thehistorical grievances of the Irish people. The tradition and the memoryof these historical grievances may indeed be used by designing orhysterical traders in agitation to inflame the present war. But the waritself is not the old war, nor can it be explained by recurring to thecauses of the old war. It has the characteristics no longer of adefensive war, nor yet of a war of revenge absolutely, but of anaggressive war, and of a war of conquest. In his able work on "The LandTenure and the Land Classes of Ireland, " Dr. Sigerson, writing in 1871, looked forward to the peaceful co-existence in Ireland of two systems ofland-holding, "whereby the country might enjoy the advantage of what isgood in the 'landlord, ' or single middleman system, and in the peasantproprietary or direct system. "

What we now see in Ireland, after nearly twenty years of legislation, steadily tending to the triumph of equal rights, is an agitationthreatening not only the "co-existence" of these two systems, but thevery existence of each of these systems. 

To get at the origin and the meaning of this agitation we must becontent, I believe, to go no further back than ten years, and to lookfor them, not in Ireland, but in America, not to Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone primarily, but to Mr. Davitt and Mr. Henry George. 

III. 

In a very remarkable letter written to Earl Grey in 1868, after theClerkenwell explosions had brought the disestablishment of the IrishProtestant Church into Mr. Gladstone's scheme of "practical politics, "the Archbishop of Westminster, not then a Cardinal, called the attentionof Englishmen to the fact, not yet I fear adequately apprehended bythem, that "the assimilating power of America upon the Irish people, ifseven days slower than that of England in reaching Ireland, is sevenfoldmore penetrating and powerful upon the whole population. " By this theArchbishop meant, what was unquestionably true, that even in 1868, onlytwenty years after the great Irish exodus to America began, the socialand political ideas of America were exerting a seven-fold strongerinfluence upon the character and the tendencies of the Irish people thanthe social and political ideas of England. Thanks to the development ofthe cables and the telegraph since 1868, and to the enormous progressof America since that time in wealth and population, this "assimilatingpower" reaches Ireland much more rapidly, and exerts upon the Irishpeople a very much more drastic influence than in 1868. Thisestablishes, of course, a return current westward, which is as necessaryto he watched, and is as much neglected by American as the originaleastward current is by British public men. 

In this letter of 1868 to Earl Grey, the Archbishop of Westminsterdesiring, as an Englishman, to counteract, if possible, this influencewhich was drawing Ireland away from the British monarchy, and towardsthe American Republic, maintained that by two things the "heart ofIreland" might be won, and her affections enlisted with her interests inthe support of the unity, solidity, and prosperity of the BritishEmpire. One of these two things was "perfect religious equality betweenthe Catholics and the Protestants of Ireland. " The other was that theImperial Legislature should by statute make it impossible for anylandlord in Ireland to commit three wrongs, --"first, the wrong ofabusing his rights by arbitrary eviction; secondly, by exacting anexorbitant rent; thirdly, by appropriating to his own use theimprovements effected by the industry of his tenants. "

Perfect religious equality has since been established between theCatholics and the Protestants of Ireland. The three wrongs which theArchbishop called upon the Imperial Legislature to make impossible toIrish landlords have since been made impossible by Statute. 

Yet it is on all hands admitted that the "unity, solidity, andprosperity" of the British Empire have never been so seriouslythreatened in Ireland as during the last ten years. Was the Archbishopwrong, therefore, in his estimate of the situation in 1868? Or has thecentripetal influence of remedial British legislation since 1868 failedto check a centrifugal advance "by leaps and bounds, " in the"assimilating power" of America upon Ireland?

IV. 

Just ten years ago, in 1878, Mr. Michael Davitt and Mr. John Devoy (thelatter of whom had been commissioned in 1865 by the Fenian leaderStephens, as "chief organiser of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in theBritish army"), being then together in America, promulgated, Mr. Davittin a speech at Boston, and Mr. Devoy in a letter sent to the _Freeman'sJournal_ in Dublin, the outlines of a scheme for overthrowing Britishrule in Ireland by revolutionising the ownership of land in thatcountry. 

The basis of this scheme had been laid thirty years before, in 1848, byFinton Lalor, John Mitchel, and the present Archbishop of Cashel, then asimple curate. 

It was thus stated by Lalor in his paper, the _Irish Felon_:--

"The entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun anddown to the centre of the earth, is vested, as of right, in the peopleof Ireland. The soil of the country belongs as of right to the entirepeople of the country, not to any one class, but to the nation. "

This was a distinct denial of the right of private property in land. Iftrue of Ireland and the Irish people this proposition was true of alllands and of all peoples. Lalor, though more of a patriot than of aphilosopher, saw this plainly; and in one of the three numbers of hispaper which appeared before it was suppressed by the British Government, he said "the principle I propose goes to the foundations of Europe, andsooner or later will cause Europe to uprise. " Michael Davitt saw this asclearly in 1878 as Finton Lalor thirty years before. He had matured hisplans in connection with this principle during the weary but not wastedyears of his imprisonment as a Fenian at Dartmoor, a place, the name ofwhich is connected in America with many odious memories of the secondwar between England and the United States; and going out to Americaalmost immediately after his release on a ticket of leave, he therefound the ideas of Finton Lalor and his associates of 1848, ripened andharvested in the mind of an American student of sociology, Henry George. Nowhere in the world has what a shrewd English traveller calls "theillegitimate development of private wealth" attained such proportions inmodern times as in America, and especially in California. Nowhere, too, in the world is the ostentatious waste of the results of labour upon theantics of a frivolous plutocracy a more crying peril of our times thanin America. Henry George, an American of the Eastern States, who went tothe Pacific coast as a lad, had grown up with and watched the progressof this social disease in California; and when Davitt reached America in1878, Henry George was preparing to publish his revolutionary book on_Progress and Poverty_, which appeared in 1879. Dates are important fromthis point, as they will trace for the reader the formation of thestrongest forces which, as I believe, are to-day at work to shape thefuture of Ireland, and, if Cardinal Manning is right, with the future ofIreland, the future of the British Empire. 

The year 1878 saw the "Home Rule" movement in Irish politics brought toan almost ludicrous halt by the success of Mr. Parnell, then a youngmember of Parliament for Meath, in unhorsing the leader of thatmovement, Mr. Butt. As the Irish members then had no coherent purpose orpolicy, Mr. Parnell had, without much trouble, dominated and brigadedthem to follow him blindly into a system of parliamentary obstruction, which there is reason to suppose was suggested to him by a friend whohad studied the Congressional proceedings of the United States, thenative country of his mother, and especially the tactics which hadenabled Mr. Randall of Pennsylvania, the leader of the Democraticminority in the House of Representatives, to check the so-called "CivilRights Bill, " sent down by the Senate to that House, during a continuoussession of forty-six hours and a half, with no fewer than seventy-sevencalls of the house, in the month of January 1875, some time before Mr. Parnell first took his seat in the House of Commons. 

When Mr. Parnell, early in 1878, thanks to this system, had ousted Mr. Butt, and got himself elected as President of the Irish "Home RuleConfederation, " he found himself, as an Irish friend of mine wrote to meat the time, in an awkward position. He had command of the "Home Rule"members at Westminster, but he had no notion what to do with them, andneither they nor he could see anyway open to securing a permanent holdupon the Irish voters. Three bad harvests in succession had thrown theIrish tenants into a state which disinclined them to make sacrificesfor any sentimental policy, but prepared them to lend their ears eagerlyto Michael Davitt, when, on his return from the United States in theearly spring of 1879, he proclaimed anew, at Irishtown in his nativecounty of Mayo, the gospel of 1848 giving the land of Ireland to thepeople of Ireland. Clearly Mr. Davitt held the winning card. As hefrankly put the case to a special correspondent, whom I sent to see him, and whose report I published in New York, he saw that "the only issueupon which Home Rulers, Nationalists, Obstructionists, and each andevery shade of opinion existing in Ireland could be united was the LandQuestion, " and of that question he took control. Naturally enough, Mr. Parnell, himself a landowner under the English settlement, shrank atfirst from committing himself and his fortunes to the leadership of Mr. Davitt. But no choice was really left him, and there is reason tobelieve that a decision was made easier to him by a then inchoateundertaking that he should be personally protected against the financialconsequences to himself of the new departure, by a testimonial fund, such as was in fact raised and presented to him in 1883. In June 1879 heaccepted the inevitable, and in a speech at Westport put himself withhis parliamentary following and machinery at the service of the founderof the Irish Land League, uttering the keynote of Mr. Davitt's "newdeparture" in his celebrated appeal to the Irish tenants to "keep a firmgrip of their homesteads. " In the middle of October 1879, Mr. Davittformally organised the Irish National Land League, "to reduce rack-rentsand facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the land of Ireland bythe occupiers, " and Mr. Parnell was made its first President. He wassent out to America in that capacity, at the end of the year to explainto the Irish-American leaders the importance of supplying the neworganisation with funds sufficient to enable it to take and keep thefield at Westminster with a force of paid members not dependent fortheir support upon the Irish constituencies. It was obviously impossibleeither to guarantee any considerable number of Irishmen holding propertyagainst loss by a policy aimed at the foundations of property, or tocount upon finding for every Irish seat a member of local weight andstake, imbued with the spirit of martyrdom. 

Mr. Parnell landed at New York on the 1st of January 1880. An interviewwith him, written out on board of the steamer which took him to Americaby a correspondent detailed for that purpose, was published on themorning after his arrival. It made on the whole an unfavourableimpression in America, which was not improved by an injudicious quarrelinto which he drifted with a portion of the American press, and whichwas distinctly deepened by his inexcusable misrepresentations of theconduct of Queen Victoria during the famine of 1847, and by his foolishattacks upon the management and objects of the Duchess of Marlborough'sfund for the relief of Irish distress. The friends of Mr. Davitt inAmerica, however, and the leaders of the most active Irish organisationsthere, came to the rescue, and as the two American parties werepreparing their lines of battle for the Presidential conflict of 1880, Mr. Parnell was not only "put through" the usual course of "receptions"by Mayors and State legislatures, but invited on an "off-day" to addressthe House of Representatives at Washington. His tour, however, on thewhole, harmed more than it helped the new Irish movement on my side ofthe Atlantic, and when he was called back to take his part in theelectoral contest precipitated by Lord Beaconsfield's dissolution ofParliament at Easter 1880, Mr. Davitt went out to America himself to dowhat his Parliamentary associate had not succeeded in doing. During thisvisit of Mr. Davitt to the United States, Mr. Henry George finallytransferred his residence from San Francisco to New York, and made hisarrangements to visit England and Ireland, and bring about a practicalcombination between the advocates of "the land for the people" on bothsides of the ocean. These arrangements he carried out in 1881-82, publishing in 1881, in America, his treatise on the Irish Land question, while Mr. Davitt, who had been arrested after his return to Europe byMr. Gladstone's Government in February 1881, on a revocation of histicket-of-leave, lay a prisoner at Portland. Mr. George himself, whiletravelling in Ireland with an academical English friend, came under"suspicion" in the eyes of one of Mr. Forster's officers, and wasarrested, but at once released. During the protracted confinement of Mr. Davitt at Portland, the utter incapacity of Mr. Parnell and hisParliamentary associates to manage the social revolution initiated bythe founder of the Land League became fully apparent, not only toimpartial, but even to sympathetic observers in America, long before itwas demonstrated by the incarceration of Mr. Parnell in Kilmainham, thedisavowal, under pressure, of the no-rent manifesto by Archbishop Croke, and the suppression of the Land League. In sequestrating Mr. Davitt, Mr. Forster, as was shown by the extraordinary scenes which in the House ofCommons followed his arrest, had struck at the core of the revolution, and had the Irish Secretary not been deserted by Mr. Gladstone, underinfluences which originated at Kilmainham, and were reinforced by thepressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882, historymight have had a very different tale to tell of the last six years inIreland and in Great Britain. [6]

V. 

It was after the return of Mr. George from Ireland to New York in 1882that the first black point appeared on the horizon, of the conflict, inevitable in the nature of things, between the social revolution andthe Catholic Church, which assumed such serious proportions two yearsago in America, and which is now developing itself in Ireland. Among theablest and the most earnest converts in America to the doctrine of thenew social revolution was the Rev. Dr. M'Glynn, a Catholic priest, standing in the front rank of his order in New York, in point alike ofeloquence in the pulpit, and of influence in private life. Finding, likeMichael Davitt, in the doctrine of Henry George an outcome and aconfirmation of the principle laid down in 1848 for the liberation ofIreland by Finton Lalor, Dr. M'Glynn threw himself ardently into theadvocacy of that doctrine, --so ardently that in August 1882 the Prefectof the Propaganda, Cardinal Simeoni, found it necessary to invite theattention of Cardinal M'Closkey, then Archbishop of New York, tospeeches of Dr. M'Glynn, reported in the _Irish World_ of New York, as"containing propositions openly opposed to the teachings of the CatholicChurch. "

It did not concern the Propaganda that these propositions ran onall-fours with the policy of the Irish Land League established by Mr. Davitt, and accepted by Mr. Parnell. What concerned the Propaganda inthe propositions of Dr. M'Glynn at New York in 1882 was precisely whatconcerns the Propaganda in the programme of Mr. Davitt as mismanaged byMr. Dillon in Ireland in 1888--the incompatibility of thesepropositions, and of that programme, with the teachings of the Church. 

Upon receiving the instructions of the Propaganda in August 1882, Cardinal M'Closkey sent for Dr. M'Glynn, and set the matter plainlybefore him. Dr. M'Glynn professed regret for his errors, promised toabstain in future from political meetings, and begged the Cardinal toinform the authorities at Home of his intention to walk morecircumspectly. The submission of Dr. M'Glynn was approved at Rome, butit was gently intimated to him that it needed to be crowned by publicreparation for the scandal he had caused. He disregarded this pastoralhint, and when the Archbishop Coadjutor of New York, Dr. Corrigan, wentto Rome in 1883 to represent the Cardinal, who was unequal to thejourney, he found the Propaganda by no means satisfied with the attitudeof Dr. M'Glynn. Two years after this, in October 1885, CardinalM'Closkey died, and Dr. Corrigan succeeded him as Archbishop of NewYork. 

Between the first admonition given to the sacerdotal ally of Mr. Georgein 1882 and this event much had come to pass in Ireland. The Land Leaguesuppressed by Mr. Forster had been suffered to reappear as the NationalLeague by Earl Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. Sir William Harcourt'sstringent and sweeping "Coercion Act" of July 11th, 1882, passed underthe stress of the murders in the Phoenix Park, expiring by its own termsin July 1885, Mr. Gladstone found himself forced either to alienate anumber of his Radical supporters by proposing a renewal of that Act, orto invite a catastrophe in Ireland by attempting to rule that countryunder "the ordinary law. "

He elected to escape from the dilemma by inviting a defeat in Parliamenton a secondary question of the Budget. He went out of power on the 9thof June 1885, leaving Lord Salisbury to send the Earl of Carnarvon asViceroy to Ireland, and the Irish party in Parliament to darken the airon both sides of the Atlantic with portentous intimations of amysterious compact, under which they were to secure Home Rule forIreland by establishing the Conservatives in their places at the generalelection in November. [7]

What came of all this I may briefly rehearse. Going out to America inNovember 1885, and returning to England in January 1886, I remained inLondon long enough to assure myself, and to publish in America myconviction of the utter hopelessness of Mr. Gladstone's "Home Rule"measure, the success of which would have made his government the allyand the instrument of Mr. Parnell in carrying out the plans of Mr. Davitt, Mr. Henry George, and the active Irish organisations of theUnited States. All this is matter of history. 

The effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech of April 8, 1886, introducing hisHome Rule Bill, upon the Irish in America was simply intoxicating. Theysaw him, as in a vision, repeating for the benefit of Ireland at Dublin, on a grander scale, the impressive scene of his surrender in 1858 atCorfu of the Protectorate of the Ionian Islands to Greece. 

Upon thousands also of Americans, interested more or less intelligentlyin British affairs, but neither familiar, nor caring to be, with thedetails of the political situation in Great Britain, this appearance ofthe British Premier, as the champion of Home Rule for Ireland, denouncing the "baseness and blackguardism" of Pitt and hisaccomplices, the framers of the Union of 1800, naturally produced a veryprofound impression. What might be almost called a "tidal wave" ofsympathy with the Irish National League, and with him as its ally, madeitself felt throughout the United States. Had I witnessed the drama fromthe far-off auditorium in New York, I might doubtless have shared theconviction of so many of my countrymen that we were about to behold theconsummation tunefully anticipated so many years ago by John QuincyAdams, and--

 "Proud of herself, victorious over fate, See Erin rise, an independent state. "

The moment seemed propitious for a resolute forward move in America ofMr. Henry George, and the other American believers in the doctrine of"the land for the people. " It would have been more propitious had notthe political managers of the Irish party, misapprehending to the lastmoment the drift of things in the British Parliament, and countingfirmly upon a victory for Mr. Gladstone, either at Westminster or at thepolls, insisted upon holding a great convention of the Irish in Americaat Chicago in August 1886. A proposition to do this had been made in thespring of 1885, and put off, in judicious deference to the disgust whichmany independent Americans of both parties then felt at the coursepursued by Mr. Parnell's friends, Mr. Egan and Mr. Sullivan in 1884, when these leaders openly led the Irish with drums beating and greenflags flying out of the Democratic into the Republican camp. 

As it was, however, Mr. Gladstone having gone out of power a secondtime, on the second day of June in 1886, the non-parliamentary and realleader in Ireland of the Irish revolutionary movement, Mr. Davitt, cameovertly to the front, and crossed the Atlantic to ride the whirlwind anddirect the storm at the Convention appointed to be held in Chicago onthe 18th of August. 

In New York he found Mr. Henry George quietly preparing to put theemotions of the moment to profit at the municipal election which was tooccur in that city in November, and Dr. M'Glynn more enamoured than everof the doctrine of "the land for the people, " and more defiant than everof the Propaganda and of his ecclesiastical superiors. It was resolvedthat Mr. George should come forward as a candidate for the mayoralty inNovember, and Dr. M'Glynn determined to take the field in support ofhim. 

VI. 

We now come to close quarters. 

Dr. Corrigan, as I have said, had become the Archbishop of New York inOctober 1885. The Irish-American Convention met at Chicago, Mr. Davittdominating its proceedings by his courageous and outspoken support ofhis defeated Parliamentary allies in England. The candidacy of Mr. HenryGeorge had not yet been announced in New York. But Dr. M'Glynn resumedhis practice of addressing public meetings in support of the doctrinesof Mr. Davitt and of Henry George. The Archbishop's duty was plain. Itwas not pleasant. A Catholic prelate of Irish blood living in New Yorkmight have been pardoned for avoiding, if he could, an open interventionat such a moment, to prevent an able and popular priest from disobeyinghis ecclesiastical superiors in his zeal for a doctrine hostile to"landlordism, " and cordially approved by the most influential of theIrish leaders. 

But on the 21st August 1886, while all the Irishmen in New York werewild with excitement over the proceedings at Chicago, ArchbishopCorrigan did his duty, and admonished Dr. M'Glynn to restrain hispolitical ardour. The admonition was thrown away. A month later, thecanvass of Mr. Henry George being then fully opened, Dr. M'Glynn sentMr. George himself to wait upon the Archbishop with a note ofintroduction as his "very dear and valued friend, " in the hope ofinducing the Archbishop to withdraw his inhibition and allow him tospeak at a great meeting, then about to be held, of the supporters ofMr. George. 

The Archbishop replied in a firm but friendly note, forbidding Dr. M'Glynn "in the most positive manner" to attend the meeting referred to, or "any other political meeting whatever. "

Dr. M'Glynn deliberately disobeyed this order, attended the meeting, andthrew himself with ever increasing heat into the war againstlandlordism. On the 2d of October 1886, therefore, he was formally"suspended" from his priestly functions--nor has he ever since beenpermitted to resume them. Another priest presides over the great churchof St. Stephen, of which he was the rector. More than once the door ofrepentance and return has been opened to him; but, I believe, he isstill waging war in his own way, and beyond the precincts of thepriesthood, both upon the right of private property in land and upon thePope. 

He is a man of vigorous intellect; and he has defined the issue betweenhimself and the Church in language so terse and clear that I reproduceit here. It defines also the real issue of to-day between the Churchspeaking through the Papal Decree of April 20, 1888, and the NationalLeague of Ireland acting through the "Plan of Campaign. "

No heed having been paid by Dr. M'Glynn to several successiveintimations summoning him to go to Rome and explain his attitude, hefinally, on the 20th of December 1886, wrote a letter in which, with asingle skilful turn of his wrist, he took out the core of Henry George'sdoctrine as to land, which really is the core also of the Irish Plan ofCampaign, and thus laid it before the Archbishop of New York:--

"My doctrine about land has been made clear in speeches, in reports ofinterviews, and in published articles, and I repeat it here. I havetaught, and I shall continue to teach in speeches and writings, as longas I live, that land is rightfully the property of the people in common, and that private ownership of land is against natural justice, no matterby what civil or ecclesiastical laws it may be sanctioned; and I wouldbring about instantly, if I could, such change of laws all over theworld as would confiscate private property in land without one penny ofcompensation to the miscalled owners. "

There is no shuffling here. With logical precision Dr. M'Glynn stripsMr. George's doctrine of its technical disguise as a form of taxation, and presents it to the world as a simple Confiscation of Rents. Manyacute critics of _Progress and Poverty_ have failed to see that whenMr. George calls upon the State to take over to itself, and to its ownuses, the whole annual rental value of the bare land of a country, theland, that is, irrespectively of improvements put upon it by man, heproposes not "a single tax upon land" at all, but an actual confiscationof the rental of the land--which for practical purposes is the land--tothe uses of the State, without a levy, and without compensation to "themiscalled owners. "

When a tax is levied, the need by the State levying it of a certain sumof money must first be ascertained by competent authority, legislativeor executive, as the case may be, and the law-making power must then, according to a prescribed form, enact that to raise such a sum a certaintax shall be levied on designated property or occupations. If theexigencies of the State are held to require it, a tax may be levied uponproperty of more than its value, as in the case, for example, of thecustoms duty which was imposed in one of our "tariff revisions" uponplate glass imported into the United States by way of "protecting" asingle plate-glass factory then existing in the United States. This wasan abominable abuse of a constitutional power, but it was not"confiscation. " What Henry George proposes is confiscation, as Dr. M'Glynn plainly sees and courageously says. What he proposes is thatthe State shall compel the annual rental value of all land to be paidinto the public treasury, without regard to the question whether theState does or does not need such a sum of money. That is confiscationpure and simple, the State, in the assumed interest of the State, proceeding against the private owners of land, or the "miscalledowners, " to use Dr. M'Glynn's significant phrase, precisely as under thefeudal system the State proceeded against the private property of rebelsand traitors. No good reason can be shown why the process should not beapplied to personalty and to debts as well as to land. 

This was the doctrine indorsed at the polls in New York in November 1886by 68, 000 voters. Nor can there be much doubt that it would have beenindorsed by the few thousand more votes needed to defeat Mr. Hewitt, theactual Mayor of New York, and to put Mr. Henry George into the ChiefMagistracy of the first city of the New World, had not its teachers andpreachers been confronted by the quiet, cool, and determined prelate whomet it as plainly as it was put. "Your letter, " said the Archbishop, "has brought the painful intelligence that you decline to go to Rome, and that you have taught, and will continue to teach, the injustice ofprivate ownership of land, no matter by what laws of Church or State itmay be sanctioned. In view of such declarations, to permit you toexercise the holy ministry would be manifestly wrong. "

In these few words of the Archbishop of New York, we have plainlyaffirmed in 1886 the principle underlying the Papal Decree of 1888against the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting in Ireland. There is noquestion of parties or of politics in the one case or in the other. WhenDr. M'Glynn talked about the private ownership of land in New York as"against natural justice, " he flung himself not only against the EighthCommandment and the teachings of the Catholic Church, touching therights of property, but against the constitutions of the State of NewYork and of the United States. That "private property shall not be takenfor public uses without just compensation" is a fundamental provision ofthe Constitution of the United States, which is itself a part of theConstitution of every State of the Union; and the right of privateownership in land is defined and protected beyond doubt or cavil in NewYork under the State Constitution. An Act passed in 1830 provides anddeclares that all lands within the State "are allodial, so that, subjectonly to the liability to escheat, the entire and absolute property isvested in the owners according to the nature of their respectiveestates. "

By this Act "all feudal tenures of every description, with all theirincidents, " were "abolished. " Most of the "feudal incidents" of thesocage tenure had been previously abolished by an Act passed in 1787, under the first Constitution of the State, adopted at Kingston in 1777, a year after the Declaration of American Independence; and socage tenureby fixed and determinate service, not military or variable by the lordat his will, had been adopted long before by an Act of the firstAssembly of the Province of New York held in 1691 under the first RoyalGovernor, after the reconquest of the province from Holland, and in thereign of William and Mary. This Act provided that all lands should "beheld in free and common socage according to the tenure of East Greenwichin England. " It is an interesting circumstance that the right of privateownership in land, thus rooted in our history, should have been defendedagainst a threatening revolutionary movement in New York by the courageand loyalty to the Constitution of his country as well as to his Churchof a Catholic Archbishop. For this same Assembly of the Province of NewYork in 1693, in an Act "to maintain Protestant ministers and churches, "enacted that "every Jesuit and popish priest" found in the Provinceafter a certain day named, should be put into "perpetual imprisonment, "with the proviso that if he escaped and was retaken he should sufferdeath. And even in the Constitution of 1777 the Protestantism of NewYork expressed its hostility to the Catholic Church by exactingsubjection "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil. "

The position of the Archbishop, both as a churchman and as a citizen, was impregnable. When Dr. M'Glynn advocated the plan of Henry George, headvocated at one and the same time the immoral seizure and confiscationof the whole income of many persons within the protection of theConstitution of New York, and the overthrow of the Constitution of thatState and of the United States. It may be within the competency of theBritish Parliament to enact such a confiscation of rent without arevolution, there being not only no allodial tenure of land in GreatBritain, but, it would appear, no limit to the power of a BritishParliament over the lives, liberties, and property of British subjects, but the will of its members. But it is not within the competency of theCongress of the United States, or of the Assembly of New York, to dosuch a thing, the powers of these bodies being controlled and denned bywritten Constitutions, which can only be altered or amended in aprescribed manner and through prescribed and elaborate forms. 

VII. 

By the middle of October 1886 it became clear that Mr. George, whosecandidacy had at first been regarded with indifference by the partymanagers, both Democratic and Republican, in New York, would command avote certainly larger than that of one of these parties, and possiblylarger than that of either of them. To put him at the head of a poll ofthree parties would elect him. This was so apparent that he and hisfriends, including Dr. M'Glynn and Mr. Davitt, were warranted inexpecting a victory. 

It was hardly therefore by a mere coincidence that this precise time wasselected for opening the war in Ireland against Rent. It is quitepossible that if Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentary friends had been inless of a hurry to open this war before the return of Mr. Davitt fromAmerica, it might have been opened in a manner less "politicallystupid, " if not less "morally wrong. " But, of course, if Mr. HenryGeorge had been elected Mayor of New York, as he came so near to beingin November 1886, and Mr. Davitt had returned to Ireland with theprestige of contributing to place him in the municipal chair of the mostimportant city in the New World, Mr. Dillon and his Parliamentaryfriends would probably have found it necessary to accept a much lessconspicuous part in the conduct of the campaign. 

It was on the 17th of October 1886 that Mr. John Dillon, M. P. , firstpromulgated the "Plan of Campaign" at Portumna, in a speech which waspromptly flashed under the Atlantic to New York, there to feed theflame, already fanned by the eloquence of Dr. M'Glynn, into a blaze ofenthusiasm for the apostle of the New Gospel of Confiscation. 

Had the "Plan of Campaign" then been met by the highest local authorityof the Catholic Church in Ireland, as Henry George's doctrine ofConfiscation was met in New York by Archbishop Corrigan, it might neverhave been necessary to issue the Papal Decree of April 1888. But whilethe Bishop of Limerick unhesitatingly denounced the "Plan of Campaign"as "politically stupid and morally wrong, " the Archbishop of Dublinbestowed upon it what may be called a left-handed benediction. Admittingthat it empowered one of the parties to a contract to "fix the terms onwhich that contract should continue in force, " the Archbishop actuallycondoned the claim of this immoral power by the tenant, on the groundthat the same immoral power had been theretofore exercised by thelandlord! Peter having robbed Paul from January to July, that is, Paulshould be encouraged by his spiritual guides to rob Peter from July toJanuary!

That the Catholic Church should even seem for a time to speak with twovoices on such a point as the moral quality of political machinery, orthat speaking with one voice upon such a point in America, it shouldeven seem to speak with another voice in Ireland, would clearly be adisaster to the Church and to civilisation. From the moment therefore, in 1886, when the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of NewYork was defined, as I have shown, and the Irish National League, with aquasi-indorsement from the Archbishop of Dublin, had arrayed itselfpractically and openly on the side of Dr. M'Glynn and against theArchbishop of New York, interests far transcending those of anypolitical party in Ireland, in Great Britain, or in the United States, were involved. Unfortunately for the immediate and decisive settlementby Rome of the issue between Dr. M'Glynn and the Archbishop of New York, a certain vague but therefore more vexatious measure of countenance hadbeen given, before that issue was raised, to the theories of Mr. HenryGeorge by another American prelate, the Cardinal Archbishop ofBaltimore, and by more than one eminent ecclesiastic in Europe. Ofcourse this would have been impossible had these ecclesiasticspenetrated, like Dr. M'Glynn, to the heart of Mr. George's contention, or discerned with the acumen of the Archbishop of New York thefundamental difference between any imaginable exercise of the power oftaxation by a Constitutional Government, and Mr. George's doctrine ofthe Confiscation of Rent. But this having occurred, it was inevitablethat Rome, which has to deal with a world-wide and complex system of themost varied and delicate human affairs, should proceed in the matterwith infinite patience and care. In January 1887 the Propagandaaccordingly cabled thus to the Archbishop of New York, --Dr. M'Glynnpersisting in his refusal to go to Rome--"for prudential reasonsPropaganda has heretofore postponed action in the case of Dr. M'Glynn. The Sovereign Pontiff has now taken the matter into his own hands. "

In the hands of his Holiness the matter was safe; and in the PapalDecree of April 20, 1888, we have at once the most conclusivevindication of the wisdom and courage shown by the Archbishop of NewYork in 1886, and the most emphatic condemnation of the attitude assumedin 1886 by the Archbishop of Dublin. 

VIII. 

It must not be assumed that Mr. George has been finally defeated inAmerica. On the contrary, he was never more active. A legacy left tohim by an Irish-American for the propagation of his doctrines has justbeen declared by the Vice-Chancellor of New Jersey, to be invalid on theground that George's doctrines are "in opposition to the laws"; and thisdecision has bred an uproar in the press which is reviving popularattention all over the country to the doctrines and to their author. Heis astute, persevering, as much in earnest as Mr. Davitt, and asfamiliar with the weak points in the political machinery of the UnitedStates as is Mr. Davitt with the weak points in the political machineryof Great Britain. This is a Presidential year. The election of 1888 willbe decided, as was the election of 1884, in New York. The Democraticparty go into the contest with a New York candidate, PresidentCleveland, who was presented to the Convention at St. Louis fornomination, not by an Irishman from New York, but by an Irishman fromthe hopelessly Republican State of Pennsylvania, and whose renomination, distasteful to the Democratic Governor of the State, was also openlyopposed by the Democratic Mayor of the city of New York, Mr. Hewitt, Mr. George's successful competitor in the Municipal election of 1886. Leaving Dr. M'Glynn to uphold the Confiscation of Land against the Popein New York, as Mr. Davitt, Mr. Dillon, and a certain number of Irishpriests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the Pope inIreland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doingcleverly makes a flank movement towards his "exclusive taxation ofland, " by promoting, under the cover of "Revenue Reform, " an attack onthe indirect taxation from which the Federal Revenues are now mainlyderived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also apolitical supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confrontedby the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon thetrue nature of Mr. George's "exclusive taxation of land, " as theclear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtainfrom the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But forthe moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only lessconfused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confusedand troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forcesidentical in character with those which confuse and trouble thesituation in Ireland. 

Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are workingin America, I believe myself to have some knowledge. 

To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amidand against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat, in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this Icould not hope, in the time at my disposal, to do. With very much lessthan this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairsI had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect, must have found it possible to rest content. 

CHAPTER I. 

DUBLIN, _Monday, Jan. 30, 1888. _--I left London last night. The trainwas full of people going to attend levees and drawing-rooms about to beheld at Dublin Castle. 

Near Watford we lost half an hour by the breaking of a connecting-rod:but the London and North-Western is a model railway, and we ranalongside the pier at Holyhead exactly "on time. " There is no suchrailway travelling in America, excepting on the Pennsylvania Central;and the North-Western sleeping-carriages, if less monumental andelaborate than ours, are better ventilated, and certainly not lesscomfortable. 

I had expected to come upon unusual things and people in Ireland, but Ihad not expected to travel thither in company with an Irish Jacobite. Two of my fellow-passengers, chatting as they smoked their cigarettesin the little vestibule between the cabins of the carriage, had much tosay about Lord Ashburnham, and the "Order of the White Rose, " and theGrand Mass to be celebrated to-morrow morning at the Church of theCarmelites in London, in memory of Charles Edward Stuart, who died atRome in 1788, and now lies buried as Charles III. , King of Great Britainand Ireland, in the vaults of the Vatican, together with his father"James III. , " and his brother "Henry IX. " One of the two was as hot andearnest about the "Divine Right of Kings" as the parson who, less thanforty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great choleravisitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the RoyalMint in dropping the letters D. G. From the first florins of QueenVictoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being calledover to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently didnot know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by theCardinal Archbishop. 

The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more thatyesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of thiscurious affair. 

He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once forthe priest in charge of the Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration. Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop's house, and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for theMass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on adilemma. "What you propose, " said the Cardinal, "is either a piece oftheatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in achurch, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to theTower!"

They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence ofNapoleon--"_très mortifiés et peu contents_. " After they had gone, theCardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reachedhim through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Right, and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he hadthrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed toshow that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to beworn by a certain princess in Bavaria!

If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the "blueChina craze, " may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearlygrowing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine ofgovernment by mere majorities, which is by no means confined to Europe?This feeling underlies the "National Association" for getting a preambleput into the Constitution of the United States, "recognising AlmightyGod as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government. " Therewas such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holinessthe existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo XIII. , theother day at Rome, President Cleveland's curious Jubilee gift of anemblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls "thegodless American Constitution. "[8]

We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats--certainly thebest appointed of their sort afloat--are owned, I find, in Dublin, andmanaged exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit thereforebelongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown asadmirable, in all respects, as the mail services between Dover and theContinental ports are not. 

I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M. P. For North Tyrone, with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one ofthe most ill-famed of the "congested districts" of Ireland, and just nowmade a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M'Fadden, theparish priest of the place, for "criminally conspiring to compel andinduce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations. "

I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where theConstitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws"impairing the validity of contracts. " But as the British Parliament hasbeen passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raisedthe standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seemsa little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities toprosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction inhis own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Faddenon such grounds by the authorities of his own Church. 

A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin. Before we got into motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped fromthe Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting usto buy the morning papers, or a copy of "the greatest book everpublished, 'Paddy at Home!'" This proved to be a translation of M. DeMandat Grancey's lively volume, _Chez Paddy_. The vendor, "Davy, " is oneof the "chartered libertines" of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and Idare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, andalertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservativemember for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the _IrishTimes_ and the _Express_ as "the two best papers in all Ireland. " But hesmiled approval when I asked for the _Freeman's Journal_ also, in whichI found a report of a speech delivered yesterday by Mr. Davitt atRathkeale, chiefly remarkable for a sensible protest against theridiculous and rantipole abuse lavished upon Mr. Balfour by theNationalist orators and newspapers. I am not surprised to see this. Mr. Davitt has the stuff in him of a serious revolutionary leader, and nosuch man can stomach the frothy and foolish vituperation to whichparliamentary agitators are addicted, not in Ireland only. Unlike Mr. Parnell, who is forced to have one voice for New York and Cincinnati, and another voice for Westminster, Mr. Davitt is free to be alwaysavowedly bent on bringing about a thorough Democratic revolution inIreland. I believe him to be too able a man to imagine, as some of theIrish agitators do, that this can be done without the consent ofDemocratic England, and he has lived too much in England, and knows theEnglish democracy too well, I suspect, not to know that to abuse anexecutive officer for determination and vigour is the surest way to makehim popular. Calling Mr. Forster "Buckshot" Forster did him no harm. Onthe contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of hisgrapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a greatdeal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear thatobedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the humanheart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promotedby putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping bigstick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine hadthe wit to see that it was his "good heart" which brought Louis XVI. Tothe scaffold. 

Nobody who had not learned from the speeches made in England, and thecable despatches sent to America, that freedom of speech and of thepress has been brutally trampled under foot in Ireland by a "Coercion"Government would ever suspect it from reading the Dublin papers which Ithis morning bought. 

As a Democratic journalist I had some practical knowledge of a true"Coercion" government in America a quarter of a century ago. TheAmerican editor who had ventured in 1862 to publish in a New York orPhiladelphia newspaper a letter from Washington, speaking of theUnionist Government by President Lincoln, as the letter from Londonpublished to-day in the _Freeman's Journal_ speaks of the UnionistGovernment of Lord Salisbury, would have found himself in one of thecasemates of Fort Lafayette within twenty-four hours. Our Republicanrulers acted upon the maxim laid down by Mr. Tilden's friend, MontgomeryBlair, [9] that "to await the results of slow judicial prosecution is toallow crime to be consummated, with the expectation of subsequentpunishment, instead of preventing its accomplishment by prompt anddirect interference. " Perhaps Americans take their Government moreseriously than Englishmen do. Certainly we stand by it more sternly inbad weather. Even so good a Constitutionalist as Professor Parsons atHarvard, I remember, when a student asked him if he would not suspendthe _Habeas Corpus_ in the case of a man caught hauling down theAmerican flag, promptly replied, "I would not suspend the _HabeasCorpus_; I would suspend the _Corpus_. "

We found no "hansoms" at the Dublin Station, only "outside cars, " andcabs much neater than the London four-wheelers. One of these brought usat a good pace to Maple's Hotel in Kildare Street, a large, old-fashioned but clean and comfortable house. My windows look down upona stately edifice of stone erecting on Kildare Street for all sorts ofeducational and "exhibitional" purposes, with the help of an Imperialgrant, I am told, and to be called the Leinster Hall. The style isdecidedly composite, with colonnades and loggie and domes and porticos, and recalls the ancient Roman buildings depicted in that fresco of abelated slave-girl knocking at her mistress's door which with itscompanion pieces is fast fading away upon the walls of the "House ofLivia" on the Palatine. 

At one end of this street is the fashionable and hospitable KildareStreet Club; at the other the Shelburne Hotel, known to all Americans. This seems to have been "furbished-up" since I last saw it. There, forthe last time as it proved, I saw and had speech of my friend of manyyears, the prince of all preachers in our time, Father Burke of Tallaghtand of San Clemente. 

I had telegraphed to him from London that I should halt in Dublin for aday, on my way to America, to see him. He came betimes, to find mealmost as badly-off as St. Lawrence upon his gridiron. The surgeon whomthe hotel people had hastily summoned to relieve me from a sudden attackof that endemic Irish ecstasy, the lumbago, had applied what he calledthe "heroic treatment" on my telling him that I had no time to be ill, but must spend that day with Father Burke, dine that night with Mr. Irving and Mr. Toole, and go on the next day to America. 

"What has this Inquisitor done to you?" queried Father Tom. 

"Cauterised me with chloroform. "

"Oh! that's a modern improvement! Let me see--" and, scrutinising theresults, he said, with a merry twinkle in his deep, dark eyes--"I seehow it is! They brought you a veterinary!"

This was in 1878. On that too brief, delightful morning, we talked ofall things--supralunar, lunar, and sublunary. Much of Wales, I remember, where he had been making a visit. "A glorious country, " he said, "andthe Welsh would have been Irish, only they lost the faith. " Full of lovefor Ireland as he was, he was beginning then to be troubled by symptomsin the Nationalist movement, which could not be regarded with composureby one who, in his youth at Rome, had seen, with me, the devil ofextremes drive Italy down a steep place into the sea. 

Five years afterwards I landed at Queenstown, in July 1883, intending tovisit him at Tallaght. But when the letter which I sent to announce mycoming reached the monastery, the staunchest Soldier of the Church inIreland lay there literally "dead on the field of honour. " Chatham, inthe House of Lords, John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, fell in harness, but neither death so speaks to the heart as the simpleand sublime self-sacrifice of the great Dominican, dragging himself fromhis dying bed into Dublin to spend the last splendour of his genius andhis life for the starving children of the poor in Donegal. 

What would I not give for an hour with him now!

After breakfast I went out to find Mr. Davitt, hoping he might suggestsome way of seeing the Nationalist meeting on Wednesday night withoutundergoing the dismal penance of sitting out all the speeches. I wishedalso to ask him why at Rathkeale he talked about the Dunravens as"absentees. " He was born in Lord Lucan's country, and may know little ofLimerick, but he surely ought to know that Adare Manor was built ofIrish materials, and by Irish workmen, under the eye of Lord Dunraven, all the finest ornamental work, both in wood and in stone, of themansion, being done by local mechanics; and also that the present ownersof Adare spend a large part of every year in the country, and aredeservedly popular. He was not to be found at the National Leagueheadquarters, nor yet at the Imperial Hotel, which is his usual resort, as Morrison's is the resort of Mr. Parnell. So I sent him a note throughthe Post-Office. 

"You had better seal it with wax, " said a friend, in whose chambers Iwrote it. 

"Pray, why?"

"Oh! all the letters to well-known people that are not opened by thepolice are opened by the Nationalist clerks in the Post-Offices. 'Tis away we've always had with us in Ireland!"

I had some difficulty in finding the local habitation of the "NationalLeague. " I had been told it was in O'Connell Street, and sharing theusual and foolish aversion of my sex to asking questions on the highway, I perambulated a good many streets and squares before I discovered thatit has pleased the local authorities to unbaptize Sackville Street, "thefinest thoroughfare in Europe, " and convert it into "O'Connell Street. "But they have failed so ignominiously that the National League findsitself obliged to put up a huge sign over its doorways, notifying allthe world that the offices are not where they appear to be in UpperSackville Street at all, but in "O'Connell Street. " The effect is asludicrous as it is instructive. Oddly enough, they have not attempted tochange the name of another thoroughfare which keeps green the "pious andimmortal memory" of William III. , dear to all who in England or Americago in fear and horror of the scarlet woman that sitteth upon the sevenhills! There is a fashion, too, in Dublin of putting images of littlewhite horses into the fanlights over the doorways, which seems to smackof an undue reverence for the Protestant Succession and the House ofHanover. 

What you expect is the thing you never find in Ireland. I had ratherthoughtlessly taken it for granted the city would be agog with the greatMorley reception which is to come off on Wednesday night. There is agood deal about it in the _Freeman's Journal_ to-day, but chieflytouching a sixpenny quarrel which has sprung up between the ReceptionCommittee and the Trades Council over the alleged making of contracts bythe Committee with "houses not employing members of the regular trades. "

For this the typos and others propose to "boycott" the Committee and theReception and the Liberators from over the sea. From casualconversations I gather that there is much more popular interest in therelease, on Wednesday, of Mr. T. D. Sullivan, ex-Lord Mayor, championswimmer, M. P. , poet, and patriot. A Nationalist acquaintance of minetells me that in Tullamore Mr. Sullivan has been most prolific ofpoetry. He has composed a song which I am afraid will hardly please myIrish Nationalist friends in America:

 "We are sons of Sister Isles, Englishmen and Irishmen, On our friendship Heaven smiles; Tyrant's schemes and Tory wiles Ne'er shall make us foes again. "

There is to be a Drawing-Room, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night. One would not unnaturally gather from the "tall talk" in Parliament andthe press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration infavour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doinghomage to the alien despot, might be ominous of "bloody noses andcracked crowns. " Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on anoutside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result fromthese counter currents of the classes and the masses. "A row!" hereplied, looking around at me in amazement. "A row is it? and what forwould there be? Shure they'll be through with the procession in time tosee the carriages!"

Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though hecould clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed ifhe found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fullyenjoy the other. 

Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel;but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew theLord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding theDrawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles asto whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought tobe paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames ashotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question ofthe relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and "CabinetMinisters. " It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get thesuffrage--and use it. 

At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien, who, withprompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, andMr. Wilson of the London _Times_, an able writer on Irish questions fromthe English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did notappear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park. 

I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle, and found him inexcellent spirits; certainly the mildest-mannered and most sensibledespot who ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a free people. Hewas quite delightful about the abuse which is now daily heaped upon himin speeches and in the press, and talked about it in a casual dreamy waywhich reminded me irresistibly of President Lincoln, whom, if in nothingelse, he resembles alike in longanimity and in length of limb. He hadseen Davitt's _caveat_, filed at Rathkeale, against the foolishness oftrying to frighten him out of his line of country by calling him badnames. "Davitt is quite right, " he said, "the thing must be getting tobe a bore to the people, who are not such fools as the speakers takethem to be. One of the stenographers told me the other day that they hadto invent a special sign for the phrase 'bloody and brutal Balfour, ' itis used so often in the speeches. " About the prosecution of FatherM'Fadden of Gweedore, he knew nothing beyond the evidence on which ithad been ordered. This he showed me. If the first duty of a governmentis to govern, which is the American if not the English way of looking atit, Father M'Fadden must have meant to get himself into trouble when heused such language as this to his people: "I am the law in Gweedore; Idespise the recent Coercion Act; if I got a summons to-morrow, I wouldnot obey it. " From language like this to the attitude of Father M'Glynnin New York, openly flouting the authority of the Holy See itself, isbut an easy and an inevitable step. 

Neither "Home Rule" nor any other "Rule" can exist in a country in whichmen whose words carry any weight are suffered to take up such anattitude. It is just the attitude of the "Comeouters" in New Englandduring my college days at Harvard, when Parker Pillsbury and StephenFoster used to saw wood and blow horns on the steps of themeeting-houses during service, in order to free their consciences "andprotest against the Sabbatarian laws. "

To see a Catholic priest assume this attitude is almost as amazing as tosee an educated Englishman like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt trying to persuadeIrishmen that Mr. Balfour made him the confidant of a grisly scheme fordoing sundry Irish leaders to death by maltreating them in prison. 

I see with pleasure that the masculine instincts of Mr. Davitt led himto allude to this nonsense yesterday at Rathkeale in a halfcontemptuous way. Mr. Balfour spoke of it to-day with generosity andgood feeling. "When I first heard of it, " he said, "I resented it, ofcourse, as an outrageous imputation on Mr. Blunt's character, anddenounced it accordingly. What I have since learned leads me to fearthat he really may have said something capable of being construed inthis absurd sense, but if he did, it must have been under theexasperation produced by finding himself locked up. "

I heard the story of Mr. Balfour's meeting with Mr. Blunt very plainlyand vigorously told, while I was staying the other day at Knoyle House, in the immediate neighbourhood of Clouds, where the two were guestsunder conditions which should be at least as sacred in the eyes ofBritons as of Bedouins. In Wiltshire nobody seemed for a moment tosuppose it possible that Mr. Blunt can have really deceived himself asto the true nature of any conversation he may have had with Mr. Balfour. This is paying a compliment to Mr. Blunt's common sense at the expenseof his imagination. In any view of the case, to lie in wait at the lipsof a fellow guest in the house of a common friend, for the counts of apolitical indictment against him, is certainly a proceeding, as Davittsaid yesterday of Mr. Blunts tale of horror, quite "open to question. "But, as Mr. Blunt himself has sung, "'Tis conscience makes us sinners, not our sin, " and I have no doubt the author of the _Poems of Proteus_really persuaded himself that he was playing lawn tennis and smokingcigarettes in Wiltshire with a modern Alva, cynically vain of his owndark and bloody designs. Now that he finds himself struck down by theiron hand of this remorseless tyrant, why should he not cry aloud andwarn, not Ireland alone, but humanity, against the appalling crimesmeditated, not this time in the name of "Liberty, " but in the name ofOrder?

What especially struck me in talking with Mr. Balfour to-day was hisobviously unaffected interest in Ireland as a country rather than inIreland as a cock-pit. It is the condition of Ireland, and not thegabble of parties at Westminster about the condition of Ireland, whichis uppermost in his thoughts. This, I should say, is the best guaranteeof his eventual success. 

The weakest point of the modern English system of government by Cabinetssurely is the evanescent tenure by which every Minister holds hisplace. Not only has the Cabinet itself no fixed term of office, being intruth but a Committee of the Legislature clothed with executiveauthority, but any member of the Cabinet may be forced by events or byintrigues to leave it. In this way Mr. Forster, when he filled the placenow held by Mr. Balfour, found himself driven into resigning it by Mr. Gladstone's indisposition or inability to resist the peremptory pressureput upon the British Premier at a critical moment by our own Governmentin the spring of 1882. Mr. Balfour is in no such peril, perhaps. He ismore sure, I take it, of the support of Lord Salisbury and hiscolleagues than Mr. Forster ever was of the support of Mr. Gladstone;and the "Coercion" law which it is his duty to administer contains nosuch sweeping and despotic clause as that provision in Mr. Gladstone's"Coercion Act" of 1881, under which persons claiming Americancitizenship were arrested and indefinitely locked up on "suspicion, "until it became necessary for our Government, even at the risk of war, to demand their trial or release. 

But if Mr. Balfour were Chief Secretary for Ireland "on the Americanplan"; if he held his office, that is, for a fixed term of years, andcared nothing for a renewal of the lease, he could not be morepre-occupied than he seems to be with simply getting his executive dutydone, or less pre-occupied than he seems to be with what may be thoughtof his way of getting it done. If all executive officers were of thisstrain, Parliamentary government might stand in the dock into whichPrince Albert put it with more composure, and await the verdict withmore confidence. Surely if Ireland is ever to govern herself, she mustlearn precisely the lesson which Mr. Balfour, I believe, is trying toteach her--that the duty of executive officers to execute the laws isnot a thing debateable, like the laws themselves, nor yet determinable, like the enactment of laws, by taking the yeas and the nays. How wellthis lesson shall be taught must depend, of course, very much upon thequality of the men who make up the machine of Government in Ireland. That the Irish have almost as great a passion for office-holding as theSpanish, we long ago learned in New York, where the percentage of Irishoffice-holders considerably exceeds the percentage of Irish citizens. And as all the witnesses agree that the Irish Government has for yearsbeen to an inordinate degree a Government by patronage, there mustdoubtless be some reasonable ground for the very general impression that"the Castle" needs overhauling. It is not true, however, I find, although I have often heard it asserted in England, that the IrishGovernment is officered by Englishmen and Scotchmen exclusively. Themurdered Mr. Burke certainly was not an Englishman; and there is anapparent predominance of Irishmen in the places of trust and power. Thatthings at the Castle cannot be nearly so bad, moreover, as we in Americaare asked to believe, would seem to be demonstrated by the affectionateadmiration with which Lord Spencer is now regarded by men like Mr. O'Brien, M. P. , who only the other day seemed to regard him as an unfitsurvival of the Cities of the Plain. If what these men then said of him, and of the Castle generally, was even very partially true--or if beingwholly false, these men believed it to be true--every man of them whonow touches Lord Spencer's hand is defiled, or defiles him. 

But that concerns them. Their present attitude makes Lord Spencer a goodwitness when he declares that the Civil servants of the Crown inIreland, called "the Castle, " are "diligent, desire to do their dutywith impartiality, and to hold an even balance between opposinginterests in Ireland, " and maintains that they "will act withimpartiality and vigour if led by men who know their own minds, anddesire to be firm in the Government of the country. " All this beingtrue, Mr. Balfour ought to make his Government a success. 

Mr. Balfour introduced me to Sir West Ridgway, the successor of SirRedvers Buller, who has been rewarded for the great services he did hiscountry in Asia, by being flung into this seething Irish stew. He takesit very composedly, though the climate does not suit him, he says; andhas a quiet workmanlike way with him, which impresses one favourably atonce. 

All the disorderly part of Ireland (for disorder is far from beinguniversal in Ireland) comes under his direct administration, beingdivided into five divisions on the lines originally laid down in 1881 byMr. Forster. Over each of these divisions presides a functionary styleda "Divisional Magistrate. " The title is not happily chosen, the powersof these officers being rather like those confided to a French Prefectthan like those which are associated in England and America with thetitle of a "magistrate. " They have no judicial power, and nothing to dowith the trial of offenders. Their business is to protect life andproperty, and to detect and bring to justice offenders against the law. They can only be called Magistrates as the Executive of the UnitedStates is sometimes called the "Chief Magistrate. "

One of the most conspicuous and trusted of these Divisional Magistrates, I find, is Colonel Turner, who was Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, under Lord Aberdeen. He is now denounced by the Irish Nationalists as aruthless tyrant. He was then denounced by the Irish Tories as asympathiser with Home Rule. It is probable, therefore, that he must be aconscientious and loyal executive officer, who understands and acts uponthe plain lines of his executive duty. 

I dined to-night at the Castle, not in the great hall or banqueting-roomof St. Patrick, which was designed by that connoisseur in magnificence, the famous Lord Chesterfield, during his Viceroyalty, but in a veryhandsome room of more moderate dimensions. Much of the semi-regal stateobserved at the Castle in the days of the Georges has been put down withthe Battle-Axe Guards of the Lord-Lieutenant, and with thebasset-tables of the "Lady-Lieutenant, " as the Vice-queen used to becalled. At dinner the Viceroy no longer drinks to the pious and immortalmemory of William III. , or to the "1st of July 1690. " No more does theband play "Lillibullero, " and no longer is the pleasant custommaintained, after a dinner to the city authorities of Dublin, of a"loving cup" passed around the table, into which each guest, as itpassed, dropped a gold piece for the good of the household. Only so muchceremonial is now observed as suffices to distinguish the residence ofthe Queen's personal representative from that of a great officer ofState, or an opulent subject of high rank. 

Dublin Castle indeed is no more of a palace than it is of a castle. Itsclaim to the latter title rests mainly on the fine old "Bermingham"tower of the time of King John; its claim to the former on the ThroneRoom, the Council Chamber, and the Hall of St. Patrick alreadymentioned. This last is a very stately and sumptuous apartment. Justtwenty years ago the most brilliant banquet modern Dublin has seen wasgiven in this hall by the late Duke of Abercorn to the Prince andPrincess of Wales, to celebrate the installation of the Prince as aKnight of St. Patrick. It is a significant fact, testified to by allthe most candid Irishmen I have ever known, that upon the occasion ofthis visit to Ireland in 1868 the Prince and Princess were received withunbounded enthusiasm by the people of all classes. Yet only the yearbefore, in 1867, the explosion of some gunpowder at Clerkenwell by aband of desperadoes, to the death and wounding of many innocent people, had brought the question of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, inthe mind of Mr. Gladstone, within the domain of "practical politics"! Byparity of reasoning, one would think, the reception of the heir-apparentand his wife in Ireland ought to have taken that question out of thedomain of "practical politics. "

The Prince of Wales, it is known, brought away from this visit animpression that the establishment of a prince of the blood in Ireland, or a series of royal visits to Ireland, would go far towards pacifyingthe relations between the two Islands. Mr. Gladstone thought hisDisestablishment would quite do the work. Events have shown that Mr. Gladstone made a sad mistake as to the effect of his measure. The painswhich, I am told, were taken by Mr. Deasy, M. P. , and others to organisehostile demonstrations at one or two points in the south of Ireland, during a subsequent visit of the Prince and Princess, would seem to showthat in the opinion of the Nationalists themselves, the impression ofthe Prince was more accurate than were the inferences of the Premier. 

There is nothing froward or formidable in the aspect of Dublin Castle. It has neither a portcullis nor a drawbridge. People go in and out of itas freely as through the City Hall in New York. There is a show ofsentries at the main entrance, and in one of the courts this morning thepicturesque band of a Scotch regiment was playing to the delectation ofa small but select audience of urchins and little girls. A Dublin mob, never so little in earnest and led by a dozen really determined men, ought to be able to make as short work of it as the hordes of theFaubourgs in Paris made of the Bastille, with its handful of invalids, on that memorable 14th of July, about which so many lies have passedinto history, and so much effervescent nonsense is still annually talkedand printed. 

The greater part of the Castle as it existed when the Irish Parliamentssat there under Elizabeth, and just before the last Catholic Viceroymade Protestantism penal, and planned the transformation of Irelandinto a French province, was burned in the time of James II. The Earl ofArran then reported to his father that "the king had lost nothing butsix barrels of gunpowder, and the worst castle in the worst situation inChristendom. "

Here, as at Ottawa, a viceregal dinner-table is set off by the neatuniforms and skyblue facings of the aides-de-camp and secretaries. Forsome mysterious reason Lord Spencer put these officers into chocolatecoats with white facings. But the new order soon gave place to the oldagain. 

At the dinner to-night was Lord Ormonde, who is returning to London, butkindly promised to make arrangements for showing me at Kilkenny Castlethe muniment room of the Butlers, which contains one of the mostvaluable private collections of charters and State papers in the realm. 

_Tuesday, Jan. 31. _--I lunched to-day with Sir Michael Morris, the LordChief Justice of Ireland, whom I had last seen in Rome at the JubileeMass of His Holiness. Sir Michael is one of the recognised lights ofsocial life and of the law in Dublin. While he was in Rome some onehighly commended him in the presence of that staunch Nationalist theArchbishop of Dublin, who assented so far as to say, "Yes, yes, thereare worse fellows in Dublin than that Morris!" It would be hard to finda more typical Irishman of the better sort than Sir Michael, a man moresure, in the words of Sheridan, to "carry his honour and his brogueunstained to the grave. "

The brogue of Sir Michael, it is said, made his fortune in the House ofCommons. It has hardly the glow which made the brogue of Father Burke amemory as of music in the ears of all who heard it, and differs fromthat miraculous gift of the tongue as a ripe wine of Bordeaux differsfrom a ripe wine of Burgundy. But to the ordinary brogue of the streetand the stage, it is as is a Brane Mouton Rothschild of 1868 to thecasual Médoc of a Parisian restaurant. "Do you know Father Healy?" saidone of the company to whom I spoke of it; "he was at a wedding with SirMichael. As the happy pair drove off under the usual shower of rice andold slippers, Sir Michael said to the Father, 'How I wish I hadsomething to throw after her!' 'Ah, throw your brogue after her, 'replied the Father. "

This brogue comes to Sir Michael lawfully enough. He belongs to one ofthe fourteen tribes of Galway. His father, Mr. Martin Morris, was HighSheriff of the County of Galway City in 1841, being the first Catholicwho had served that office since the time of Tyrconnel. His mother was aBlake of Galway, and the family seat, Spiddal, came to them through aFitzpatrick. "Remember these things, " said one of the guests to me, aCatholic from the south of Ireland, "and remember that Sir Michael, likemyself, and, so far as I know, like every Irish Catholic in this roomto-day, is a thoroughgoing Unionist, who would think it midsummermadness to hand Ireland over to the 'Home Rule' of the 'uncrowned king, 'Mr. Parnell, who hasn't a drop, I believe, of Irish blood in his veins, and who, whatever else he may be, is certainly not a Catholic. Didn'tParnell vote at first against religion and in favour of Bradlaugh? anddidn't he do this to force the bargain for the clerical franchise at theParliamentary conventions?"

"But there are some good Catholics, are there not, " I answered, "andsome good Christians, and of Irish blood too, among the associates ofMr. Parnell?"

"Associates!" he exclaimed; "if you know anything of Mr. Parnell, youmust know that he has no associates. He has followers, and he hasinstruments, but he has no associates. The only Irishmen whom he hasreally taken counsel with, or treated, I was about to say, with ordinarycivility, were Egan and Brennan. His manner with them was alwaysconspicuously different from his cold and almost contemptuous bearingtowards the men whom he commands in Parliament, and Egan, who directshis forces in your country, rewards him by calling him 'the great andgifted leader of _our_ race!' 'Our race' indeed! Parnell comes of theconquering race in Ireland, and he never forgets it, or lets hissubordinates forget it. I was in Galway when he came over there suddenlyto quell the revolt organised by Healy. The rebels were at white-heatbefore he came. But he strode in among them like a huntsman among thehounds--marched Healy off into a little room, and brought him out againin ten minutes, cowed and submissive, but filled, as anybody can see, ever since, with a dull smouldering hate which will break out one ofthese days, if a good and safe opportunity offers. "

"How do you account, then, " I asked, "for the support which all thesemen give Mr. Parnell?"

"For the support which they give him!" exclaimed my new acquaintance, "for the support they give him! Bless your heart, my dear sir, it is hegives them the support! Barring Biggar, who, to do him justice, is asfree with his pocket as he is with his tongue--and no man can say morefor anybody than that--barring Biggar and M'Kenna and M'Carthy, andperhaps a dozen more, all these men are nominated by Mr. Parnell, anddraw salaries from the body he controls; they are paid members, like theworking-men members. Support indeed!"

"But the constituencies, " I urged, "surely the voters must know and caresomething about their representatives?"

The gentleman from the south of Ireland laughed aloud. "Very clear itis, " he said, "that you have made your acquaintance with my dearcountrymen in America, or in England perhaps--not in Ireland. Look atThurles, in January '85! The voters selected O'Ryan; Parnell ordered himoff, and made them take O'Connor! The voters take their members to-dayfrom the League--that is, from Mr. Parnell, just as they used to takethem from the landlords. What Lord Clanricarde said in Galway, when hemade all those fagot votes by cutting up his farms, that he could returnhis grey mare to Parliament if he liked, Mr. Parnell can say with justas much truth to-day of any Nationalist seat in the country. I tellyou, the secret of his power is that he understands the Irish people, and how to ride them. He is a Protestant-ascendency man by blood, and heis fighting the unlucky devils of landlords to-day by the old 'landlord'methods that came to him with his mother's milk--that is rightlyspeaking, I should say, with his father's, " and here he burst outlaughing at his own bull--"for his mother, poor lady, she was anAmerican. "

"Thank you, " I said. 

"Oh, no harm at all! But did you ever know her? An odd woman she was, and is. "

"Her father, " I replied, "was a gallant American sailor of Scottishblood. "

"Oh yes, and is it true that he got a great hatred of England from beingcaptured in the _Chesapeake_ by the English Captain Broke? I alwaysheard that. "

I explained that there were historical difficulties in the way ofaccepting this legend, and that Commodore Stewart's experiences, duringthe war of 1812, had been those of a captor, not of a captive. 

"Well, a clever woman she is, only very odd. She was a great terror, Iremember, to a worthy Protestant parson, near Avondale; she used to comeat him quite unexpectedly with such a power of theological discussion, and put him beside himself with questions he couldn't answer. "

"Very likely, " I replied, "but she has transferred her interest topolitics now; and she had the good sense, at the Chicago Convention in1886, to warn the physical-force men against showing their hand tooplainly in support of her son. "

A curious conversation, as showing the personal bitterness of politicshere. It reminded me of Dr. Duche's description in his famous letter toWashington of the party which carried the Declaration of Independencethrough the Continental Congress. But it had a special interest for meas confirming the inferences I have often drawn as to Mr. Parnell'srelations with his party, from his singular and complete isolation amongthem. I remember the profound astonishment of my young friend Mr. D----, of New York, who, as the son of, perhaps, the most conspicuous andinfluential American advocate of Home Rule, had confidently counted uponseeing Mr. Parnell in London, when he found that the most importantmember of the Irish Parliamentary party, in point of position, wasutterly unable to get at Mr. Parnell for him, or even to ascertain whereMr. Parnell could be reached by letter. 

Though a staunch Unionist, Sir Michael is no blind admirer of things asthey are, nor even a thick-and-thin partisan of English rule in Ireland. "If you will have the Irish difficulty in a nutshell, " he is reported tohave said to a prosy British politician, "here it is: It is simply avery dull people trying to govern a very bright people. "

He has quick and wide intellectual sympathies, or, as he put it to alawyer who was kindly enlightening him about some matters of scientificnotoriety, "I don't live in a cupboard myself. " His own terse summing upof the Irish difficulty could hardly be better illustrated than by thecurrent story of the discomfiture of an English Treasury official, whocame into his official chambers to complain of the expenditure for fuelin the Court over which he presides. The Lord Chief-Justice looked athim quietly while he set forth his errand, and then, ringing a bell onhis table, said to the servant who responded: "Tell Mary the man hascome about the coals. "

At Sir Michael's I had some conversation also with Mr. Justice Murphy, who won a great reputation in connection with those murders in thePhoenix Park, which went near to breaking the heart and hope of poorFather Burke, and with Lord and Lady Ashbourne, whom I had not seensince I met them some years ago under the hospitable roof of LordHoughton. Lord Ashbourne was then Mr. Gibson, Q. C. He is now the LordChancellor of Ireland, and the author of the Land Purchase Act of 1885, which many well-informed and sensible men regard as the Magna Charta ofpeace in Ireland, while others of equal authority assure me that byreversing the principle of the Bright clauses in the Act of 1871 it hasencouraged the tenants to expect an eventual concession of theland-ownership to them on merely nominal terms. 

Naturally enough, he is carped at and reviled almost as much by hispolitical friends as by his political foes. In the time of Sir MichaelHicks Beach I remember hearing Lord Ashbourne denounced most bitterly bya leading Tory light as "a Home Ruler in disguise, who had bedevilledthe Irish Question by undertaking to placate the country if it could beleft to be managed by him and by Lord Carnarvon. "

The disguise appears to me quite impenetrable, and after my talk withhim, I remembered a characteristic remark about him made to me by LordHoughton after he had gone away: "A very clever man with a very cleverwife. He ought to be on our side, but he has everything the Tories lack, so they have stolen him, and will make much of him, and keep him. Butone of these days he will do them some great service, and then they'llnever forgive him!"

Lord Ashbourne went off early to look up some fine old woodenmantelpieces and wainscotings in the "slums" of Dublin. A brisk trade itseems has for some time been driven in such relics of the departedsplendour of the Irish capital. In the last century, when Dublin wasfurther from London than London now is from New York, the Irishlandlords were more fond of living in Dublin than a good many of theIrish Nationalists I know now are. In this way the Iron Duke came to beborn in Dublin, where his father and mother had a handsome town house, whereas when they went up to London they used to lodge, according to oldLady Cork, "over a pastry-cook's in Oxford Street. " In those days theremust have been a good many fine solidly built and well decoratedmansions in Dublin, of a type not unlike that of the ample ratherstately and periwigged houses, all British brick without, and all SantoDomingo mahogany within, which, in my schoolboy days, used to give sucha dignified old-world air to Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia. It is among such of these as are still standing, and have come to vileuses, that the foragers from London now find their harvest. 

From the Chief-Justice's I went with Lord Ernest Hamilton to a meetingof the Irish Unionists. Admission was by tickets, and the meetingevidently "meant business. " I suppose Presbyterian Ulster was largelyrepresented: but Mr. Smith Barry of Fota Island, near Cork, one of thekindest and fairest, as well as one of the most determined and resolute, of the southern Irish landlords, was there, and the most interestingspeech I heard was made by a Catholic lawyer of Dublin, Mr. Quill, Q. C. , who grappled with the question of distress among the Irish tenants, andproduced some startling evidence to show that this distress is by nomeans so great or so general as it is commonly assumed to be. [10] Ablespeeches were also made by Mr. T. W. Russell, M. P. For Tyrone, and byColonel Saunderson, the champion of Ulster at Westminster. Both of thesemembers, and especially Colonel Saunderson, "went for" theirNationalist colleagues with an unparliamentary plainness of speech whichcommanded the cordial sympathy of their audience. "Is it possible, "asked Colonel Saunderson, "that you should ever consent, on any terms, to be governed by such--, well, by such wretches as these?" to which theaudience gave back an unanimous "Never, " neither thundered nor shouted, but growled, like Browning's "growl at the gates of Ghent, "--a low deepgrowl like the final notice served by a bull-dog, which I had not heardsince the meetings which, at the North, followed the first seriousfighting of the Civil War. I was much struck, too, by the prevalenceamong the audience of what may be called the Old Middle State type ofAmerican face and head. A majority of these men might have come straightfrom those slopes of the Alleghany which, from Pennsylvania down to theCarolinas, were planted so largely by the only considerable Irishemigrations known to our history, before the great year of famine, 1847, the Irish emigrations which followed the wars against the woollenindustries in the seventeenth century, and the linen industries in theeighteenth. A staunch, doggedly Protestant people, loving the NewEngland Puritans and the Anglicans of Eastern Virginia little betterthan the Maryland Catholics, but contributing more than their full shareof traditional antipathy to that extreme dislike and dread of the RomanChurch which showed itself half-a-century ago in the burning ofconvents, and thirty years ago gave life and fire to the Know-Nothingmovement. Even so late as at the time of Father Burke's grand and mostsuccessful mission to America, I remember how much astonished andimpressed he was by the vigour and the virulence of these feelings. Oneof the bishops, he told me, in a great diocese tried (though of coursein vain) to dissuade him on this account from wearing his Dominicandress. These anti-Catholic passions are much stronger in America to-daythan it always suits our politicians to remember, though to forget itmay some day be found very dangerous. Even now two of the ablestprelates of the most liberal of the Protestant American bodies, BishopCleveland Coxe of Western New York, and Bishop Beckwith of Georgia, thelatter of whom I met the other day in Rome on his return from Palestine, are promoting what looks very much like a crusade against the plan forestablishing a Catholic University at Washington. Bishop ClevelandCoxe's denunciations of what he calls "the alien Church, " point straightto a revival of the "Native American" movement; and I fear thatPresident Cleveland's gift of a copy of the Constitution to Leo XIII. Will hardly make American Catholics forget either the hereditaryanti-Catholic feeling which led him, when Governor of New York, toimperil the success of the Democratic party by his dogged resistance tothe Catholic demand for the endowment of Catholic schools andprotectories, or the scandalous persecution (it can be called by noother name) of Catholics in Alaska, which was carried on in the name andunder the patronage of his sister, Miss Cleveland, by a local missionaryof the Presbyterian Church, to the point of the removal by the Presidentof a Federal judge, who dared to award a Catholic native woman fromVancouver the custody of her own child. 

It is hard to imagine a greater misfortune for the Church in Ireland, and for both the Church and the Irish race in America, than theidentification of the Home Rule movement with the Church, and itstriumph, after being so identified, and with the help of Britishsympathisers and professional politicians, over the resistance ofProtestant Ireland. This dilemma of the Church in Ireland, plainly seenat Rome, as I know, to-day, was forcibly presented in the speech ofColonel Saunderson. 

The chair at this Loyalist meeting was filled by the Provost of Trinity, Dr. Jellett, a man of winning and venerable aspect, a kind of "angelicdoctor, " indeed, whose musical and slightly tremulous voice gave asingular pathos and interest to his brief but very earnest speech. [11]

To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien. Among thecompany were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. Gladstone's Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponentof Home Rule; Judge O'Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of aneagle; Mr. Carson, Q. C. ; and other notabilities of the bench and bar. Myneighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King'sInn, Mr. Atkinson, Q. C. , a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T. W. Russell, M. P. , who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of LaTosca, and goes in fear of the re-establishment of the Holy Office inDublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of thebench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished bythe drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who werehanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law intheir cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could havedealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge ofmurder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocativeinstigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among thepolice. 

Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of theIrish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for hisphysical graces. 

A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, "And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?"

"He is indeed!"

"Well, then, I don't wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!"

Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, "The wholething is a business operation mainly--a business operation with thepeople who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger--and abusiness operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength, outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance orfoment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousandodd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They arealways after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, orthe other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. Sothe solicitors know the whole country. "

"When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the 'Plan ofCampaign, ' the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. Thepoorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least tolose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, andpromises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of theLeague, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all eventshave to pay the costs of the proceedings. It is this promise whichfinally brings down most of them. To enjoy the luxury of a litigationwithout paying for it tempts them almost as strongly as the prospect ofgetting the land without paying for it. You will find that the Leaguealways insists, when things come to a settlement, that the landlordshall pay the costs. If the landlord through poverty of spirit or ofpurse succumbs to this demand, the League scores a victory. If thelandlord resists, it is a bad job for the League. The local lawyer isdiscredited in the eyes of his clients, and if he is to get any fees hemust come down upon his clients for them. Naturally his clients resentthis. If Mr. Balfour keys up the landlords to stand out manfully againstpaying for all the trouble and loss they are continually put to, he willtake the life of the League so far as Ireland is concerned. As thingsnow stand, it is almost the only thriving industry in Ireland!"

_Wednesday, Feb. 1. _--This morning I called with Lord Ernest Hamiltonupon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor orauthor of many other well-known publications, and especially of the"Peerage, " sometimes irreverently spoken of as the "British Bible. "

Sir Bernard's offices are in the picturesque old "Bermingham" tower ofthe castle. There we found him wearing his years and his lore as lightlyas a flower, and busy in an ancient chamber, converted by him into amost cosy modern study. He received us with the most cordial courtesy, and was good enough to conduct us personally through his domain. 

Many of the State papers formerly kept here have been removed to theFour Courts building. But Sir Bernard's tower is still filled withdocuments of the greatest historical interest, all admirably docketedand arranged on the system adopted at the Hôtel Soubise, now the Palaceof the Archives in Paris. 

These documents, like the tower itself, take us back to the early dayswhen Dublin was the stronghold of the Englishry in Ireland, and itscitizens went in constant peril of an attack from the wild and "mereIrish" in the hills. The masonry of the tower is most interesting. Thecircular stone floors made up of slabs held together without cement, like the courses in the towers of Sillustani, by their exact adjustment, are particularly noteworthy. High up in the tower Sir Bernard showed usa most uncomfortable sort of cupboard fashioned in the huge wall of thetower, and with a loophole for a window. In this cell the Red HughO'Donnell of Tyrconnel was kept as a prisoner for several years underElizabeth. He was young and lithe, however, and after his friends hadtried in vain to buy him out, a happy thought one day struck him. Hesqueezed himself through the loophole, and, dropping unhurt to theground, escaped to the mountains. There for a long time he made headagainst the English power. In 1597 he drove Sir Conyers Clifford frombefore the castle of Ballyshannon, with great loss to the English, andwhen he could no longer keep the field, he sought refuge in Spain. Hewas with the Spanish, as Prince of Tyrconnel, at the crushing defeat ofKinsale in 1601. Escaping again, he died, poisoned, at Simancas the nextyear. 

Sir Bernard showed us, among other curious manuscripts, a correspondencebetween one Higgins, a trained informer, and the Castle authorities in1798. This correspondence shows that the revolutionary plans of theNationalists of 1798 were systematically laid before the Government. 

When one thinks how very much abler were the leaders of the Irishrebellion in 1798 than are the present heads of the Irish party inParliament, how much greater the provocations to rebellion given theIrish people then were than they are now even alleged to be--how littlethe Irish people in general have now to gain by rebellion, and how muchto lose, it is hard to resist a suspicion that it must be even easiernow than it was in 1798 for the Government to tap the secrets of theorganisations opposed to it. 

Sir Bernard showed us also a curious letter written by Henry Grattan tothe founder of the great Guinness breweries, which have carried the fameof Dublin porter into the uttermost parts of the earth. The Guinnessesare now among the wealthiest people of the kingdom, and Irelandcertainly owes a great deal to them as "captains of industry, " but theyare not Home Rulers. 

At the Kildare Street Club in the afternoon I talked with two Irishlandlords from the north of Ireland, who had come up to take theirwomenkind to the Drawing-Room. 

I was struck by their indifference to the political excitements of theday. One of them had forgotten that the Ripon and Morley reception wasto take place to-night. The other called it "the love-feast of Voltaireand the Vatican. " Both were much more fluent about hunting and farming. I asked if the hunting still went on in their part of the island. 

"It has never stopped for a moment, " he replied. 

"No, " added the other, "nor ever a dog poisoned. They were poisoned, whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The storieswere printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at itso as not to be 'bothered. '"

Both averred that they got their rents "fairly well, " but both also saidthat they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderlyman, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly wentover to the markets in England. "I go to Norwich, " he said, "not toLiverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that. Norwich is better for meat and for stores. " Both agreed this was a greatyear for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoesto America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just takenfrom Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought oversix hundred tons of hay from America. 

They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with atale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, andeighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, withtheir tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The othercapped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one ofhis farm lads about like a dog, --"the only pig, " he said, "I ever sawshow any human feeling!" The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought theEnglish landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. "Ah, no!"interfered the other, "not quite; for if the English can't get theirrents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rentsnor keep our land!" They both admitted that there had been much badmanagement of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done theowners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but theyboth maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had beenone-sided and short-sighted. "The tenants haven't got real good fromit, " said one, "because the claims of the landlord no longer check theirextravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers andtraders, who show them little mercy. " Both also strenuously insisted onthe gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of thecharges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting thosecharges were cut down by legislation. 

"You have no landlords in America, " said one, "but if you had, how wouldyou like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a DisestablishedChurch at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their duesto you?"

I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America, the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States, while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especiallyin some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolutecontrol of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at thismoment in Illinois[12] between a small army of tenants and theirabsentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundredthousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grantsno leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from histenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes andlevies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy. 

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, "ifthat is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with HomeRule, I'll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!"

After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see theMorley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlightparade--the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets werewell filled, but there was no crowding--no misconduct, and not muchexcitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a"demonstration. " It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Parison the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in thestreets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the cityfathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the CityHall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of NewYork on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and theredoubtable Colonel "Jim Fiske, " a great Orange demonstration led tosomething very like a massacre by chance medley. 

Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporisedout of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. Therewas no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright withgarlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from thehouse-tops. 

We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the greatbridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march fromKingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q. C. , in Rutland Square, where thedistinguished visitors were to meet the liberated Lord Mayor, with Mr. Dwyer Gray, and other local celebrities. A friendly citizen let us perchon his outside car. 

The procession presently came in sight, and a grand show it made--not ofthe strictly popular and political sort, for it was made up of guildsand other organised bodies on foot and on horseback, marching incompanies--but imposing by reason of its numbers, and of the flaringtorches. Of these there were not so many as there should have been to dojustice to the procession. The crowd cheered from time to time, withthat curious Irish cheer which it is often difficult to distinguish fromgroaning, but the only explosive and uproarious greeting given to thevisitors in our neighbourhood came from a member of "the devout femalesex, " a young lady who stood up between two friends on the top of a carvery near us, and imperilled both her equilibrium and theirs by wildlywaving her hand-kerchief in the air, and crying out at the top of asomewhat husky voice, "Three cheers for Mecklenburg Street! Threecheers for Mecklenburg Street!"

This made the crowd very hilarious, but as Lord Ernest's local knowledgedid not enable him to enlighten me as to the connection betweenMecklenburg Street and the liberation of Ireland, I must leave themystery of their mirth unsolved till a more convenient season. 

At Rutland Square the crowd was tightly packed, but perfectlywell-behaved, and the guests were enthusiastically cheered. But evenbefore they had entered the house of Mr. Walker it began to break up, and long files of people wended their way to see "the carriages"hastening with their lovely freight to the Castle. Thither Lord Ernesthas just gone, arrayed in a captivating Court costume of black velvet, with cut-steel buttons, sword, and buckles--just the dress in whichWashington used to receive his guests at the White House, and in whichSenator Seward, I remember, insisted in 1860 on getting himselfpresented by Mr. Dallas to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. 

CHAPTER II. 

SION HOUSE, COUNTY TYRONE, _Feb. 3d. _--Hearing nothing from Mr. Davittyesterday, I gave up the idea of attending the Ripon-Morley meeting lastnight. As I have come to Ireland to hear what people living in Irelandhave to say about Irish affairs, I see no particular advantage inlistening to imported eloquence on the subject, even from so clever aman as his books prove Mr. Morley to be, and from so conscientious a manas an acquaintance, going back to the days when he sat with Kingsley atthe feet of Maurice, makes me believe Lord Ripon to be. How much eitherof them knows about Ireland is another matter. A sarcastic Nationalistacquaintance of mine, with whom I conversed about the visitorsyesterday, assured me it had been arranged that Lord Ripon should wearthe Star of the Garter, "so the people might know him from Morley. " WhenI observed that Dublin must have a short memory to forget so soon theface of a Chief Secretary, he replied: "Forget his face? Why, they neversaw his face! It's little enough he was here, and indoors he kept whenhere he was. He shook hands last night with more Irishmen than ever hespoke to while he was Chief Secretary; for he used to say then, I amtold, in the Reform Club, that the only way to get along with the Irishwas to have nothing to do with them!"

There was a sharp discussion, I was told, in the private councils of theCommittee yesterday as to whether the Queen should be "boycotted, " andthe loyal sentiments usual in connection with her Majesty's name droppedfrom the proceedings. I believe it was finally settled that this mightput the guests into an awkward position, both of them having worn herMajesty's uniform of State as public servants of the Crown. 

During the day I walked through many of the worst quarters of Dublin. Imet fewer beggars in proportion than one encounters in such parts ofLondon as South Kensington and other residential regions notover-frequented by the perambulating policemen; but I was struck by thenumber of persons--and particularly of women--who wore that mostpathetic of all the liveries of distress, "the look of having seenbetter days. " In the most wretched streets I traversed there was moresqualor than suffering--the dirtiest and most ragged people in themshowing no signs of starvation, or even of insufficient rations; andcertainly in the most dismal alleys and by-streets, I came upon nothingso revolting as the hives of crowded misery which make certain of thetenement house quarters of New York more gruesome than the Cour desMiracles itself used to be. 

This morning at 7. 25 A. M. I left Dublin with Lord Ernest Hamilton forStrabane. My attention was distracted from the reports of the greatmeeting by the varied and picturesque beauty of the landscape, throughwhich we ran at a very respectable rate in a very comfortable carriage. We passed Dundalk, where Edward Bruce got himself crowned king ofIreland, after his brother Robert had won a throne in Scotland. 

These masterful Normans, all over Europe from Apulia to Britain, workedout the problem of "satisfied nationalities" much more successfully andsimply than Napoleon III. In our own day. If Edward Bruce broke downwhere Robert succeeded, the causes of his failure may perhaps be worthconsidering even now by people who have set themselves the task in ourtimes of establishing "an Irish nationality. " Leaving out theCromwellian English of Tipperary and the South, and the Scotch who havedone for Ulster, what he aimed at for all Ireland, they have very muchthe same materials to deal with as those which he dismally failed tofashion. 

Drogheda stands beautifully in a deep valley through which flows theBoyne Water, spanned by one of the finest viaducts in Europe. Here, twoyears after the discovery of America, Poyning's Parliament enacted thatall laws passed in Ireland must be subject to approval by the EnglishPrivy Council. I wonder nobody has proposed a modification of this formof Home Rule for Ireland now. Earl Grey's recent suggestion thatParliamentary government be suspended for ten years in Ireland, which Iheard warmly applauded by some able lawyers and business men in Dublin, involves like this an elimination of the Westminster debates from theproblem of government in Ireland. As we passed Drogheda, Father Burke'smagnificent presence and thrilling voice came back to me out of themist of years, describing with an indignant pathos, never to beforgotten, the fearful scenes which followed the surrender of Sir ArthurAshton's garrison, when "for the glory of God, " and "to prevent thefurther effusion of blood, " Oliver ordered all the officers to beknocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and therest shipped as slaves to the Barbadoes. But how different was thespirit in which the great Dominican recalled these events from that inwhich the "popular orators, " scattering firebrands and death, delight todwell upon them!

At Strabane station we found a handsome outside car waiting on us, anddrove off briskly for this charming place, the home of one of the mostactive and prosperous manufacturers in Ireland. A little more than halfway between the station and Sion House, Mr. Herdman met us afoot. Wejumped off and walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by hisbrother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. Itstands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it, and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are thelife of the place, under the eye and within touch of the hand of themaster. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman's father, afterhe had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal, half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power isadmirable at Ballyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down athirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people madeBallyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Ernestill flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live verymuch as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irishoperatives to work up £90, 000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarnfor the Continent, and to divide among themselves some £20, 000 a year inwages. 

After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and themodel village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order, neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of thecountry, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. "I find itwise, " said Mr. Herdman, "to give neither religion a preponderance, andto hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity andefficiency. " The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is theineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry. He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, butvery soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountainsrather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings aweek. 

Three weeks of her work would have paid the year's rent of the paternalholding. 

In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for theworkpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (justnow crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as atheatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and theflies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidereand the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to seein Ulster. 

After we had gone over the works thoroughly, Mr. Herdman took us back, on a transparent pretext of enlightened curiosity touching certainqualities of spun flax, to give us a glimpse of the "beauty of Sion"--awell-grown graceful girl of fifteen or sixteen summers. Sheconcentrated her attention, as soon as we appeared, upon certainmysterious bobbins and spindles, with an exaggerated determination whichproved how completely she saw through our futile and frivolous devices. Mr. Herdman told us, as we came away discomfited, a droll story of theugliest girl ever employed here--a girl so preternaturally ugly that oneof his best blacksmiths having been entrapped into offering to marryher, lost heart of grace on the eve of the sacrifice, and, taking shipat Derry for America, fled from Sion for ever. 

In the evening came, with other guests, Dr. Webb, Q. C. , Regius Professorof Laws and Public Orator of Trinity at Dublin, well known both as aGrecian capable of composing "skits" as clever as the verses ycleptHomerstotle--in which the _Saturday Review_ served up the Donnellynonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare--and as a translator of _Faust_. Hewas abused by the Loyalists at Dublin, in 1884, for his defence of P. N. Fitzgerald, the leader who beat Parnell and Archbishop Croke so badly atThurles the other day; and he is in a fair way now to be denounced withequal fervour by the Nationalists as a County Court judge in Donegal. He finds this post no sinecure. "I do as much work in five days, " hesaid to-night, "as the Superior Judges do in five weeks. "

He is a staunch Unionist, and laughs at the notion that the Irish peoplecare one straw for a Parliament in Dublin. "Why should they?" he said. "What did any Parliament in Dublin ever do to gratify the one realpassion of the Irish peasant--his hunger for a bit of land? So far asthe Irish people are concerned, Home Rule means simply agrarian reform. Would they get that from a Parliament in Dublin? If the BritishParliament evicts the landlords and makes the tenants lords of the land, they will be face to face with Davitt's demand for the nationalising ofthe land. Do you suppose they will like to see the lawyers and thepoliticians organising a labour agitation against the 'strong farmers'?The last thing they want is a Parliament in Dublin. Lord Ashbourne's Actcarries in its principle the death-warrant of the 'National League. '"

Some excellent stories were told in the picturesque smoking-room afterdinner, one of a clever and humorous, sensible and non-political priest, who, being taken to task by some of his brethren for giving the coldshoulder to the Nationalist movement, excused himself by saying, "Ishould like to be a patriot; but I can't be. It's all along of therheumatism which prevents me from lying out at nights in a ditch with arifle. " The same priest being reproached by others of the cloth with afondness for the company of some of the resident landlords in hisneighbourhood, replied, "It's in the blood, you see. My poor mother, Godrest her soul! she always had a liking for the quality. As for my dearfather, he was just a blundering peasant like the rest of ye!"

GWEEDORE, _Saturday, 4th Feb. _--A good day's work to-day!

We left our hospitable friends at Sion House early in the morning. Thesun was shining brightly; the air so soft and bland that the thrusheswere singing like mad creatures in the trees and the shrubbery; and thesky was more blue than Italy. "A foine day it is, sorr, " said our jarveyas we took our seats on the car. There is some point in the old Irishsarcasm that English travellers in Ireland only see one side of thecountry, because they travel through it on the outside car. But to makethis point tell, four people must travel on the car. In that case theymust sit two on a side, each pair facing one side only of the landscape. It is a very different business when you travel on an outside car alone, with the driver sitting on one side of it, or with one companion only, when the driver occupies the little perch in front between the sides ofthe car. When you travel thus, the outside car is the best thing in theworld, after a good roadster, for taking you rapidly over a country, andenabling you to command all points of the horizon. Double up one leg onthe seat, let the other dangle freely, using the step as a stirrup, andyou go rattling along almost as if you were on horseback. 

We drove through a long suburb of Strabane into the busiest quarter ofthe busy little place. The names on the shops were predominantlyScotch--Maxwells, Stewarts, Hamiltons, Elliotts. I saw but one Celticname, M'Ilhenny, and one German, Straub. I changed gold for enormousBank of Ireland notes at a neat local bank, and the cheery landlord ofthe Abercorn Arms gave us a fresh car to take us on to Letterkenny, adrive of some twenty miles. 

The car came up like a small blizzard, flying about at the heels of anuncanny little grey mare. Lord Ernest knew the beast well, and said shewas twenty-five years old. She behaved like an unbroken filly at first, but soon striking her pace, turned out a capital goer, and took us onwithout turning a hair till her work was done. The weather continued tobe good, but clouds rolled up around the horizon. 

"It'll always be bad weather, " said our saturnine jarvey, "when theJudges come to hold court, and never be good again till they rise. "

Here is a consequence of alien rule in Ireland, never, so far as I know, brought to the notice of Parliament. 

"Why is this?" I asked; "is it because of the time of the year theyselect?"

"The time of year, sorr?" he replied, glancing compassionately at me. "No, not at all; it's because of the oaths!"

We reached Letterkenny in time for a very good luncheon at "Hegarty's, "one of the neatest little inns I have ever found in a place of the size. It stands on the long main street which is really the town. At one endof this street is a very pretty row of picturesque ivy-clad brickcottages, built by a landlord whose property and handsome park boundthe town on the west; and the street winds alongside the slope of a hillrising from the bank of the Swilly river. A fair was going on. Thelittle market-place was alive with bustling, chattering, and chafferingcountry-folk. Smartly-dressed young damsels tripped in and out of theneat well-filled shops, and in front of a row of semidetached villas, like a suburban London terrace, on the hill opposite "Hegarty's, " aGerman band smote the air with discordant fury. Decidedly a lively, prosperous little town is Letterkenny, nor was I surprised to learn froma communicative gentleman, nursing his cane near the inn-door, thatadvantage would be taken of the presence of the Hussars sent to keeporder at Dunfanaghy, to "give a ball. "

"But I thought all the country was in arms about the trials atDunfanaghy, " I said. 

"In arms about the trials at Dunfanaghy? Oh no; they'll never be lockedup, Father M'Fadden and Mr. Blane. And the people here at Letterkenny, they've more sinse than at Dunfanaghy. Have you heard of the champagne?"

Upon this he proceeded to tell me, as a grand joke, that FatherM'Fadden and Mr. Blane, M. P. , having declined to accept the tea offeredthem by the authorities during their detention, they had been permittedto order what they liked from the local hotel-keeper. After the trialwas over, and they were released on bail to prosecute their appeal, thehotel-keeper demanded of the authorities payment of his bill, includingtwo bottles of champagne ordered to refresh the member for Armagh!

A conspicuous, smart, spick-and-span house on the main street, built ofbrick and wood, with a verandah, and picked out in bright colours, waspointed out to me by this amiable citizen as the residence of a"returned American. " This was a man, he said, who had made some money inAmerica, but got tired of living there, and had come back to end hisdays in his native place He was a good man, my informant added, "only heputs on too many airs. "

A remarkably handsome, rosy-faced young groom, a model of manhood invigour and grace, presently brought us up a wagonette with a pair ofstout nags, and a driver in a suit of dark-brown frieze, whose headseemed to have been driven down between his shoulders. He never liftedit up all the way to Gweedore, but he proved to be a capital jarveynotwithstanding, and knew the country as well as his horses. 

Not long after leaving the town by a road which passes the huge CountyAsylum (now literally crammed, I am told, with lunatics), we passed aruined church on the banks of a stream. Here the country people, itseems, halt and wash their feet before entering Letterkenny, failingwhich ceremony they may expect a quarrel with somebody before they getback to their homes. This wholesome superstition doubtless wasestablished ages ago by some good priest, when priests thought it theirduty to be the preachers and makers of peace. 

We soon left the wooded country of the Swilly and began to climb intothe grand and melancholy Highlands of Donegal. The road was as fine asany in the Scottish Highlands, and despite the keen chill wind, theglorious and ever-changing panoramas of mountain and strath throughwhich we drove were a constant delight, until, just as we came withinfull range of Muckish, the giant of Donegal, the weather finally brokedown into driving mists and blinding rain. 

We pulled up near a picturesque little shebeen, to water the horses andget our Highland wraps well about us. Out came a hardy, cheery oldfarmer. He swept the heavens with the eye of a mountaineer, andexclaimed:--"Ah! it's a coorse day intirely, it is. " "A coorse dayintirely" from that moment it continued to be. 

Happily the curtain had not fallen before we caught a grand passingglimpse of the romantic gorge of Glen Veagh, closed and commanded in theshadowy distance by the modern castle of Glenveagh, the mountain home ofmy charming country-woman, Mrs. Adair. 

Thanks to its irregular serpentine outline, and to the desolate majestyof the hills which environ it, Lough Veagh, though not a large sheet ofwater, may well be what it is reputed to be, a rival of the finest lochsin Scotland. No traces are now discernible on its shores of the toocelebrated evictions of Glen Veagh. But from the wild and rugged aspectof the surrounding country it is probable enough that these evictionswere to the evicted a blessing in disguise, and that their descendantsare now enjoying, beyond the Atlantic, a measure of prosperity and ofhappiness which neither their own labour nor the most liberallegislation could ever have won for them here. We caught sight, as wedrove through Mrs. Adair's wide and rocky domain, of wire fences, and Ibelieve it is her intention to create here a small deer forest. Thisought to be as good a stalking country as the Scottish Highlands, provided the people can be got to like "stalking" stags better thanlandlords and agents. 

Long before we reached Glen Veagh we had bidden farewell, not only tothe hedges and walls of Tyrone and Eastern Donegal, but to the"ditches, " which anywhere but in Ireland would be called "embankments, "and entered upon great stone-strewn wastes of land seemingly unreclaimedand irreclaimable. Huge boulders lay tossed and tumbled about as if theyhad been whirled through the air by the cyclones of some prehistoricage, and dropped at random when the wild winds wearied of the fun. Thelast landmark we made out through the gathering storm was the pinnacledcrest of Errigal. Of Dunlewy, esteemed the loveliest of the Donegallakes, we could see little or nothing as we hurried along the highway, which follows its course down to the Clady, the river of Gweedore; andwe blessed the memory of Lord George Hill when suddenly turning fromthe wind and the rain into what seemed to be a mediaeval courtyardflanked by trees, we pulled up in the bright warm light of an opendoorway, shook ourselves like Newfoundland dogs, and were welcomed by afrank, good-looking Scottish host to a glowing peat fire in this reallycomfortable little hotel, the central pivot of a most interestingexperiment in civilisation. 

GWEEDORE, _Sunday, Feb. 5th. _--A morning as soft and bright almost asApril succeeded the stormy night. Errigal lifted his bold irregularoutlines royally against an azure sky. The sunshine glinted merrily onthe swift waters of the Clady, which flows almost beneath our windowsfrom Dunlewy Lough to the sea. The birds were singing in the trees, which all about our hotel make what in the West would be called an"opening" in the wide and woodless expanse of hill and bog. 

This hotel was for many years the home of Lord George Hill, who built itin the hope of making Gweedore, what in England or Scotland it wouldlong ago have become, a prosperous watering-place. Now that abattle-royal is going on between Lord George's son and heir and thetenants on the estate, organised by Father M'Fadden under the "Plan ofCampaign, " it is important to know something of the history of theplace. 

Is this a case of the sons of the soil expropriated by an alien andconfiscating Government to enrich a ruthless invader? I was told by aNationalist acquaintance in Dublin that the owner of Gweedore is a nearkinsman of the Marquis of Londonderry, and that the property came to himby inheritance under an ancient confiscation of the estates of theO'Dounels of Tyrconnel. All of this I find is embroidery. 

The "Carlisle" room, which our landlord has assigned to us, contains anumber of books, the property of the late Lord George, and amplematerials are here for making out the annals of Gweedore. Lord George, it seems, was a posthumous son of the fourth Marquis of Downshire, and anephew of that Marchioness of Salisbury who was burned to death with thewest wing of Hatfield House half a century ago. He inherited nothing inDonegal, nor was any provision made for him under his father's will. Hiselder brothers made up and settled upon him a sum of twenty thousandpounds. He entered the Army, and being quartered for a time atLetterkenny, shot and fished all about Donegal. He found the people herekindly and friendly, but in a deplorable state of ignorance and ofdestitution. Their holdings under sundry small proprietors were entirelyunimproved, and as their families increased, these holdings were cut upby themselves into even smaller strips under the system known as"rundale, "--each son as he grew up taking off a slice of the paternalholding, putting up a hut with mud, and scratching the soil after hisown rude fashion. This custom, necessarily fatal to civilisation, doubtless came down from the traditional times when the lands of a septwere held in common by the sept, before the native chieftains hadconverted themselves into landlords, and defeated Sir John Davies'sattempt to convert their tribal kinsmen into peasant proprietors. 

Whatever its origin, it had reduced Gweedore, or "Tullaghobegly, " fiftyyears ago to barbarism. Nearly nine thousand people then dwelt here withnever a landlord among them. There was no "Coercion" in Gweedore, neither was there a coach nor a car to be found in the whole district. The nominal owners of the small properties into which the district wasdivided knew little and cared less about them. The rents were usually"made by the tenants, "--a step in advance, it will be seen, of thesystem which the collective wisdom of Great Britain has for the lasttwenty years been trying to establish in Ireland. But they were onlypaid when it was convenient. An agent of one of these properties whotravelled fourteen miles one day to collect some rents gave it up anddrove back again, because the "day was too bad" for him to wander aboutin the mountains on the chance of finding the tenants at home anddisposed to give him a trifle on account. On most of the propertiesthere were arrears of eight, ten, and twenty years' standing. 

There was one priest in the district, and one National School, theschoolmaster, with a family of nine persons, receiving the munificentstipend of eight pounds a year. These nine thousand people, dependingabsolutely upon tillage and pasture, owned among them all one cart andone plough, eight saddles, two pillions, eleven bridles, and thirty-tworakes! They had no means of harrowing their lands but with meadow rakes, and the farms were so small that from four to ten farms could beharrowed in a day with one rake. 

Their beds were of straw, mountain grass, or green and dried rushes. Among the nine thousand people there were but two feather-beds, and buteight beds stuffed with chaff. There were but two stables and sixcow-houses in the whole district. None of the women owned more than oneshift, nor was there a single bonnet among them all, nor a looking-glasscosting more than threepence. 

The climate and the scenery took the fancy of Lord George. He made uphis mind to see what could be done with this forgotten corner of theworld, and to that end bought up as he could the small and scatteredproperties, till he had invested the greater part of his small fortune, and acquired about twenty thousand acres of land. Of this, little wasfit for cultivation, even with the help of capital and civilisedmanagement. There was not a road in the district, nor a drain. 

Lord George came and established himself here. He went to worksystematically to improve the country, reclaiming bog-lands, buildingroads, and laying out the property into regular farms. He went aboutamong the people himself, trying to get their confidence, and to letthem know what he wanted to do for them, and with their help. 

For a long time they wouldn't believe him to be a lord at all, "becausehe spoke Irish"; and the breaking up of the rundale system, under whichthey had lived in higgledy-piggledy laziness, exasperated them greatly. Of the first man who took a fenced and well-defined farm from LordGeorge, and went to work on it, the others observed that he would cometo no good by it, because he would "have to keep a maid just to talk tohis wife. " Men could not be got for any wages to work at draining, or atmaking the "ditches" or embankments to delineate the new holdings; andwhen Lord George found adventurous "tramps" willing to earn a fewshillings by honest work of the kind, conspiracies were formed to undoby night what was done by day. However, Lord George persevered. 

There was not a shop, nor a dispensary, nor a doctor, nor a warehouse, nor a quay for landing goods in this whole populous and sea-washedregion. He put up storehouses, built a little harbour at Bunbeg, established a dispensary, got a doctor to settle in the district, andfinally put up the hotel in which we are. He advanced money to tenantsdisposed to improve their holdings. Finding the women, as usual, morethrifty and industrious than the men, and gifted with a natural aptitudefor the loom and the spindle, he introduced the weaving of woollen yarninto stout frieze stuffs and foot-gear for both sexes. This was in 1840, and in 1854 Gweedore hand-knit socks and stockings were sold to theamount of £500, being just about the annual estimated rents of all theproperties bought by Lord George at the time when he bought them in1838! But with this difference: The owners from whom Lord George boughtthe properties got their £500 very irregularly, when they got it at all;whereas the wives and daughters of the tenants, who made the socks andstockings, were paid their £500 in cash. 

Clearly in Gweedore I have a case not of the children of the soildespoiled and trampled upon by the stranger, but of the honestinvestment of alien capital in Irish land, and of the administration bythe proprietor himself of the Irish property so acquired for the benefitalike of the owner and of the occupiers of the land. 

That the deplorable state in which he found the people was mainly due totheir own improvidence and gregarious incapacity is also tolerablyclear. On the west coast of Norway, dear to the heart of thesalmon-fisher, you find people living under conditions certainly no morefavourable than here exist. North of the Hardanger Fjord, the springopens only in June. The farmers grow only oats and barley; but they haveno market except for the barley, and live chiefly by the pasturage. Itis as rocky a region as Donegal. But the Norsemen never try to make theland do more than it is capable of doing. With them the oldest son takesthe farm and works it. The juniors are welcome to work on the farm ifthey like for their brother, but they are not allowed to cut it up. There is no rundale in Norway; and when the cadets see that there is noroom for them they quietly "pull up stakes, " and go forth to seek a newhome, no matter where. 

For fourteen years Lord George Hill spent on Gweedore all the rents hereceived from it, and a great deal more. During that time the relationsbetween the people and their new landlord seem to have been, in themain, most friendly, notwithstanding his constant efforts to break uptheir old habits, or, to use their own language, to "bother them. " Butthere were no "evictions"; rents were not raised even where the tenantswere visibly able to pay better rents; prizes were given annually forthe best and neatest cottages, for the best crops of turnips (neitherturnips, parsnips, nor carrots were there at Gweedore when Lord Georgebought the estate), for the best pigs (there was not a pig in Gweedorein 1838!), for calves and colts, for the best fences, the best orderedtillage farms, the best labourers' cottages, the best beds and bedding, the best butter, the best woollen goods made on the estate. The oldrundale plan of dividing up the land among the children was put a stopto, and every tenant was encouraged not to make his holding smaller, butto add to and enlarge it. A corn-mill, saw-mill, and flax-mill wereestablished. In 1838 there was not a baker within ten miles. In 1852 thelocal baker was driving a good business in good bread. The tenant'swife, for whom in 1838 a single shift was a social superiority, in 1852went shopping at Bunbeg for the latest fashions from Derry or Dublin. 

Whatever "landlordism" may mean elsewhere in Ireland, it is plain enoughthat in the history of Gweedore it has meant the difference betweensavage squalor and civilisation. 

Lord George Hill died in 1879, the year in which the Land League beganits operations. He bequeathed this property to his son, Captain Hill, bywhom the management of it has been left to agents. After Lord George'sdeath two tracts of mountain pasture, reserved by him to feed importedsheep, were let to the tenants, who by that time had come to own quite aconsiderable number, some thousands, of live stock, cattle, horses, andsheep. 

Concurrently with this concession to the tenants the provisions made byLord George against the subdivision of holdings began to give way. Father M'Fadden, combining the position of President of the NationalLeague with that of parish priest, seems to have favoured this tendency, and to have encouraged the putting up of new houses on reduced holdingsto accommodate an increasing population. A flood which in August 1880damaged the chapel and caused the death of five persons gave him anopportunity of bringing before the British public the condition of thepeople in a letter to the London _Times_, which elicited a very generousresponse, several hundred pounds, it is said, having been sent to himfrom London alone. Large contributions of relief were also made toGweedore from the Duchess of Marlborough's Fund, and Gweedore became astanding butt of British benevolence. Two results seem to have followed, naturally enough, --a growing indisposition on the part of the tenants topay rent, and a rapid rise in the value of tenant rights. With theNational League standing between them and the landlord, with the BritishParliament legislating year after year in favour of the Irish tenant andagainst the Irish landlord, and with the philanthropic public ready torespond to any appeal for help made on their behalf, the tenants atGweedore naturally became a privileged class. In no other way at leastcan I explain the extraordinary fact that tenant rights at Gweedore havebeen sold, according to Lord Cowper's Blue-book of 1886, during theperiod of the greatest alleged distress and congestion in this district, at prices representing from forty to a hundred-and-thirty years'purchase of the landlord's rent!

In this Blue-book the Rev. Father M'Fadden appears as receiving no lessthan £115 sterling for the tenant-right sold by him of ground, the headrent of which is £1, 2s. 6d. A year. The worst enemy of Father M'Faddenwill hardly suspect him, I hope, of taking such a sum as this from atenant farmer for the right to starve to death by inches. [13]

A shrewd Galway man, now here, who seems to know the region well, andlikes both the scenery and the people, tells me that the troubles whichhave now culminated in the arrest of Father M'Fadden have beenaggravated by the vacillation of Captain Hill, and by the foibles of hisagent, Colonel Dopping, who not long ago brought down Mr. Gladstone withhis unloaded rifle. That the tenants as a body have been, or now are, unable to pay their rent he does not believe. On the contrary, he thinksthem, as a body, rather well off. Certainly I have seen and spoken withnone of them about the roads to-day who were not hearty-looking men, andin very good case. Colonel Dopping, according to my Galwegian, is not anEnglishman, but a Longford Irishman of good family, who got histraining in India as an official of the Woods and Forests in Bengal. "Heis not a bad-hearted man, nor unkind, " said my Galwegian, "but he istoo much of a Bengal tiger in his manner. He went into the cottagespersonally and lectured the people, and that they never will stand. Theydon't require or expect you to believe what they say--in fact they havelittle respect for you if you do--but they like to have the agentpretend that he believes them, and then go on and show that he don't. But he must never lose his temper about it. Colonel Dopping, I haveheard, argued with an old woman one day who was telling him more yarnsthan were ever spun into cloth in Gweedore, till she picked up her cupof tea and threw it in his face. He flounced out of the cottage, andordered the police to arrest her. That did him more harm than if he hadshot a dozen boys. " "What with the temper of Colonel Dopping and thevacillation of Captain Hill, who is always of the mind of the last manthat speaks to him, Father M'Fadden has had it all his own way. CaptainHill's claim was for £1800 of arrears, long arrears too, and £400 ofcosts. How much the people paid in under the Plan of Campaign nobodyknows but Father M'Fadden. But he is a clever _padre_, and he playedCaptain Hill till he finally gave up the costs, and settled for £1450. "

"And this sum represents what?"

"It represents in round numbers about two years' income from an estatein which Captain Hill's father must have invested, first and last, morenearly £40, 000 than £20, 000 of money that never came out of it. "

"That doesn't sound like a very good operation. But isn't the question, Whether the tenants have earned this sum, such as it is, out of the landlet to them by Captain Hill?"

"No, not exactly, I think. You must remember there are some twelvehundred families living here on land bought with Lord George's money, and enjoying all the advantages which the place owes to his investmentand his management, much more than to any labour or skill of theirs. Youmust look at their rents as accommodation rents. Suppose they earn therent in Scotland, or England, or Tyrone, or wherever you like, thequestion is, What do they get for it from Captain Hill? They get aholding with land enough to grow potatoes on, and with as much free fuelas ever they like, and with free pasture for their beasts, and all thisthey get on the average, mind you, for no more than ten shillings ayear! Why, there was a time, I can assure you, when the women hereearned the value of all the Hill rents by knitting stockings and makingwoollen stuffs. You see the stuffs lying here in this window that theymake even now, and good stuffs too. But before the League boycotted theagency here, the agency ten years ago used to pay out £900 in a year, where it pays less than £100 to the women for their work. "

"Why did the League do this?"

"Why? Why, because it wanted to control the work itself, and to knowjust what it brings into the place. You must remember Father M'Fadden isthe President of the League, and the people will do anything for him. Ihave heard of one old woman who sat up of nights last year knittingsocks to send up to London, to pay the Christmas dues to theFather, --six shillings' worth. "

"And are these stuffs here in the hotel made for the agency you speakof?"

"Oh no; these are just made by women that know the hotel, and Mr. Robinson here, he kindly takes in the stuffs. You see the name of everywoman on every one of them that made it, and the price. If a strangerbuys some, he pays the money to Mr. Robinson, and so it goes to thewomen, and no commission charged. "

The "stuffs" are certainly excellent, very evenly woven; and thepatterns, all devised, I am told, by the women themselves, very simpleand tasteful. The only dyes used are got by the women also from thesea-weeds and the kelp, which must be counted among the resources of theplace. The browns and ochres thus produced are both soft and vivid;while nothing can be better than a peculiar warm grey, produced by askilful mingling of the undyed wools. 

"What, then, causes the distress for which the name of Gweedore is asynonym?" I asked. 

"It doesn't exist, " responded my Galwegian; "that is, there is no suchdistress in Gweedore as you find in Connemara, for instance;[14] butwhat distress there is in Gweedore is due much more to the habits thepeople have been getting into of late years, and to the idleness ofthem, than to any pressure of the rents you hear about, or even to thepoverty of the soil. Go down to the store at Bunbeg, and see what theybuy and go in debt for! You won't find in any such place as Bunbeg inEngland such things. And even this don't measure it; for, you see, two-thirds of them are not free to deal at Bunbeg. "

"Why not? Is Bunbeg 'boycotted'?"

"No, not at all. But they are on the books of the 'Gombeen man'--Sweeneyof Dungloe and Burtonport. They're always in debt to him for the meal;and then he backs the travelling tea-pedlars, and the bakers that carryaround cakes, and all these run up the accounts all the time. Tot upwhat these people lay out for tea at four shillings a pound--and theywon't have cheap tea--and what they pay for meal, and what they pay forinterest, and the 'testimonials, '--they paid for the monument here toO'Donnell, the Donegal man that murdered Carey, --and the dues to thepriest, and you'll find the £700 or so they don't pay the landlord goingin other directions three and four times over. "

"Then they are falling back into all the old laziness, the mensauntering about, or sitting and smoking, while the women do all thework. "

The maid having told us Mass would be performed at noon, I walked withLord Ernest a mile or so up the road to Derrybeg, to see the peoplethronging down from the hills; the women in their picturesque fashionwearing their bright shawls drawn over their heads. But the maid haddeceived us. The Mass was fixed for eleven, and I suspect her of being aProtestant in disguise. 

On the way back we met Mr. Burke, the resident magistrate. He has a neathouse here, with a garden, and had come over from Dunfanaghy to see hiswife. He meant to return before dark. The country was quiet enough, hesaid; but there were some troublesome fellows about, keeping up theexcitement over the arrest at Father M'Fadden's trial of FatherStephens--a young priest recently from Liverpool, who has become thecurate of quite another Father M'Fadden--the parish priest ofFalcarragh, and is giving his local superior a great deal of trouble byhis activity in connection with the "Plan of Campaign. " Mr. WybrantsOlphert of Ballyconnell, the chief landlord of Falcarragh, has been"boycotted, " on suspicion of promoting the arrest of the two priests. Five policemen have been put into his house. At Falcarragh, where sixpolicemen are usually stationed, there are now forty. Mr. Burkeevidently thinks, though he did not say so, that Father Stephens hasbeen spoiled of his sleep by the laurels of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore. He is to be tried at Dunfanaghy on Tuesday, and there are now 150 troopsquartered there--Rifles and Hussars. 

"Are they not boycotted?" I asked. 

"No. The people rather enjoy the bustle and the show, not to speak ofthe money the soldiers spend. "

Lord Ernest, who knows Mr. Olphert, sent him over a message by Mr. Burkethat we would drive over to-morrow, and pay our respects to him atBallyconnell. From this Mr. Burke tried to dissuade us, but what he toldus naturally increased our wish to go. 

After luncheon I ordered a car, and drove to Derrybeg, to call there onFather M'Fadden, Lord Ernest, who has already seen him, agreeing to callthere for me on his return from a walk. We passed much reclaimedbogland, mostly now in grass, and looking fairly well; many piles ofturf and clusters of cottages, well-built, but not very neatly kept. From each, as we passed, the inevitable cur rushed out and barkedhimself hoarse. Then came a waste of bog and boulders, and then a long, neat stone wall, well coped with unhewn stone, which announced thevicinity of Father M'Fadden's house, quite the best structure in theplace after the chapel and the hotel. It is of stone, with a neat sideporch, in which, as I drove up, I descried Father M'Fadden, in his trimwell-fitting clerical costume, standing and talking with an elderlylady. I passed through a handsome iron wicket, and introduced myself tohim. He received me with much courtesy, and asked me to walk into hiswell-furnished comfortable study, where a lady, his sister, to whom hepresented me, sat reading by the fire. 

I told Father M'Fadden I had come to get his view of methods and thingsat Gweedore, and he gave it to me with great freedom and fluency. He isa typical Celt in appearance, a M'Fadden Roe, sanguine by temperament, with an expression at once shrewd and enthusiastic, a most flexiblepersuasive voice. All the trouble at Gweedore, he thought, came of theagents. "Agents had been the curse both of Ireland and of the landlord. The custom being to pay them by commissions on the sums collected, andnot a regular salary, the more they can screw either out of the soil, orout of any other resources of the tenants, the better it is for them. AtGweedore the people earn what they can, not out of the soil, but out oftheir labour exported to Scotland, or England, or America. Onlyyesterday, " he continued, turning to his neat mahogany desk and takingup a letter, "I received this with a remittance from America to pay therent of one of my people. "

"This was in connection, " I asked, "with the 'Plan of Campaign' and yourcontest here?"

"Yes, " he replied; "and a girl of my parish went over to Scotlandherself and got the money due there for another family, and brought itback to me here. You see they make me a kind of savings-bank, and havedone so for a long time, long before the 'Plan of Campaign' was talkedabout as it is now. "

This was interesting, as I had heard it said by a Nationalist in Dublinthat the "Plan of Campaign" was originally suggested by Father M'Fadden. He made no such claim himself, however, and I made no allusion to thisaspect of the matter. "I have been living here for fifteen years, andthey listen to me as to nobody else. "

In these affairs with the agents, he had always told his people that"whenever a settlement came to be made, cash alone in the hand of theperson representing them could make it properly. " "Cash I must have, " hesaid, "and hold the cash ready for the moment. When I had worked out asettlement with Captain Hill, I had a good part of the money in my handready to pay down. £1450 was the sum total agreed upon, and after thefurther collection, necessitated by the settlement, there was a deficitof about £200. I wrote to Professor Stuart, " he added, after a pause, "that I wanted about £200 of the sum-total. But more has come in sincethen. This remittance, from America yesterday, for example. "

"Do they send such remittances without being asked for them?" Iinquired. 

"Yes; they are now and again sending money, and some of them don't send, but bring it. Some of them go out to America now as they used to go toEngland--just to work and earn some money, and come back. 

"If they get on tolerably well they stay for a while, but they findAmerica is more expensive than Ireland, and if, for any cause, they getout of work there, they come back to Ireland to spend what they have. Naturally, you see, " said Father M'Fadden, "they find a certain pleasureto be seen by their old friends in the old place, after borrowing thefour pounds perhaps to take them to America, coming back with the moneyjingling in their pockets, and in good clothes, and with a watch and achain--and a high hat. And there is in the heart of the Irishman aneternal longing for his native land constantly luring him back toIreland. All do not succeed, though, in your country, " he said. "We hearof two out of ten perhaps who do very well. They take care we hear ofthat. The rest disappear, and are never heard of again. "

"Then you do not encourage emigration?" I, asked, "even although thepeople cannot earn their living from the soil?"

Father M'Fadden hesitated a moment, and then replied, "No, for thingsshould be so arranged that they may earn their living, not out of thecountry, but on the soil at home. It is to that I want to bring thecondition of the district. "

At this point Lord Ernest Hamilton came up and knocked at the door. Hewas most courteously received by Father M'Fadden. To my query why theCourts could not intervene to save the priests from taking all thistrouble on themselves between the owners and the occupiers of the land, Father M'Fadden at first replied that the Courts had no power tointervene where, as in many cases in Gweedore, the holdings aresubdivided. 

"The Courts, " he said, "may not be, and I do not think they are, allthat could be desired, though they undoubtedly do supply a more or lessimpartial arbitrator between the landlord and the tenant. It is animprovement on the past when the landlords fixed the rents forthemselves. "

I did not remind him of what Lord George Hill tells us, that in theolden time at Gweedore the tenants fixed their own rents--and then didnot pay them--but I asked him how this could be said when the tenantclearly must have accepted the rent, no matter who fixed it. "Oh!" saidFather M'Fadden, "that may be so, but the tenant was not free, he wascoerced. With all his life and labour represented in the holding and itsimprovements, he could not go and give up his holding. It's astand-and-deliver business with him--the landlord puts a pistol to hishead!"

"But is it not true, " I said, "that under the new Land Bill the LandCommissioner's Court has power to fix the rents judicially withoutregard to landlord or tenant during fifteen years?"

"Yes, that is so, " said Father M'Fadden. "Under Mr. Gladstone's Act of81, and under the later Act of the present Government, the rents sofixed from '81 to '86 inclusive are subject to revision for three years;but the people have no confidence in the constitution of the Courts, and, as a matter of fact, the improvements of the tenants areconfiscated under the Act of '81, and the reductions allowed under theAct of '87 are incommensurate with the fall in prices by 100 per cent. And there still remains the burden of arrears. I feel that I must standbetween my people and obligations which they are unable to meet. To thatend I take their money, and stand ready to use it to relieve them whenthe occasion offers. That is my idea of my work under the 'Plan ofCampaign'; and, furthermore, I think that by doing it I have securedmoney for the landlord which he couldn't possibly have got in any otherway. "

This struck me as a very remarkable statement, nor can I see how it canbe interpreted otherwise than as an admission that if the people hadthe money to pay their rents, they couldn't be trusted to use it forthat purpose, unless they put it into the control of the priest or ofsome other trustee. 

Reverting to what he had said of the necessity for some change in theconditions of life and labour here, I asked if, in his opinion, thepeople could live out of the land if they got the ownership of it. 

In existing circumstances he thought they could not. 

Was he in favour, then, of Mr. Davitt's plan of Land Nationalisation?

"Well, I have not considered the question of Nationalisation of theland. "

To my further question, What remedies he would himself propose for astate of things in which it was impossible for the people to live out ofthe land either as occupiers or as owners--emigration being barred, Father M'Fadden, without looking at Lord Ernest, replied, "Oh, I thinkabler men who draw up Parliamentary Acts and live in public life oughtto devise remedies, and that is a matter which would be best settled bya Home Government. "

The glove was well delivered, but Lord Ernest did not lift it. 

"But, Father M'Fadden, " I said, "I am told you are a practicalagriculturist and engineer, and that you have contrived to get excellentwork done by the people here, dividing them off into working squads, andassigning so many perches to so many--surely then you must understandbetter than a dozen members of Parliament what they can be got to do?"

He smiled at this, and finally admitted that he had a plan of his own. It was that the Government should advance sums for reclaiming the land. "The people could live on part of their earnings while thus employed, and invest the surplus in sheep to be fed on the hill pastures. When thereclamation was effected the families could be scattered out, and theholdings increased. In this district alone there are 350 holdings ofreclaimable land of 20 acres each, the reclamation of which, accordingto a competent surveyor, "would pay well. " And the district could beimproved by creating employment on the spot, establishing factories, developing fisheries, giving technical education, and encouragingcottage industries, which are so vigorously reviving in this districtowing to the benevolent efforts of the Donegal Industrial Fund. "

Father M'Fadden spoke freely and without undue heat of his trial, andgave us a piquant account of his arrest. 

This was effected at Armagh, just as he was getting into an earlymorning train. A sergeant of police walked up as the train was about tostart, and asked--

"Are you not Father M'Fadden of Gweedore?"

"What interest have you in my identity?" responded the priest. 

"Only this, sir, " said the officer, politely exhibiting a warrant. 

"I had been in Armagh the previous day, " said Father M'Fadden, "attending the month's memory of the late deceased Primate of AllIreland, Dr. M'Gettigan, and stayed at a private residence, that ofSurgeon-Major Lavery, not suspecting that while enjoying the genialhospitality of the Surgeon-Major my steps were dogged by a detective, and that gentleman's house watched by police. "

Of the trial Father M'Fadden spoke with more bitterness. His eyes glowedas he exclaimed, "Can you imagine that they refused me bail, when bailhad been allowed to such a felon as Arthur Orton? Why should I havebeen locked up over two Sundays, for ten days, when I offered to pledgemy honour to appear?" He made no other complaint of the magistrate, andnone of the prosecutor, Mr. Ross. He praised his own lawyer, too, but hestrongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or theparts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin. 

"Why, just think of it, " he exclaimed; "it took the clerk just eightminutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech whichit took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak fromthe lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and astenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I runahead of him!"

I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a fullsummary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentencespronounced by him. 

"Yes, as to phrases, " he answered, "that might be; but the phrases maybe taken out of their true connection, and strung together in anuntruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully set down, " hesaid, with some heat. "I was made to call a man 'level, ' when I said inthe American way that he was 'level-headed. '" _A propos_ of this, I amtold that the American word "spree" has become Hibernian, and is used todescribe meetings of the National League and "other politicalentertainments. "

When I told Father M'Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I hadreason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from othersthan Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as tothe attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the UnitedKingdom, he said he knew that "some Italian prelates neither understoodnor approved the 'Plan of Campaign, ' nor is the Irish Land questionunderstood at Rome;" but this did not seem to disturb him much, as hewas quite sure that in the end the "Plan of Campaign" would be legalisedby the British Government. "I think I see plainly, " he said, "that LordErnest's government is fast going to pieces, though I can't expect himto admit it!" Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that FatherM'Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see inWestminster. Upon my asking him whether the "Plan of Campaign" did notin effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligationshe had voluntarily incurred, Father M'Fadden advanced his own theory ofthe subject, which was that, "if a man can pay a fair year's rent out ofthe produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be arack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holdingdoes not produce the rent, then I don't think that is a strictobligation in conscience. "

In America, the courts, I fear, would make short work of this theory ofFather M'Fadden. If a tenant there cannot pay his first quarter's rent(they don't let him darken his soul by a year's liabilities) theypromptly and mercilessly put him out. 

Interesting as was our conversation with the parish priest of Gweedore, I felt that we might be trespassing too far upon his kindness and histime. So we rose to go. He insisted upon our going into the dining-room, where, as he told us, he had hospitably entertained sundry visitingstatesmen from England, and there offered us a glass of the excellentwine of the country. He excused himself from joining us as being"almost a teetotaller. "

On our return to the hotel I met the Galwegian strolling about. When Itold him of Father M'Fadden's courteous hospitality, he said, "I am veryglad you took that glass he offered. I really believe his quarrel withCaptain Hill dates back to Hill's declining that same courtesy underFather M'Fadden's roof. "

GWEEDORE, _Monday, Feb. 6. _--Another very beautiful morning--as a farmersaid with whom I chatted on my morning stroll, "A grand day, sorr!"Errigal, which in this mountain atmosphere seems almost to hang over ourhotel, but is in reality three or four miles away, stood out superblyagainst a clear azure sky, wreaths of soft luminous mist floating like adivine girdle half way up his bare volcanic peak. 

I walked up to the Bunbeg road with Lord Ernest to call upon somepeasants whom he knows. In one stone cabin, very well built andplastered, standing sidewise to the road, with doors on either side, wefound the house apparently in charge of a little girl of nine or tenyears, a weird but pretty child with very delicate well-cut features, who lay couchant upon her doubled-up arm on a low bed in a corner of themain room, and peered at us over her elbow with sparkling inquisitiveeyes. 

By her side sat a man with his cap on, who might have been the "youngPretender, " or the "old Kaiser, " so far as his looks went towardsindicating his age. He never rose or welcomed us, being, as weafterwards found out, only a visitor like ourselves, and a kinsman ofMrs. M'Donnell, the head of the house. "Mrs. M'Donnell, " he said, "isgone to the store at Bunbeg. "

This main room rose perhaps ten feet in height to the open roof. It hadone large and well-glazed window. When Lord George Hill came here therewere not ten square feet of window-glass in the whole parish outside ofthe Church, the national school, and the residence of the chiefpolice-officer. 

Windows when there were any were closed with dried sheepskins, throughwhich the cats ran in and out as freely as through the curious tunnelwhich the kindly Master of Blantyre has constructed at Sheba's Cross fortheir special benefit. 

There were two beds in the main room; rather high than low, one ofrushes, on which lay the child of whom I have spoken, and one ofgreater pretensions vacant in another corner. 

The door stood wide open, but the cabin was warm and comfortable, and apeat fire smouldered, sending up, to me, most agreeable odours. An innerroom seemed to be a sort of granary, full of hay and straw. There thecow is kept at night. "It's handy if you want a drink of milk, " said thevisitor. In comparison with the dwellings of small farmers in EasternFrance or in Southern Italy this Donegal cabin was not only clean butattractive. It was more squalid perhaps, but less dreary than theextemporised and flimsy dwellings of settlers in the extreme Far West ofthe United States, and I should say decidedly a more wholesomehabitation than the hermetically sealed and dismal wooden houses ofhundreds of struggling farmers in the older Eastern States. I am sure myold friend Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, who made the only thorough surveysof agricultural life in the United States before the Civil War, wouldhave pronounced it in all respects superior, so far as health andcomfort go, to the average home of the average "poor buccra, " betweenthe Chesapeake and the Sabine. I am afraid a great deal of not whollyinnocuous nonsense has been written and spoken about this part of theUnited Kingdom by well-meaning philanthropists who have gauged thecondition of the people here by their own standards of comfort andenjoyment. Most things in this life of ours are relative. I wellremember hearing an American millionaire, who began life in New York asthe patentee of a mouse-trap, express his profound compassion for ajudge of the Supreme Court condemned to live "upon a pittance of eightthousand dollars a year. "

These dwellers in the cabins of Donegal are millionaires, so far asthose essentials of life are concerned, which we call room and air andfreedom to move and breathe, in comparison with hundreds and thousandsof their own race in the slums of New York and Chicago and Liverpool andLondon. 

Mrs. M'Donnell's cousin, however, took dark views of things. The times"were no good at all. "

The potatoes, I had heard, were doing well this year. 

"No! they wouldn't keep the people; indeed, they wouldn't. There wouldhave to be relief. "

"Why not manure the land?"

"Manure? oh yes, the sea-stuff was good manure, but the people couldn'tget it. They had no boats; and it cost eighteenpence a load to haul itfrom Bunbeg. No! they couldn't get it off the rocks. At the Rosses theymight; the Rosses were not so badly off as Derrybeg or Gweedore, for allthey might say. "

"But Father M'Fadden had urged me, " I said, "to see the Rosses, becausethe people there were worse off than any of the people. "

"Well, Father M'Fadden was a good man; he was a friend of the people;and they were bad indeed at the Rosses, but they could get the sea-stuffthere, and hadn't to pay for cartage. And indeed, if you put thesea-stuff on the bogland, the land was better in among the rocks' at theRosses than was the bogland, it was indeed: the stuff did no good at allthe first year. The second and the third it gave good crops--but thenyou must burn it--and by the fourth year and the fifth it was all ashes, and no good at all! This was God's truth, it was; and there must berelief. "

"But could the people earn nothing in Scotland or in Tyrone?"

"Oh no, they could earn nothing at all. They could pay no rent. "

So he sat there, a Jeremiah among the potsherds, quite contented andmiserable--well and hearty in a ragged frieze coat, with his hat overhis eyes. 

While we talked, a tall lusty young beggar-girl wandered in and outunnoticed. Chickens pecked and fluttered about, and at intervals theinevitable small dog suddenly barked and yelped. 

On our way back we met the elder daughter of Mrs. M'Donnell, a girl ofsixteen, the "beauty of Gweedore. " A beauty she certainly is, and of atype hardly to have been looked for here. 

Her lithe graceful figure, her fine, small, chiselled features, hershapely little head rather defiantly set on her sloping shoulders, herfair complexion and clear hazel eyes, her brown golden hair gathered upbehind into a kind of tress, all these were Saxon rather than Celtic. Her trim neat ankles were bare, after the mountain fashion, but she wasprettily dressed in a well-fitting dark blue gown, wore a smartlytrimmed muslin apron, with lace about her throat, and carried over herarm a new woollen shawl, very tasteful and quiet in colour. She greetedus with a self-possessed smile. 

"No, " she had not, been shopping with her mother. The shawl was apresent from one of her cousins. Did we not think it very pretty? Shewas only out for a walk, and had no notion where her mother might be. Astalwart red-bearded man who lounged and loitered behind her on the roadwas "only a friend, " she said, "not a relation at all!" Nor did sheshow, I am sorry to say, any compassion for the evident uneasiness withwhich, from a distance, he regarded her long and affable parley with twostrangers. 

We asked her whether she expected and wished to live in Gweedore, orwould like to follow elsewhere some calling or trade. "Oh yes, " sheunhesitatingly replied, "I should like to be a dress-maker in Deny;but, " she added pensively, "it's no use my thinking about it, for I knowI shouldn't be let!"

"Wouldn't you like Dublin as well?" I asked. 

"Perhaps; but I shouldn't be let go to Dublin either!"

Would she like to go to America?

"No!" she didn't think much of "the Americans who came back, " andAmerica must be "a very hard country for work, and very cold in thewinter. "

Now this was a widow's daughter, living in such a cabin as I havedescribed, and upon a small holding in a parish reputed to be the most"distressful" in Donegal![15]

Returning to the hotel we found our car ready for Falcarragh. Our driverwas a quiet, sensible fellow, who did not seem to care sixpence aboutthe great Nationality question, though he knew the country very well. 

Iron was visible in the rocks as we drove along, and we passed someabandoned mining works, "lead and silver mines;" he said, "they weregiven up long before his time. " We got many fine views of the mountainsErrigal, Aghla More, and Muckish. Lough Altan, a wild tarn, lies betweenErrigal and Aghla More. 

The peasants we met stared at us curiously, but, were very civil, evenat a place bearing the ominous name of Bedlam, against which Mr. Burkehad warned us as the most troublesome on the way. All the countrysidewas there attending a fair, and we drove through throngs of red-shawled, barelegged women, ponies, horses, cattle, and sheep. Of Tory Island, with its famous tower, dating back to the fabled "Fomorians, " we hadsome grand glimpses. The white surf, flashing and leaping high in theair on the nearer islets accented and gave life to the landscape. 

In one glorious landlocked bay, we saw not a single boat riding. Ourdriver said, "The fishermen all live on Tory Island, and send their fishto Sligo. The people on the mainland don't like going out in the boats. "

Lord Ernest tells me there is a movement to have a telegraph station setup on Tory Island, to announce the Canadian steamers coming into Movillefor Deny. 

We found Falcarragh, or "Cross-Roads, " a large clean-looking village, consisting of one long and broad street, through which horses and cattlewere wandering in numbers, apparently at their own sweet will. 

Ballyconnell House, the seat of Mr. Wybrants Olphert, is the manor houseof the place. As we drew near, no signs appeared of the dreadful"Boycott. " The great gates of the park stood hospitably open, and wedrove in unchallenged past a pretty ivy-clad lodge, and through low, butthickly planted groves. A huge boulder, ruddy with iron ore, bears theuncanny and unspellable name of the "Clockchinnfhaelaidh, " or "Stone ofKinfaele. " Upon this stone, tradition tells us, Balor, a giant of ToryIsland, chopped off the head of an unreasonable person namedMackinfeale, for complaining that Balor, under some prehistoric "Plan ofCampaign, " had driven away his favourite cow, Glasgavlan. 

Ballyconnell House, a substantial mansion of the Georgian era, standsextremely well. Over a fine sloping lawn in front, you have a gloriousview of the sea, and of a very fine headland, known as "the Duke'sHead, " from the really remarkable resemblance it bears to the profile ofWellington. The winds have such power here that there are but fewwell-grown trees, and those near the house. About them paraded manygame-hens, spirited birds, looking like pheasants. These, as we learned, never sleep save in the trees. 

The "boycotted" lord of the manor came out to greet us--a handsome, stalwart man of some seventy years, with a kindly face, and mostcharming manners. His family, presumably of Dutch origin, has beenestablished here since Charles II. He himself holds 18, 133 acres here, valued at £1802 a year; and he is a resident landlord in the fullestsense of the term. For fifty years he has lived here, during all whichtime, as he told us to-day, he has "never slept for a week out of thecountry. " His furthest excursions of late years have been to Raphoe, where he has a married daughter. "Absenteeism" clearly has nothing to dowith the quarrel between Mr. Olphert and his tenants, or with the"boycotting" of Ballyconnell. 

The dragoons from Dunfanaghy had just ridden away as we came up. Theyhad come over in full fig to show themselves, and to encourage therespectable Catholics of Falcarragh, who side with their parish priest, Father M'Fadden of Glena, and object to the vehement measures, promotedby his young curate, Father Stephens, recently of Liverpool. The peoplehad received them with much satisfaction. "They had never seen thecavalry before, and were much delighted!"

Before we sat down to luncheon young Mr. Olphert came in. It was curiousto see this quiet, well-bred young gentleman throw down his belt and hisrevolver on the hall table, like his gloves and his umbrella. "Quitelike the Far West, " I said. "And we are as far in the West as we canget, " he replied laughingly. 

Our luncheon was excellent--so good, in fact, that we felt a kind ofremorse as if we had selfishly quartered ourselves upon a beleagueredgarrison. But Mr. Olphert said he had no fear of being starved out. Personally he was, and always had been, on the best terms with thepeople of Falcarragh. The older tenants, even now, if he met themwalking in the fields when no one was in sight, would come up and salutehim, and say how "disgusted" they were with what was going on. It wasthe younger generation who were troublesome--more troublesome, he added, to their own parish priest than they were to him. Three or four yearsago a returned American Irishman, an avowed unbeliever, but an activeNationalist and one of Mr. Forster's "suspects, " had come into theneighbourhood and done his worst to break up the parish. He used to cometo Falcarragh on a Sunday, and get up on a stone outside the chapelwhile Father M'Fadden was saying Mass or preaching, and harangue suchpeople as would listen to him, and caricature the priest and the sermongoing on within sound of his own voice. "I am myself a Protestant, "said Mr. Olphert, "but I have a great respect for priests who do theirduty; and the conduct of Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in countenancingthis man, who tried to overthrow the authority of Father M'Fadden ofGlena, excited my indignation. As to what is going on now, " said Mr. Olphert, "it is to Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, and to Father Stephenshere, that the trouble is chiefly to be charged. " This tallies with whatI heard at Gweedore from my Galwegian acquaintance. He thought Mr. Olphert, and Mr. Hewson, the agent, ought to have made peace on theterms which Father Stephens said he was willing to accept for thetenants, these being a reduction of 3s. 4d. In the pound, if Mr. Olphertwould extend the reduction to the whole year. My Galwegian thought thisreasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is onlycollected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian stillmaintained that but for the two priests--the parish priest of Gweedoreand the curate of Falcarragh--there need have been no trouble atFalcarragh. There had been no "evictions. " When the tenants first wentto Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. In the pound on thenon-judicial rents, and this Mr. Olphert at once agreed to give them. The tenants had regularly paid their rents for ten years before. Thatthey are not going down in the world would appear from the fact that theP. O. Savings Banks' deposits at Falcarragh, which stood at £62, 15s. 10d. In 1880, rose in 1887 to £494, 10s. 8d. A small number of them hadgone into Court and had judicial rents fixed; and it was on thecontention promoted by the two priests, through these judicial tenants, he said, that all the difficulty hinged. Father M'Fadden of Glena, whothought the quarrel unjustifiable and silly, had an interview with Mr. Blane, M. P. , and with Father Stephens, and tried to arrange it all. Hewould have succeeded, my Galwegian thought, had not the agent, Mr. Hewson, obstinately fought with the obstinate curate, Father Stephens, over the suggestion made by the latter, that the terms granted on thefine neighbouring estate of Mr. Stuart of Ards--a man of wealth, wholives mainly at Brighton, though Ards is one of the loveliest places inIreland--should be extended by Mr. Olphert for a whole year to his ownpeople, who had never asked for anything of the kind!

Mr. Olphert said he knew Gweedore well. He owns a "townland"[16] there, on which he has thirty-five tenants, none of them on a holding at moremore than £4 a year. Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, he said, finding thatthe people on Mr. Olphert's townland were going back to the "Rundale"practices, tried to induce Mr. Olphert to return all these subdivisionsas "tenancies. " This he refused to do. As to the resources of thepeasantry, he thought them greater than they appeared to be. "This comesto light, " said Mr. Olphert, "whenever there is a tenant-right for sale. There is never any lack of money to buy it, and at a round good price. "The people also, he thinks, spend a great deal on what they regard asluxuries, and particularly on tea. "A cup of tea could not be got forlove or money in Gweedore, when Lord George Hill came there. You mightas well have asked for a glass of Tokay. "

Now they use and abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. Theybuy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, andusually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, putit into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over thefire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at oddmoments all day long! Oddly enough, this is the way in which theyprepare tea in Cashmere and other parts of India, with this essentialdifference, though, that the Orientals mitigate the astringency of theherb with milk and almonds and divers ingredients, tending to make asort of "compote" of it. Taken as it is taken here, it must have atremendous effect on the nerves. Mr. Olphert thinks it has had much todo with the increase of lunacy in Ireland of late years. From hisofficial connection with the asylum at Letterkenny, he knows that whileit used to accommodate the lunatics of three counties, it is now hardlyadequate to the needs of Donegal alone. 

Everything about Ballyconnell House is out of key with the actualmilitary conditions of life here. It is essentially what Tennyson calls"an ancient home of ordered peace. " In the ample hall hang old portraitsand trophies of the chase. The large and handsome library, panelled inrich dark wood, is filled full of well-bound books. Prints, busts, thethousand and one things of "bigotry and virtue" which mark thedwelling-place of educated and thoughtful people are to be seen on everyside. Mr. Olphert showed us a cabinet full of bronzes, picked up on thestrand of the sea. Among these were brooches, pins, clasps, buckles, twovery fine bronze swords, and a pair of bronze links engraved withdistinctly Masonic emblems, such as the level, the square, and thecompasses. When were these things made, and by what people?

So far as I know, Masonry in the British Islands cannot be historicallytraced back much, if at all, beyond the Revolution of 1688. 

Mr. Olphert and his son walked about the place with us. They have nofears of an attack, but think it wise to keep a force of police on thepremises. The only demonstration yet made of any kind against the housewas the march from Falcarragh some time ago of a mob of young men, whopromptly withdrew on catching sight of half-a-dozen policemen within thepark gates. As to getting his work done, some of his people had steadilyrefused to acknowledge the "boycott, " and they were now strengthened bythe attitude of those who had surrendered to the pressure, and were nowsullen and angry with the League which had given them nothing to do, andno supplies. 

At Falcarragh we met a person who knew much about the late Lord Leitrim, who was murdered in this neighbourhood on the highway some years ago. Hespoke freely of the murderer by name, as if it were matter of commonnotoriety. Of the murdered man, he said that he had made himselfextremely unpopular and odious, not so much by certain immoralitiesfreely alleged at the time of his death, as by vexatious meddling withthe prejudices and whims of his tenants. "He used to go into the housesand pull down cartoons and placards, if he saw them put up on thewalls. " "No! he had no party feeling in the matter; he used to pull downWilliam III. And the Pope with an equal hand. " It seems that in thisregion, too, a local legend has grown up of the birth at a place calledCashelmore of a "Queen of France. " The case is worth noting as throwinglight on the genesis and accuracy of local traditions. The "Queen ofFrance" referred to proves, on inquiry, to have been Miss Patterson, whomarried Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the first Emperor, afterwardscreated by him King of Westphalia! This Avas the lady so well known inAmerica as Mrs. Patterson Bonaparte of Baltimore, who died at a greatage only a few years ago. I have no reason to suppose that she was bornat Cashelmore at all or in Ireland. But her father, reputed in the timeof Washington to be the richest man in the United States, who came fromthe North of Ireland and settled in Baltimore as a merchant, may verywell have been born there. 

To my great regret Father M'Fadden of Glena, or Falcarragh, was absentfrom home. As we drove homeward we met on the way a young lady on asmart jaunting-car, with a servant in livery. This was the daughter, ourdriver told us, of Mr. Griffiths, the Protestant clergyman, past whoseresidence our road lay. His church stands high upon a commanding cliff, and is a feature in the landscape. We met the parson himself also, walking with a friend. The road from Bedlam to Derrybeg goes by a regionof the "Rosses, " reputed the most woe-begone part of the Gweedoredistrict. This is the scene of a curious tale told about Father M'Faddenof Gweedore, by his ill-wishers in these parts, to the effect that headvises English Members of Parliament and other "sympathising" visitorswho come here to make a pilgrimage to "the Bosses, " where, no matter atwhat time of day they appear, they invariably find sundry of the peoplesitting in their huts and eating stewed seaweed out of iron pots. Icannot vouch for this tale, but certainly I have seen no people here ofeither sex, or of any age, who look as if they lived on stewed seaweed. Another person at Falcarragh told us, as an illustration of theinfluence exerted by Father M'Fadden of Gweedore, in this parish, overwhich he has no proper authority, that, in obedience to an intimationfrom him, the persons whose seats in the chapel had been occupied on twosuccessive Sundays by the policemen now stationed here, yesterdayrefused to allow the policemen to occupy them, the only exception beingin the case of a man who had been arrested at the same time with FatherStephens, and who had been so well treated by the police, that he feltbound to repay their courtesy by offering one of them his seat. 

CHAPTER III. 

DUNGLOE, _Tuesday, Feb. 7. _--We rose early this morning at Gweedore; thesun shining so brightly that we were forced to drop the window-shades atbreakfast, while I read my letter from Rome, telling me of the bittercold there, and of a slight snow-fall last week. Here the birds weresinging, and the air was as soft and exhilarating as that of an Aprilmorning in the Highlands of Mexico or Costa Rica. 

Our host gave us a capital car, with a staunch nag and a wide-awakejarvey, thanks to all which I found the thirteen miles drive to thisplace too short. No doubt it will be a great thing for Donegal when"light railways" are laid down here. But I pity the traveller of thefuture here, if he is never to know the delight of traversing these wildand picturesque wastes in such weather as we have had to-day, on a car, well-balanced by a single pleasant companion, drinking, as he goes, deep draughts of the Atlantic air! Truly on a jaunting-car "two arecompany and three are none. " You have almost the free companionship of aSouth American journey in the saddle, jumping off to walk, when youlike, more freely still. 

We drove near the house of the "beauty of Gweedore, " but she was notvisible, though we met her mother (by no means a _pulchra mater_) as wecrossed the Clady at Bryan's Bridge. 

We soon passed from the bogland into a wilderness of granite. Ourjarvey, however, maintained that there was "better land among the stonesthan any bogland could be. " He was a shrewd fellow, and summed up theeconomical situation, I thought, better than some of his betters, whenhe said of the whole region that "it will fatten four, feed five, andstarve six. "

It may well fatten six, though, I should say, if the natural wealth ofthis vast granite range can be properly turned to account. On every sideof us lay vast blocks of granite of all hues and grades, all absolutelyunworked, but surely not unworkable. We stopped and picked up manyspecimens, some of them almost as rich in colour as porphyry. Of lakesand lakelets supplying water-power the name too, is legion. 

Beyond Annagary we caught a glimpse of the Isle of Arran, the scene, afew years ago, of so much suffering, and that of a kind I should thinkas much beyond the control of legislation as the misery and destructionwhich have overtaken successive attempts to establish settlements onAnticosti in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

This town of Dungloe sprawls along the shore of the sea. It is reputedthe most ill-favoured town in Donegal, and it certainly is not a dreamof beauty. But it blooms all over with evidences of the prosperity ofthat interesting type of Irish civilisation, the "Gombeen man, " of whomI had heard so much at Gweedore. Over the doorways of most of the shopsappear the names of various members of the family of Sweeney, all ofthem, I am told, brought here and established within a few years past bythe head of the sept, who is not only the great "Gombeen man" of theregion, but a leading local member of the National League, and HerMajesty's Postmaster. The Sweeneys, in fact, commercially speaking, dominate Dungloe, their, only visible rivals being a returned IrishAmerican, who has built himself a neat two-story house and shop just atthe entrance of the village, and our own host, Mr. Maurice Boyle, whoseextremely neat little inn just faces a large shop, the stronghold of theChief of the Sweeneys. I am sorry to find that this important citizen ofDungloe is not now here. We went into his chief establishment to makesome purchases, and found it full of customers, chiefly women, neatlydressed after the Donegal fashion, and busily chaffering with theshopgirls and shopmen, who had their hands full, exhibiting goods suchas certainly would not be found in any New York or New England villageof this sort. When we secured the attention of the chief shopman, anattily dressed, dark-haired young man who would not have discreditedthe largest "store" in Grand Street or the Bowery of New York, we askedhim to show us some of the home-made woollen goods of the country. These, he assured us, had no sale in Dungloe, and he did not keep them. But he showed us piles of handsome Scottish tweeds at much higherprices. Now as this is an exclusively agricultural region, it is evidentthat the tenants must be able to make it worth a trader's while to keepon hand such goods as we here found, and therefore that they cannot beexactly on "the ragged edge" of things. 

Mr. Sweeney is also the proprietor of the chief "hotel" of Dungloe; ourhost, Mr. Boyle, being in fact supposed to be "boycotted" forentertaining officers of the police. This "boycott, " however, hasentailed no practical inconvenience upon us; and Mr. Boyle's pretty andplucky daughters, who manage his house for him, laughed scornfully atthe notion of being "bothered" by it. 

After luncheon we took a car and drove out to Burtonport, on the Roadsof Arranmore, to visit the parish priest there, Father Walker, and Mr. Hammond, the agent of the Conyngham estates. 

We passed near a large inland lake, Lough Meela, and the seaward viewsalong the coast were very fine. With peace and order this corner ofIreland might easily become the chosen site of the most delightfulseaside homes in the United Kingdom. The Recorder of Cork has discoveredthis, and passes a great part of the year here. This Donegal coast is nofurther from the great centres of British wealth and population than areMount Desert and the other summer resorts of Maine and New Hampshirefrom New York and Philadelphia; and the islands which break the greatroll of the Atlantic here cannot well be more nearly in "a state ofnature" than were the Isles of Shoals, for example, in my college days, long after Mr. Lowell first wandered there with the transcendentalThaxters to celebrate the thunders of the surf at Appledore. 

The wonderful granitic formations we had seen on the way from Gweedorestretch all along the coast to the Roads of Arranmore. At Burtonportthey lie on the very water's edge. At a place called Lickeena, masses ofbeautiful salmon-and rose-coloured granite actually trend into thetidewater, and at Burtonport proper is a promontory of thatrichly-mottled granite which I had supposed to be the peculiar heritageof Peterhead, and which is now largely exported from Scotland to theUnited States. Why should not this Irish granite be shipped directlyfrom Donegal to America, there to be built up into cathedrals, andshaped into monuments for the Exiles of Erin? All these formations whichwe have seen present themselves in great cubical blocks, so jointed thatthey may be detached without blasting, with great comparative ease, andwith little of the waste which results from the squaring of shapelessmasses. At the same time, as we saw while coming from Gweedore, themany lakes of this region offer all the water-power necessary forpolishing-works, columnar lathes, and the general machinery used indeveloping such quarries. Without being an expert in granites, I haveseen enough of the granite works at home to feel quite sure that amoderate and judiciously managed investment here ought to return ahandsome result. If the National League is as well off as it is reputedto be, it might go into this business open a new and remunerativeindustry to the people of a "congested" district, and earn dividendslarge enough to enable it to pay the expenses of the war against Englandat Westminster, without drawing on the savings of the servant-girls inAmerica, The only person likely to suffer would be the "Gombeen man, " ifthe peasantry earned enough to pay off their debts to him, and stop theflow of interest into his coffers. 

At Burtonport we found the "Gombeen man, " of Dungloe, represented by avery large "store. " He runs steamers between this place and variousports on the Scottish and Irish coasts, bringing in goods and taking outthe crops which his debtors turn over to him. 

This Burtonport "store" towers high above the modest home of the parishpriest, Father Walker. To our great regret he was absent on parochialduty, but his niece very kindly welcomed us into his modest study, wherewe left a note begging him to honour us with his company at dinner inDungloe. 

Mr. Hammond, too, was absent, so after paying our respects to his wife, we drove back to Dungloe, and walked about the village till dark, chatting with the good-natured, civil people. The local sensation herethey tell us is not the trial of the priests at Dunfanaghy, but a "row"breeding between the chief of the Sweeneys and one of his brethren overthe possession of Her Majesty's Post-office. It seems there is anofficial regulation or custom that the post-office once established in aparticular building shall not be moved thence without positive causeshown. The head of the Sweeneys, having completed his new and grandestablishment, wishes to move the post-office thither; but the brotherto whom he confided the office in the older building, where he left itwhile making the change of his own business, now desires to keep theoffice where it is, and, I suppose, to become postmaster himself![17] Atrivial matter enough, but not without edification for students of theactual situation in this most curious country. 

About seven o'clock Father Walker made his appearance--a fine-looking, dignified, most amiable man. He is a teetotaller, which we esteemed astroke of good fortune, a bottle of port wine which we obtained, despitethe "boycott, " from the Gombeen shop, proving to be of such a qualitythat it might have been concocted in the last century, expressly todiscredit the Methuen treaty. 

Father Walker is the President of the National League branch. 

Like Father M'Fadden at Gweedore, he speaks of the landlords in thispart of Donegal as really owning, not so much farms as residentialgrounds for tenants who export their thews and sinews to Scotland andother countries, and live by that traffic mainly. It is a commonpractice here, he tells me, for the children, who are very sharp andbright, to be taken by their parents into Tyrone and other parts of theNorth, and put out to live with the people there, who prize them, andpay very good wages. I asked him if he thought the official estimate Ihad seen of the proportion of these "migratory labourers" to the wholepopulation of Ulster, as about one-tenth of one per cent. , anunder-statement. He thought it was an under-statement for this part ofthe county of Donegal, but to be explained, perhaps, by the fact that somuch of the migration is merely from one county into another, and notout of the kingdom. He agreed that the practice goes on upon a much moreextensive scale in the County Mayo, where more than thirteen per cent, of all the adult male population are said to belong to the category ofmigratory labourers. The Irish population of England seems to berecruited at regular seasons in this way, very much as is the Albanianpopulation of Constantinople. 

Father Walker was full of information about the granite quarries, andmuch interested in the prospect of their development. He told us that apractical engineer from Liverpool had, not long ago, been here seeking alease of the quarries--or, in other words, of the quarrying rights oversixty or seventy miles of Donegal--from the agent of Lord Conyngham. This engineer had come to Donegal on a sporting expedition last year, and gone back full of the capabilities of the granite region. FatherWalker had been told by him that similar quarries also exist in theCounty Mayo at Belmullet, where preparations are now making, he thinks, to develop them, though on a smaller scale than would be bothpracticable and desirable here. 

In Mayo, as in Donegal, labour must be plentiful enough, and thecomparatively unskilled labour required in such quarries would beparticularly abundant here. It would be a great thing, Father Walkerthought, to introduce here the custom of a regular pay-day, and with itgradually habits of exactness and economy, not easily developed withoutit. 

He gave me also, at my request, some valuable information as to thestipends of the Catholic clergy, and the sources from which they arederived. This subject has been agitated in the local press of this partof Ireland in connection with estimates of Father M'Fadden's income atGweedore, which Father M'Fadden declares, I believe, to be greatlyexaggerated. Father Walker has been parish priest at Burtonport forabout nine years. In all that time the highest sum reached in one yearby the stipend has been £560; this sum having to be divided between theparish priest, who received £280, and two curates receiving £140 each. The annual stipend, however, has more than once fallen below £480, andFather Walker thinks £520 a fair average, giving £260 to the parishpriest, and £130 each to his curates. Where there are only two priestsin a parish, as is the case, for example, in each of the parishes ofGweedore and Falcarragh, the parish priest receives two-thirds, and thecurate one-third of the stipend. 

The sources of this stipend are various, and in speaking upon this pointFather Walker desired me to note that he could only speak positively ofthe rules of this particular diocese, as they do not cover in theirentirety the usages of other provinces, or even of other dioceses inthis province of Ireland. One general and invariable rule indeed existsthroughout Ireland, which is that every parish priest is bound to offerthe Holy Sacrifice, _pro populo_, for the whole people, without fee orreward, on all Sundays and Holy Days, making in all some eighty-seventimes a year. 

In the diocese of Raphoe, to which Burtonport belongs, there are fourrecognised methods by which the revenues of the priests are raised. Thefirst is an annual fixed stipend of four shillings for each household orfamily. "Sometimes, " said Father Walker, "but rarely, the better-offfamilies give more than this; and not unfrequently the poorer familiesfail to give anything under this head. " The second is a fixed stipend ofone pound upon the occasion of a marriage. "Sometimes, but not often, this sum is exceeded by generous and prosperous parishioners. " The thirdis a standard stipend of two shillings for a baptism. "This alsosuffers, but on rare occasions, " said the good priest, "a favourableexception. I mention the exceptions as well as the rules, " said the goodFather, "in order to make grateful allusion to the donors. "

The fourth and last consists of the offerings at interments. "These varyvery much indeed, but they constitute an important, and, I may say, anecessary item in the incomes of the clergy. "

Besides these four forms of stipend, the priests derive a revenue from"those who ask them to offer the Holy Sacrifice 'for their specialintention. '" In such cases it is customary to offer a sum, usually oftwo shillings, but sometimes of half-a-crown, which is intended both asa remuneration for the priest, and to cover the cost of altarrequisites. 

Father Walker estimates the families in his own parish in round numbersat about thirteen hundred, and in Gweedore and Falcarragh at about ninehundred each. We had some conversation about the great fisheries, whichone would think ought to exist, but do not exist, on this coast, suchfishing as is done here by the natives being on a very limited scale. Father Walker tells me that formerly £80, 000 worth of herring were takenon this coast, though he is not sure that Donegal fishermen took them. But of late years he thinks the herring have deserted these waters. Headmits, however, that the people have no liking for the sea. "Going overonce, " he said, "to Arranmore from the mainland in a boat with a priestof the country, the water was a little rough, and the poor man nearlypinched a piece out of my arm holding on to me!" Father Walker himselfthought the trip across the "sound" to Tory Island rather a ticklishpiece of business. Yet the natives make it sometimes in their littlecorraghs or canvas boats, which would seem to show that some of themmust be capable of seamanship. Most of these islands, notablyArranmore, Father Walker thought quite incapable of supporting thepeople who dwell on them, without constant help from the mainland. Is itnot an open question whether an age which countenances the condemnationof private property in houses declared unfit for human habitation oughtto hesitate at dealing in the same spirit with nurseries of chronicpenury and intermittent famine? On one of these islands, known as ScullIsland, Father Walker tells me great quantities of human bones are foundin circular graves or trenches, very shallow, and going all around theisland. There are legends of great battles fought on the little island, and of pestilences, to account for these. But it is likely enough thatthe island was simply used as a cemetery by the dwellers on the shore atsome early date. Father Walker when he was last, there had brought awaysome of these relics. One he showed us, the beautifully formed jawboneof a young child, apparently ten or twelve years old, with exquisitepearly teeth. The chin was not in the least prognathous, but very wellformed. In this district of Dungloe, too, the women weave and knit aswell as at Gweedore; and Father Walker, before he left us for his home, after a most agreeable evening, promised to send me some specimens oftheir handiwork. He is sure that with a proper organisation thisindustry might be so developed as to materially relieve the people herefrom the pressure of their debts to the dealers of all kinds, a pressuremuch more severe than that of the rent. According to the dealersthemselves, no tenant really in debt to them can now expect to workhimself free of the burden under four or five years. It is obvious howmuch power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands ofthe dealers, and especially of the "Gombeen men. "

BARON'S COURT, _Wednesday, Feb. 8. _--Since last night I have travelledfrom one extreme to the other of Irish life--from the desolation of theRosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautifuldemesne of Baron's Court. We made an early start from Dungloe on acapital car for Letterkenny, where we were to strike the railway forStrabane and Newtown-Stewart. The morning was clear, but cold. Onleaving Dungloe we drove directly into a region of reclaimed land, whereimprovements of various kinds seemed to be going on. All this ourjarvey informed us, with a knowing look, belonged to Mr. Sweeney. 

"Was he a squire of this country?" I asked innocently. 

"A squire of this country, sorr? He is just Mr. Sweeney, the Gombeenman; he and his brothers, they all came here from where I don't know. "

An energetic man, certainly, Mr. Sweeney, and not likely, I shouldthink, to allow the National League, to push matters here to the pointof nationalising the land of Donegal, if he can prevent it. In thehighway we met, two or three miles out of Dungloe, a very trim daintylittle lady, in a long, well-fitting London waterproof ulster, with anatty little umbrella in her hand, walking merrily towards the town. Howweatherwise she was soon appeared, the rain coming up suddenly, andcoming down sharply, in the whirling way it has among the hillseverywhere. The scenery was desolate, but grand. Countless little lochsgive sparkle and life to it. Everywhere the granite. About Doocharry, aromantic little spot, where Lord Cloncurry has a fishing-box in theheart of a glorious landscape, masses crop out of a rich red granite, finer in colour than any we had previously seen. In that neighbourhoodthe wastes of Donegal take on an aspect which recalls, though upon quitea different key in colour, the inimitable beauty of those treelessNorth-western highlands of Scotland, upon which Nature has lavished allthe wealth of her palette. Vast spaces of brown and red and gold shimmeraway under the softly luminous mountain atmosphere to the dark blues andpurples of the hills. We passed Glen Veagh again, but from quite adifferent point of view, which gave us a beautiful picture of LoughVeagh in its length, and of the smiling pastoral landscape upon itsfurther shore. 

As we drew near the eastern boundary of Donegal, hedges and civilisedagriculture reappeared. With these we came upon mud cottages, such as Ihad not seen in Donegal, being the huts provided for their labourers bythe tenant-farmers, whose comfortable stone-houses and out-buildingsstood well back under the long ranges of the hills. 

We passed through much striking scenery, perhaps the finest point beinga magnificent Gap in the hills, guarded and defined by three colossalheadlands, one of them a vast long rampart, the other two giganticcounterscarps. The immediate approach to Letterkenny, too, from the westis charming, passing in full view of the extensive and beautiful parkand the large mansion of Colonel Stewart of the Guards, and skirting thewell-kept estate of Mr. Boyd, the owner of the ivy-clad cottages whichso took my fancy the other day. 

In the Ulster settlement under King James I. A patent for Letterkennywas issued to one of the Crawfords. Then, as the records tell us, "SirGeorge Marburie dwelt there, and there were forty houses all inhabitedby British tenants. A great market town, and standeth well for theKing's service. "

Again we found a fair going on--this time attended by swarms of peddlersvending old clothes and all sorts of small wares, bread-cartmen, andtea-vendors. These latter aver that it is easier to sell tea in the"congested" districts at 4s. 6d. Than at 2s. 6d. The people have no testof its quality but its price!

The town was gay with soldiers and police--whose advent had created sucha demand for bread and meat, a man told us, that all the butchers andbakers in Letterkenny and Dunfanaghy were at their wits' ends to meetit. "But they don't complain of that!" We reached Newtown-Stewart byrailway after dark. As we passed Sion the mills were all lighted up, giving it the look of an English or New England town. A New Englandsnow-storm, too, awaited us at our journey's end; and, after a wilddrive of several miles through the whirling white mists, it was adelectable thing to find ourselves welcomed in a hall full of light andwarmth and flowers by merry children and lively dogs, the guard ofhonour of the most gracious and charming of hostesses. 

BARON'S COURT, _Thursday, Feb. 9. _--Among a batch of letters receivedthis morning I find one from a most estimable and accomplished priest inthe West of Ireland, to whom I wrote from Dublin announcing my intentionof visiting the counties of Clare and Kerry. "I shall be very glad, " hesays, "to learn that no evil hath befallen you during your visit to thatsolitary plague-spot, where dwell the disgraceful and degraded'Moonlighters. ' Would not 'martial law, ' if applied to that particularspot, suffice to stamp out, these-insensate pests of society?" Thislanguage, strong, but not too strong in view of the hideous murder lastweek near Lixnaw of a farmer in the presence of his daughter for theatrocious crime of taking a farm "boycotted" by the National League, shows that the open alliance between this organisation and the criminalclasses in certain parts of Ireland is beginning (not a day too soon) toarouse the better order of priests in Ireland to the peril of playingwith edged tools. For my correspondent is not only a priest, but aNationalist. I have sent him in reply a letter received by me, alsoto-day, touching the conduct in connection with the Lixnaw murder of apriest, a curate, I think, comparatively new to the place, who, standing by the corpse of the murdered man, endeavoured, so my informantstates, to make his unfortunate daughter give up the names of themurderers, the effect of which would have been to put them on theirguard, and "under the protection of that public conspiracy of silence, which is the shield of all such criminals in these parts!" Baron's Courtis a very large, stately mansion, lacking elevation perhaps likeBlenheim, but imposing by its mass and the area it covers. It wasrebuilt almost entirely by the late Duke of Abercorn, who also madeimmense plantations here which cover the country for miles around. Hisgrandfather, the handsome Marquis of the days of the Prince Regent, came here a great deal towards the end of his life, but did littletowards making the mansion worthy of its site. Two very good portraitsof him here show that he deserved his reputation as the finest-lookingman of his day, a reputation attested by a diamond ring, the history ofwhich is still preserved in the family. A fine though irregular pearlgiven by Philip of Spain to his hapless spouse, Mary Tudor, is anotherof the heirlooms of Baron's Court; but the ring and the note left byMary Stuart to Claud Hamilton, Lord Paisley, mysteriously disappearedduring the long minority of the late Duke under the trusteeship of thefourth Earl of Aberdeen, and have since, it is said, come into thepossession of the Duke of Hamilton. 

Of the three castles given to Lord Claud Hamilton by James I. , to enablehim to hold this country, one which stood at Strabaue has disappeared, the memory of it surviving only in the name of Castle Street in thattown. The ivy-clad ruins of another adorn a height in this beautifulpark. They are "bosomed high in tufted trees, " and overlook one of threemost lovely lakes, stretching in a shining chain through the length ofthe demesne. 

Another ruined tower of the time of King John stands on an island inone of these lakes. When the Ulster settlement was made, these landswith all the countryside were held by the O'Kanes. With the other Celticand Catholic inhabitants, they were driven by the masterful invadersinto the mountains and bogs. There still remain their descendants, stillCeltic and still Catholic, and still dreaming of the day when they shalldescend into the low country and drive the Protestant Scotch and Englishfrom the "fat lands" which they occupy. In this way the racial andreligious animosities are kept alive, which have died out in Tipperaryand Waterford, for example, where the Cromwellian English have becomemore Irish and often more Catholic than the Irish themselves. 

I took a long drive and walk with Lord Ernest this afternoon through thepark, which rivals Curraghmore in extent. It is nowhere divided from thelands of the adjoining tenants, and with great liberality is thrown opento the people, not only of Newtown-Stewart and Strabane, but of all thecountry. Parties, sometimes of seven hundred people, from Belfast comedown to pass the day in these sylvan solitudes, and it is to be recordedto the praise of Ireland that these visitors always behave with perfectgood sense and good feeling. 

The "terrible trippers" of the English midlands, as I once heard an oldverger in a northern Cathedral call them, who chip off relics frommonuments, pull up flowers by the roots, and scatter sandwich papers andempty gingerbeer bottles broadcast over well-rolled lawns, are notknown, Lord Ernest tells me, in this island. As he neatly puts it, theIrishman, no matter what his station in life may be, or how great ablackguard he may really be, always instinctively knows when he ought tobehave like a gentleman, and knows how to do so. In the lakes werehundreds of wild fowl. The sky was a sky of Constable--silvery-whiteclouds, floating athwart a dome of clear Italian blue. The soil heremust be extraordinarily fertile. The woods and groves are dense beyondbelief. Cut down what you like, the growth soon overtakes you, as lushalmost as in the tropics. 

There was a great cyclone here a year or two ago, which prostrated in anight over a hundred thousand trees. You see the dentated gaps left bythis disaster in the great circle of firs and birches on the surroundinghills, but they make hardly a serious break in the thoroughly sylvancharacter of the landscape. We visited the centre of the devastation, where I found myself in what seemed to be a backwoods clearing inAmerica. An enterprising Scot, Kirkpatrick by name, has taken a contractunder the Duke, built himself a neat wooden cabin and stables, set up asmall saw-mill driven by steam, and is hard at work turning the fallentrees into timber, and making a very good thing of it, both for the Dukeand for himself. He has one or two of his own people with him, butemploys the labour of the country, and has no fear of disturbance. Hethinks, however, that he must get "a good wicked dog" to frighten awaythe tramps, who sometimes stray into his woodland, and put theenterprise in peril by smoking and drowsing under haystacks. 

Near this clearing is a model village, the houses scrupulously neat, with trees and flowers, and here we met the Duchess with her devoted dogwalking briskly along to visit one of her people, a wonderful old man, bearing the ancient name of the O'Kanes, and five years older than theKaiser William. Until six months ago this veteran was an activecarpenter, coming and going, about his work at ninety-six like a man inmiddle age. Then he went to bed with a bad cold, and will probablynever rise again. In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, andwhen they are now offered him rejects them angrily. He has lived, andpreferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes andporridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a gloriousexample to the vegetarians. As in so many other cases, his memory ofrecent events is dim and clouded--of events long past, clear andphotographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenseswhich now take, dimmed and fractured. 

He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of therecruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, andcan give the names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads longsince crumbled into dust around Mont St. Jean. With the curiousunconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrantinto the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were forDublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him. 

"Ye'll be going soon!"

"Oh yes, I shan't trouble ye more than an hour or two more. "

In quite another part of the domain we came upon a Covenanter--a true, authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of _Old Mortality_; thename of him, Keyes. He greeted Lord Ernest cheerily enough, nodded to mein a not unfriendly way, and at once broke into exhortation: "It's avery short life we live; man that is born of woman is of few days, andfull of trouble. Well for them that are the children of light--if seeingthe light they sin not against it"; and so on with amazing volubility. 

There are eighty-five of these Covenanters here. They touch not nor havetouched the accursed thing. To them all parties and all governments arealike evil. The Whigs persecuted the Solemn League and Covenant--so didthe Tories. Nationalists and Unionists are to them alike abominable, sold under sin. Withal they are shrewd, canny, successful farmers--and, as I inferred from sundry incidents, before Lord Ernest confided thefact to me, not averse from a "right gude williewaught" now and then. 

Mr. Keyes, I thought, was not a blue-ribbon man, nor a ribbon-man of anykind. 

The Duchess told me afterwards she had vainly endeavoured more than onceto get these people to vote at elections. 

We had a sprinkling of such people, and very good people in quiet timesthey were, in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, to whomFederals and Confederates were alike anathema. 

We wound up our drive to-day just beyond "the Duke's seat, " a littlerustic bench put up by the late Duke on a hill range which commands amagnificent view over the whole domain of hill and forest and lakes, andfar away to the mountains of Munterlony. There, in the bogs and woodsJames Hamilton, "lord baron of Strabane, " with "other rebels, unknown, in his company, " hid himself till, after the fall of Charlemont inAugust 1650, he was captured by a party of the Commonwealth'smen--whereby, as the record here runs, "all and singular his manors, towns, lands, and so forth were forfeited to the Commonwealth ofEngland. " Under this pressure he sought "protection, " and got it afortnight later from Cromwell's General, Sir Charles Coote, whosedescendants still nourish in Wicklow. But on the 31st of December 1650he "broke the said protection, and joined himself with Sir PhelimO'Neill, being then in rebellion. "

Troublous times those, and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost thealacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! Itis a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he foundrest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant. " Aswe came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented to the present Duke bythe Corporation of Waterford, as having belonged to the French 28-gunfrigate, on which in 1689 James II. And Lord Abercorn sailed away fromIreland for Prance. I believe that because of its weight the presentFirst Lord of the Admiralty avers that it is no anchor at all, but abuoy fixture. It might have been ten times as heavy, and yet not haveavailed to keep James from getting to sea at that particular time. 

BARON'S COURT, _Friday, Feb. 10. _--Here also, in County Tyrone, theIrish women show their skill in women's work. Mrs. Dixon, the Englishwife of the house-steward of Baron's Court, has charge of a woollenindustry founded here, after a discourse on thrift, delivered at atemperance meeting of the people by the then Marquis of Hamilton, hadstirred the country up to consider whether the peasant women might notpossibly find some better and more profitable way of passing theirwinter evenings than in sitting huddled around a peat fire with theirelbows on their knees, gossiping about their neighbours. Lord Hamiltoncited the women of Gweedore as proofs that such a way might by searchingbe found. 

The Duke and Duchess found the funds, the stewardess invested them inbuying the necessary yarn and knitting-needles, and the Marchioness ofHamilton acted as corresponding clerk and business agent of the newindustry. The clothing department of the British army lent a listeningear to the business proposals made to it, and the work began. From thattime on it has been the main substantial resource against suffering andstarvation of the families of some three hundred labourers in the hillcountry near Baron's Court. 

These labourers work for the small farmers from April to November; andbetween the autumn and the spring their wives and daughters knit, and bythe Baron's Court machinery are enabled to dispose of, nearly twentythousand pairs of woollen socks. The yarns are brought from Edinburgh tothe store-house at Baron's Court. Thither every Wednesday come theknitters. Mrs. Dixon weighs the hanks of yarn, and gives them out. 

On the following Wednesday the knitters reappear, each with her bale ofstockings or socks. These are again weighed, and the knitters receivetheir pay according to the weight, quality, and size of the goods. Insome families there are four, five, or six knitters. All these people, with four or five exceptions, are small cottars living on wretchedlittle mountain farms, not on the Duke of Abercorn's property; and butfor this industry they would be absolutely without employment all thewinter through. 

Some of them come from a distance of twelve or fourteen miles, and butfor this resource would literally starve. They are nearly all of themCatholics, and the Protestants here being Unionists, they are probablyNationalists. About three hundred knitters in all are employed. In theyear 1886-87 the orders given for Baron's Court work enabled Mrs. Dixonto pay out regularly about five pounds a week, not including casualprivate orders. For the current year the orders have been much larger, and the expenditure proportionally greater. Mrs. Dixon's storehouse wasfull of goods to-day. The long knickerbocker stockings which she showedus were remarkably good, some in "cross-gartered" patterns, handsomer, I thought, than similar goods in the Scottish Highlands--and all of themstaunch and well-proportioned. 

For socks such as are supplied to the volunteers and the troops the WarOffice pays 8-3/4d. A pair. 

It was pleasant to learn from Mrs. Dixon that these people thoroughlyappreciate the spirit which prompted and still directs this enterprise. Last spring when the Duchess was thought for a time to be hopelesslyill, a young girl came down to Baron's Court weeping bitterly. On herarm was a basket, in which were two young chanticleers crowing lustily. The poor girl said these were all she had, and she had brought them "tomake soup for the Duchess, for she heard that was what the great peoplelived on, and it might save her life. "

This afternoon I went over by the railway to Derry with Lord Ernest toattend a meeting there. The "Maiden City" stands picturesquely on theFoyle, and has a fine, though not large, cathedral of St. Colomb, restored only last year, of which it may be noted that the work neverwas undertaken while the Protestant Church of Ireland was established bylaw, and has been successfully carried out since the disendowment ofthat Church. The streets were white with snow, but the meeting in theold Town Hall was largely attended. It was, in fact, a sort of Orangesymposium--tea being served at long tables, and the platform decoratedwith a pianoforte. The Mayor of the city presided, and between thespeeches, songs, mostly in the Pyramus or condoling vein, were sung by alocal tenor of renown. It was very like an American tea-fight in thecountry, and the audience were unquestionably enthusiastic. They quitecheered themselves hoarse when Lord Ernest Hamilton reminded them thathe had made his first political speech in that hall on a "memorableoccasion, " when, being an as yet unfledged Parliamentarian, he had takena hand in a successful attempt to prevent the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Dawson, from making a speech in Derry. One of my neighbours, a merchantin the city, told me that a project is afoot for tearing down the oldhall in which we met "to enlarge the street, " but he added that "thepeople of Derry were too proud of their history to allow it!"

I understood him to say it is one of the very few buildings in Derrywhich witnessed the famous siege, and the breaking of the boom. 

We left the "revel" early, caught a fast train to Newtown-Stewart, andreturned here an hour ago through a driving snowstorm, most dramaticallyarranged to enhance the glow and genial charm of our welcome. 

BARON'S COURT, _Saturday, Feb. 11th. _--All the world was white with snowthis morning. Alas! for the deluded birds we have been listening to fordays past; thrushes, larks, and as, I believe, blackbirds, though thereis a tradition in these parts that no man ever heard the blackbird singbefore the 15th of February. I suspect it grew out of the date of St. Valentine's Day. We had some lovely music, however, within doors thismorning; and, in spite of the snow and the chill wind, a little fairy ofa girl, with her groom, went off like mad across country on her pony, "Guinea Pig, " to fetch the mails from Newtown-Stewart. 

Not long after breakfast came in from Letterkenny Sergeant Mahony of theconstabulary, on whose testimony Father M'Fadden was convicted. We hadheard at Letterkenny that he was now on leave at Belfast, and LordErnest had kindly arranged matters so that he should come here andtell us his story of Gweedore. 

An admirable specimen he is of a most admirable body of men. He is asthoroughly Celtic in aspect as he is by name--a dark Celt, with a quietresolute face, and a wiry well-built frame. 

Nothing could be better than his manner and bearing, at once respectfuland self-respectful: that manner of a natural gentleman one so oftensees in the Irish peasant. He is a devout Catholic, but no admirer ofFather M'Fadden. 

As to his evidence, he explains very clearly that he was not sent toreport Father M'Fadden's speech at all, but to note and take down andreport language used in the speech of a sort to excite the peopleagainst the law. He was selected for this duty for three reasons: he isa Donegal man who has lived at Gweedore for sixteen years; he is a fairstenographer; and he speaks Irish, in which language Father M'Faddenmade his speech. 

"I speak Irish quite as well as he does, " said the Sergeant quietly, "and he knows I do. What I did was to put down in English words what Iheard said in Irish. This I had to do because I have no stenographicsigns for the Irish words. " He tells me he taught himself stenography. 

"As for Father M'Fadden, " he said, "he told the people that' he was thelaw in Gweedore, and they should heed no other. ' He spoke the truth, too, for he makes himself the law in Gweedore. He dislikes me because Iam a living proof that he is not the only law in Gweedore!" Of thebusiness shrewdness and ability of Father M'Fadden, Sergeant Mahonyexpressed a very high opinion, though hardly in terms which would havegratified such an ecclesiastic as the late Cardinal Barnabo. PossiblyCardinal Cullen might have relished them no better. "Certainly he hasthe finest house in Gweedore, sir, and what's more he made it the finesthimself. "

"Do you mean that he built it?"

"He did, indeed; and did you not notice the beautiful stone fences he isputting up all about it, and the four farms he has?"

"Then he is certainly a man of substance?"

"And of good substance, sir! The Government, they gave him a hundredpounds towards the house. But it was the flood that was the blessedthing for him and made a great man of him!"

"The flood?" I asked, with some natural astonishment; "the flood? Whatflood?"

"And did you never hear of the great flood of Gweedore? It was inAugust 1880. You will mind the water that comes down behind the chapel?Well, there was a flood, and it swelled, and it swelled, and it burstthe small pipe there behind the chapel: too small it was entirely forcarrying off' the great water, and nobody took notice of it, or thatthere was anything wrong, and so the water was piled up behind thechapel, and at Mass on the Sunday, while the chapel was full, the wallsgave way, and the water rushed in, and was nine feet deep. There werefive people that couldn't get out in time, and were drowned--two oldpeople and three children, young people. It was a great flood. AndFather M'Fadden wrote about it--oh, he is a clever priest with thepen--and they made a great subscription in London for the poor peopleand the chapel. I can't rightly say how much, but it was in the papers, a matter of seven hundred pounds, I have heard say. And it was all sentto Father M'Fadden. "

"And it was spent, of course, " I said, "on the repairs of the chapel, orgiven to the relatives of the poor people who were drowned. "

"Oh, no doubt; very likely it was, sir! But the repairs of thechapel--there isn't a mason in Donegal but will tell you a hundredpounds would not be wanted to make the chapel as good as it ever was. And for the people that were drowned--two of them were old people, as Isaid to you, sir, that had no kith or kin to be relieved, and for theothers they were of well-to-do people that would not wish to takeanything from the parish. "

"What was done with it, then?"

"Oh! that I can't tell ye. It was spent for the people some way. Youmust ask Father M'Fadden. He is the fund in Gweedore, just as he is thelaw in Gweedore. Oh! they came from all parts to see the great ruin ofthe flood at Gweedore. They did, indeed. And some of them, it was poorsight they had; they couldn't see the big rift in the walls, when FatherM'Fadden pointed it out to them. 'Whisht! there it is!' he would say, pointing with his finger. Then they saw it!"

I asked him at what figure he put the income of Father M'Fadden from hisparish. Without a moment's hesitation he answered, "It's over a thousandpounds a year, sir, and nearer twelve hundred than eleven. " I expressedmy surprise at this, the whole rental of Captain Hill, the landlord, falling, as I had understood, below rather than above £700 a year; andGweedore, as Father Walker had told me, containing fewer houses thanBurtonport. 

"Fewer houses, mayhap, " said the sergeant, "though I'm not sure of that;but if fewer they pay more. There's but one curate--poor man, he doesall the parish work, barring the high masses, and a good man he is, buthe gets £400 a year, and that is but a third of the income!"

I asked by what special stipends the priest's income at Gweedore couldbe thus enhanced. "Oh, it's mainly the funeral-money that helps it up, "he replied. "You see, sir, since Father M'Fadden came to Gweedore it'scome to be the fashion. "

"The fashion?" I said. 

"Yes, sir, the fashion. This is the way it is, you see. When a poorcreature comes to be buried--no matter who it is, a pauper, or a tenant, or any one--the people all go to the chapel; and every man he walks upand lays his offering for the priest on the coffin; and the others, theywatch him. And, you see, if a man that thinks a good deal of himselfwalks up and puts down five shillings, why, another man that thinks lessof him, and more of himself, he'll go up and make it a gold ten-shillingpiece, or perhaps even a sovereign! I've known Father M'Fadden, sir, totake in as much as £15 in a week in that way. "

Sergeant Mahony told us a curious tale, too, of the way in which FatherM'Fadden dealt with the people of the neighbouring parish of Falcarragh. He would go down to the parish boundary, if he wanted to address thepeople of Falcarragh, and stand over the line, with one foot in eachparish!

At our request Sergeant Mahony made some remarks in Irish; very wooingand winning they were in sound. Before he left Baron's Court he promisedto make out and send me a schedule of the parochial income at Gweedore, under the separate heads of the sources whence it is derived. 

Obviously Sergeant Mahony would make a good "devil's advocate" at thecanonization of Father M'Fadden. But, all allowances made for this, onething would seem to be tolerably clear. Of the three personages who taketribute of the people of Gweedore, the law intervenes in their behalfwith only one--the landlord. The priest and the "Gombeen man" deal withthem on the old principle of "freedom of contract. " But it is by nomeans so clear which of the three exacts and receives the greatesttribute. 

We leave Baron's Court in an hour for Dublin, whence I go on aloneto-night into Queen's County. 

CHAPTER IV. 

ABBEYLEIX, _Sunday, Feb. 12. _--Newtown-Stewart, through which I droveyesterday afternoon with Lord Ernest to the train, is a prettilysituated town, with the ruins of a castle in which James II. Slept for anight on his flight to France. He was cordially received, and by way ofshowing his satisfaction left the little town in flames when hedeparted. Here appears to be a case, not of rack-renting, but ofabsenteeism. The town belongs to a landlord who lives in Paris, andrarely, if ever, comes here. There are no improvements--nosanitation--but the inhabitants make no complaint. "Absenteeism" has itscompensations as well as its disadvantages. They pay low rents, and arelittle troubled; the landlord drawing, perhaps, £400 a year from thewhole place. The houses are small, though neat enough in appearance, butthe town has a sleepy, inert look. On the railway between Dundalk andNewry, we passed a spot known by the ominous name of "The Hill of theSeven Murders, " seven agents having been murdered there since 1840! Isuppose this must be set down to the force of habit. At Newry a cavalryofficer whom Lord Ernest knew got into our carriage. He was full ofhunting, and mentioned a place to which he was going as a "very finecountry. "

"From the point of view of the picturesque?" I asked. 

"Oh no! from the point of view of falling off your horse!"

At Maple's Hotel I found a most hospitable telegram, insisting that Ishould give up my intention of spending the night at Maryborough, andcome on to this lovely place in my host's carriage, which would be sentto meet me at that station. I left Kingsbridge Station in Dublin about 7P. M. We had rather a long train, and I observed a number of peopletalking together about one of the carriages before we started; but therewas no crowd at all, and nothing to attract special attention. As wemoved out of the station, some lads at the end of the platform set up acheer. We ran on quietly till we reached Kildare. There quite agathering awaited our arrival on the platform, and as we slowed up, acry went up from among them of, "Hurrah for Mooney! hurrah for Mooney!"The train stopped just as this cry swelled most loudly, when to mysurprise a tall man in the gathering caught one or two of the people bythe shoulder, shaking them, and called out loudly, "Hurrah forGilhooly--you fools, hurrah for Gilhooly!"

This morning I learned that I had the honour, unwittingly, of travellingfrom Dublin to Maryborough with Mr. Gilhooly, M. P. , who appears to havebeen arrested in London on Friday, brought over yesterday by the daytrain, and sent on at once from Dublin to his destined dungeon. 

An hour's drive through a rolling country, showing white and weird underits blanket of snow in the night, brought us to this large, rambling, delightful house, the residence of Viscount de Vesci. Mr. Gladstone camehere from Lord Meath's on his one visit to Ireland some years ago. Ifind the house full of agreeable and interesting people; and the chillof the drive soon vanished under the genial influences of a lightsupper, and of pleasant chat in the smoking-room. A good story was toldthere, by the way, of Archbishop Walsh, who being rather indiscreetlyimportuned to put his autograph on a fan of a certain Conservative ladywell known in London, and not a little addicted to lion-hunting, peremptorily refused, saying, "no, nor any of the likes of her!" Andanother of Father Nolan, a well-known priest, who died at the age ofninety-seven. When someone remonstrated with him on his association withan avowed unbeliever in Christianity, like Mr. Morley, Father Nolanreplied, "Oh, faith will come with time!" The same excellent priest, when he came to call on Mr. Gladstone, here at Abbeyleix, on his arrivalfrom the Earl of Meath's, pathetically and patriarchally adjured him, onhis next visit to Ireland, "not to go from one lord's house to another, but to stay with the people. " This was better than the Irish journalwhich, finding itself obliged to chronicle the fact that Mr. Gladstone, with his wife and daughter, was visiting Abbeyleix, gracefully observedthat he "had been entrapped into going there!" Some one lamenting thelack of Irish humour and spirit in the present Nationalist movement, ascompared with the earlier movements, Lord de Vesci cited as a solitarybut refreshing instance of it, the incident which occurred the other dayat an eviction in Kerry, [18] of a patriotic priest who chained himselfto a door, and put it across the entrance of the cabin to keep out thebailiffs!

It is discouraging to know that this delightful act was bitterlydenounced by some worthy and well-meaning Tory in Parliament as an"outrage"!

Despite the snow the air this morning, in this beautiful region, is softand almost warm, and all the birds are singing again. The park bordersupon and opens into the pretty town of Abbeyleix, the broad andpicturesque main thoroughfare of which, rather a rural road than astreet, is adorned with a fountain and cross, erected in memory of thelate Lord de Vesci. There is a good Catholic chapel here (the ancientabbey which gave the place its name stood in the grounds of the presentmansion), and a very handsome Protestant Church. 

It is a curious fact that two of the men implicated in the Phoenix Parkmurders had been employed, one, I believe, as a mason, and one as acarver, in the construction of this church. Both the chapel and thechurch to-day were well attended. I am told there has been little realtrouble here, nor has the Plan of Campaign been adopted here. SometimesLord de Vesci finds threatening images of coffins and guns scratched inthe soil, with portraits indicating his agent or himself; but these meanlittle or nothing. Lady de Vesci, who loves her Irish home, and has doneand is doing a good deal for the people here, tells me, as an amusingillustration of the sort of terrorism formerly established by the localorganisations, that when she met two of the labourers on the placetogether, they used to pretend to be very busy and not to see her. Butif she met one alone, he greeted her just as respectfully as ever. 

The women here do a great deal of embroidery and lace work, in which sheencourages them, but this industry has suffered what can only be atemporary check, from the change of fashion in regard to the wearing oflaces. Why the loveliest of all fabrics made for the adornment of womenshould ever go "out of fashion" would be amazing if anything in thevagaries of that occult and omnipotent influence could be. The Irishladies ought to circulate Madame de Piavigny's exquisite _Limed'Heures_, with its incomparable illustrations by Carot and Meaulle, drawn from the lace work of all ages and countries, as a tonic againstdespair in respect to this industry. In one of the large rooms of herown house, Lady de Vesci has established and superintends a school ofcarving for the children of poor tenants. It has proved a school ofcivilisation also. The lads show a remarkable aptitude for the arts ofdesign, and of their own accord make themselves neat and trim as soon asthey begin to understand what it is they are doing. They are always busyat home with their drawings and their blocks, and some of them arealready beginning to earn money by their work. 

What I have seen at Adare Manor near Limerick, where the late Earl ofDunraven educated all the workmen employed on that mansion asstone-cutters and carvers, suffices to show that the people of thiscountry have not lost the aptitudes of which we see so many proofs inthe relics of early Irish art. 

Among the guests in the house is a distinguished officer, ColonelTalbot, who saw hard service in Egypt, and in the advance on Khartoum, with camels across the desert--a marvellous piece of military work. Ifind that he was in America in 1864-65, with Meade and Hunt and Grantbefore Petersburg, being in fact the only foreign officer then present. He there formed what seem to me very sound and just views as to theability of the Federal commanders in that closing campaign of the CivilWar, and spoke of Hunt particularly with much admiration. Of GeneralGrant he told me a story so illustrative of the simplicity and modestywhich were a keynote in his character that I must note it. The daybefore the evacuation of Petersburg by the Con federates, Grant wasurged to order an attack upon the Confederate positions. He refused todo so. The next day the Confederates were seen hastily abandoning them. Grant watched them quietly for a while, and then putting down his glass, said to one of the officers who had urged the assault, "You were right, and I was wrong. I ought to have attacked them. "

It is provoking to know that the notes taken by this British officer atthat time, being sent through the Post Office by him some years ago toEdinburgh for publication, were lost in the transmission, and have neverbeen recovered. Curiously enough, however, he thinks he has now and thendiscerned indications in articles upon the American War, published in anewspaper which he named, going to show that his manuscripts are inexistence somewhere. 

ABBEYLEIX, _Monday, Feb. 13. _--To-day, in company with Lord de Vesciand a lady, I went over to Kilkenny. We left and arrived in a snowstorm, but the trip was most interesting. Kilkenny, chiefly known in America, Ifear, as the city of the cats, is a very picturesque place, thanks toits turrets and towers. It has two cathedrals, a Bound Tower (one ofthese in Dublin was demolished in the last century!), a Town Hall with abelfry, and looming square and high above the town, the Norman keep ofits castle. The snow enlivened rather than diminished the scenic effectof the place. Bits of old architecture here and there give character tothe otherwise commonplace streets. Notable on the way to the castle is abit of mediaeval wall with Gothic windows, and fretted with thescutcheon in stone of the O'Sheas. The connection of a gentleman of thisfamily with the secret as well as the public story of the Parnellitemovement may one day make what Horace Greeley used to call "mightyinterestin' reading. " A dealer in spirits now occupies what is left ofthe old Parliament House of Kilkenny, in which the rival partisans ofPreston and O'Neill outfought the legendary cats, to the final ruin ofthe cause of the Irish confederates, and the despair of the loyallegate of Pope Innocent. 

Of Kilkenny Castle, founded by Strongbow, but two or three towersremain. The great quadrangle was rebuilt in 1825, and much of it againso late as in 1860. There is little, therefore, to recall the image ofthe great Marquis who, if Rinuccini read him aright, played soresolutely here two centuries and a half ago for the stakes which EdwardBruce won and lost at Dundalk. The castle of the Butlers is now really agreat modern house. 

The town crowds too closely upon it, but the position is superb. Thecastle windows look clown upon the Nore, spanned by a narrow ancientbridge, and command, not only all that is worth seeing in the town, buta wide and glorious prospect over a region which is even now beautiful, and in summer must be charming. 

Over the ancient bridge the enterprise of a modern brewer last weekbrought a huge iron vat, so menacingly ponderous that the authoritiesmade him insure the bridge for a day. 

Within the castle, near the main entrance, are displayed sometapestries, which are hardly shown to due advantage in that position. They were made here at Kilkenny in a factory established by PiersButler, Earl of Ormonde, in the sixteenth century, and they ought to besent to the Irish Exhibition of this year in London, as proving whatIrish art and industry well directed could then achieve. They areequally bold in design and rich in colour. The blues are especiallyfine. 

The grand gallery of the castle, the finest in the kingdom, though atrifle narrow for its length, is hung with pictures and familyportraits. One of the most interesting of these is a portrait of theblack Earl of Ormon'de, a handsome swarthy man, evidently careful of hisperson, who was led by that political flirt, Queen Elizabeth, to believethat she meant to make him a visit in Ireland, and, perhaps, to honourhim with her hand. He went to great expenses thereupon. At a parley withhis kinsman, the Irish chieftain O'Moore of Abbeyleix, this black earlwas traitorously captured, and an ancient drawing representing thisevent hangs beneath his portrait. 

The muniment room, where, thanks to Lord Ormonde's courtesy, we foundeverything prepared to receive us, is a large, airy, and fire-proofchamber, with well-arranged shelves and tables for consulting therecords. These go back to the early Norrnan days, long before EdwardIII. Made James Butler Earl of Ormonde, upon his marriage with Alianoreof England, granddaughter of Edward I. The Butlers came into Irelandwith Henry II. , and John gave them estates, the charters of some ofwhich, with the seals annexed, are here preserved. There are finespecimens of the great seals also of Henry III. , and of his sons EdwardI. And Edmund Crouchback, and of the Tudor sovereigns, as well as manyprivate seals of great interest. The wax of the early seals wasobviously stronger and better than the wax since used. Of Elizabeth, whocame of the Butler blood through her mother, one large seal in yellowwax, attached to a charter dated Oct. 24, 1565, is remarkable for thebeauty of the die. The Queen sits on the obverse under a canopy; on thereverse she rides in state on a pacing steed as in her effigy at theTower of London. The seals of James I. Follow the design of this die. Two of these are particularly fine. At the Restoration somethingdisappears of the old stateliness. A seal of Charles II. , of 1660, verylarge and florid in style, shows the monarch sitting very much at hisease, with one knee thrown negligently over the other. Many of theprivate letters and papers of the seventeenth and early eighteenthcenturies, during which Kilkenny, as it had been often before, was agreat centre of Irish politics and intrigues, have been bound up involumes, and the collection has been freely drawn upon by historians. But it would obviously bear and reward a more thorough co-ordination andexamination than it has ever yet received. 

There is a curious Table Book here preserved of Charles I. While atOxford in 1644, from which it appears that while the colleges weremelting up their plate for the King, his Majesty fared better than mighthave been expected. His table was served with sixty pounds of mutton aday; and he wound up his dinner regularly with "sparaguss" so long as itlasted, and after it went out with artichokes. 

An Expense Book, too, of the great Marquis, after he became the firstDuke of Ormonde, Colonel Blood's Duke, kept at Kilkenny in 1668 throwssome interesting light on the cost of living and the customs of greathouses at that time. The Duke, who was in some respects the greatestpersonage in the realm, kept up his state here at a weekly cost ofabout £50, a good deal less--allowing for the fall in the power of thepound sterling--than it would now cost him to live at a fashionableLondon hotel. He paid £9, 10s. A week for the keep of nineteen horses, 18 shillings board wages for three laundry-maids, and £1, 17s. 4d. Forseven dozen of tallow-candles. The wines served at the ducal table wereBurgundy, Bordeaux, "Shampane, " Canary, "Renish, " and Portaport, thelast named at a shilling a bottle, while he paid no more than £3, 18s. For six dozen bottles of Bordeaux, and £1, 1s. For a dozen and a half of"Shampane. " This of course was not the sparkling beverage which in ourtimes is the only contribution of Champagne to the wine markets of theworld, for the _Ay Mousseux_ first appears in history at the beginningof the eighteenth century. It was the red wine of Champagne, which solong contested the palm with the vintages of Burgundy. St. Evremond, whowith the Comte d'Olonne and the great _gourmets_ of the seventeenthcentury thought Champagne the best, as the Faculty of Paris alsopronounced it the most wholesome of wines, doubtless introduced his ownreligion on the subject into England--but the entry in the Duke'sExpense Book of 1668 is an interesting proof that the duel of thevintages was even then going as it finally went in favour of Burgundy. While the Duke got his Champagne for 1s. 2d. A bottle, he had to paytwenty shillings a dozen, or 1s. 8d. A bottle, for five dozen ofBurgundy. He got his wines from Dublin, which then, as long before, wasthe most noted wine mart of Britain. The English princes drew their bestsupplies thence in the time of Richard II. 

From the castle we drove through the snow to the Cathedral of St. Canice, a grand and simple Norman edifice of the twelfth century, nowthe Church of the Protestant bishop. An ancient Round Tower of muchearlier date stands beside it like a campanile, nearly a hundred feet inheight. 

There is a legend that Rinuccini wanted to buy and carry away one of thegreat windows of this Cathedral, in which mass was celebrated while hewas here. The Cathedral contains some interesting monuments of theButlers, and there are many curiously channelled burial slabs in thefloor, like some still preserved in the ruins of Abbeyleix. Lord deVesci pointed out to me several tombs of families of English origin oncepowerful here, but now sunk into the farmer class. On one of these Ithink it was that we saw a remarkably well-preserved effigy of a lady, wearing a plaited cap under a "Waterford cloak"--one of the neatestvarieties of the Irish women's cloak--garment so picturesque at once, and so well adapted to the climate, that I am not surprised to learnfrom Lady de Vesci that it is very fast going out of fashion. Thismorning before we left Abbeyleix she showed us two such cloaks, typesfrom two different provinces, each in its way admirable. Put on and wornabout the room by two singularly stately and graceful ladies, they fellinto lines and folds which recalled the most exquisitely beautifulstatuettes of Tanagra; and all allowance made for the glamour lent themby these two "daughters of the gods, divinely tall, " it was impossiblenot to see that no woman could possibly look commonplace andinsignificant in such a garment. Yet Lady de Vesci says that more thanonce she has known peasant women, to whom such cloaks had beenpresented, cut off the characteristic and useful hood, and trim themangled robe with tawdry lace. So it is all over the world! Women whoare models for an artist when they wear some garment indigenous to theircountry and appropriate to its conditions, prefer to make guys ofthemselves in grotesque travesties of the latest "styles" from Londonand Paris and Dublin!

Kilkenny boasts that its streets are paved with marble. It is in factlimestone, but none the worse for that. The snow did not improve them. So without going on a pilgrimage to the Kilkenny College, at whichSwift, Congreve, and Farquhar, --an odd concatenation ofcelebrities--were more or less educated, we made our way to the ImperialHotel for luncheon. The waiter was a delightful Celt. Upon my asking himwhether the house could furnish anything distantly resembling good Irishwhisky, he produced a bottle of alleged Scotch whisky, which he put uponthe table with a decisive air, exclaiming, "And this, yer honour, is themost excellent whisky in the whole world, or I'm not an Irishman!"

Urged by the cold we tempered it with hot water and tasted it. It shutus up at once to believe the waiter a Calmuck or a Portuguese--anything, in short, but an Irishman. It is an extraordinary fact that, so far, thewhisky I have found at Irish hotels has been uniformly quite execrable. I am almost tempted to think that the priests sequestrate all the goodwhisky in order to discourage the public abuse of it, for the "wine ofthe country" which they offer one is as uniformly excellent. 

Kilkenny ought to be and long was a prosperous town. In 1702, the secondDuke of Ormonde made grants (at almost nominal ground-rents) of theground upon which a large portion of the city of Kilkenny was thenstanding, or upon which houses have since been built. 

These grants have passed from hand to hand, and form the "root of title"of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is thecentre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to anancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water withoutmud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniablydeclining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and theparcel-post diminish its importance as a local emporium. The almostcomplete disappearance of the woollen manufacture, the agriculturaldepression which has made the banks and wholesale houses "come down"upon the small dealers, and the "agitation, " bankrupting or exiling thelocal gentry, have all conspired to the same result. 

From Abbeyleix station we walked back to the house through the parkunder trees beautifully silvered with the snow. At dinner the party wasjoined by several residents of the county. One of them gave me his viewsof the working of the "Plan of Campaign. " It is a plan, he maintains, not of defence as against unjust and exacting landlords, but of offenceagainst "landlordism, " not really promoted, as it appears to be, in theinterest of the tenants to whose cupidity it appeals, but worked fromDublin as a battering engine against law and order in Ireland. Everycase in which it is applied needs, he thinks, to be looked into on itsown merits. It will then be found precisely why this or that spot hasbees selected by the League for attack. At Luggacurren, for instance, the "Plan of Campaign" has been imposed upon the tenants because theproperty belongs to the Marquis of Lansdowne, who happens to beGovernor-General of Canada, so that to attack him is to attack theGovernment. The rents of the Lansdowne property at Luggacurren, thisgentleman offers to prove to me, are not and never have been excessive;and Lord Lansdowne has expended very large sums on improving theproperty, and for the benefit of the tenants. Two of the largesttenants having got into difficulties through reckless racing and otherforms of extravagance found it convenient to invite the league intoLuggacurren, and compel other tenants in less embarrassed circumstancesto sacrifice their holdings by refusing to pay rents which they knew tobe fair, and were abundantly able and eager to pay. At Mitchelstown the"Plan of Campaign" was aimed again, not at the Countess of Kingston, theowner, but at the Disestablished Protestant Church of Ireland, thetrustees of which hold a mortgage of a quarter of a million sterling onthe estates. On the Clanricarde property in Galway the "Plan ofCampaign" has been introduced, my informant says, because LordClanricarde happens to be personally unpopular. "Go down to Portumna andWoodford, " he said, "and look into the matter for yourself. You willfind that the rents on the Clanricarde estates are in the mainexceptionally fair, and even low. The present Marquis has almost nevervisited Ireland, I believe, and he is not much known even in London. People who dislike him for one reason or another readily believeanything that is said to his disadvantage as a landlord. Most people whodon't like the cut of Dr. Fell's whiskers, or the way in which he takessoup, are quite disposed to listen to you if you tell them he beats hiswife or plays cards too well. The campaigners are shrewd fellows, andthey know this, so they start the 'Plan of Campaign' on the Portumnaproperties, and get a lot of English windbags to come there and hobnobwith some of the most mischievous and pestilent parish priests in allIreland--and then you have the dreadful story of the 'evictions, ' andall the rest of it. Lord Clanricarde, or his agent, or both of them, getting out of temper, will sit down and do some hasty or crabbed orinjudicious thing, or write a provoking letter, and forthwith it isenough to say 'Clanricarde, ' and all common sense goes out of thequestion, to the great damage, not so much of Lord Clanricarde--for helives in London, and is a rich man, and, I suppose, don't mind therow--but of landlords all over Ireland, and therefore, in the long-run, of the tenants of Ireland as well. "

At Luggacurren, this gentleman thinks, the League is beaten. There areeighty-two tenants there, evicted and living dismally in what is calledthe Land League village, a set of huts erected near the roadside, whiletheir farms are carried on for the owner by the Land Corporation. Asthey were most of them unwilling to accept the Plan, and wereintimidated into it for the benefit of the League, and of the two chieftenants, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Kilbride, men of substance who had squanderedtheir resources, the majority of the evicted are sore and angry. 

"At first each man was allowed £3 a month by the League for himself andhis family. But they found that Mr. Kilbride, who has been put intoParliament by Mr. Parnell for Kerry, a county with which he has no moreto do than I have with the Isle of Skye, was getting £5 a week, and sothey revolted, and threatened to bolt if their subsidy was not raised to£4 a month. "

"And this they get now? Out of what funds?"

"Out of the League funds, or, in other words, out of their own and otherpeople's money, foolishly put by the tenants into the keeping of theLeague to 'protect' it! They give it the kind of 'protection' thatOliver gave the liberties of England: once they get hold of it, theynever let go!"

I submitted that at Gweedore Father M'Fadden had paid over to CaptainHill the funds confided to him. 

"No doubt; but there the landlord gave in, and the more fool he!"

With another guest I had an interesting conversation about the Ulstertenant-right, which got itself more or less enacted into British lawonly in 1870, and of which Mr. Froude tells me he sought in vain todiscover the definite origin. "The best lawyers in Ireland" could givehim no light on this point. He could only find that it did not existapparently in 1770, but did exist apparently twenty years later. Thegentleman with whom I talked to-night tells me that the custom of Ulsterwas really once general throughout Ireland, and is called the "Ulster"custom, only because it survived there after disappearing elsewhere. There is a tradition too, he says, in Ulster that the recognition ofthis tenant-right as a binding custom there is really due to LordCastlereagh. It would be a curious thing, could this be verified, tofind Lord Castlereagh, whose name has been execrated in Ireland forfourscore years, recommending and securing a century ago thatrecognition of the interest of the Irish tenant in his holding, which, in our time, Mr. Gladstone, just now the object of Irish adulation, was, with much difficulty and reluctance, brought to accord in theCompensation for Disturbances clause of his Act of 1870!

Of this clause, too, I am told to-night that the scale of compensationfixed for the awards of the Court in the third section of it was devised(though Mr. Gladstone did not know this) by an Irish member in theinterest of the "strong farmers, " who wish to root out the smallfarmers. There is an apparent confirmation of this story in the factthat under this section the small farmers, under £10, may be awardedagainst the landlord seven years' rent as compensation for disturbance, while the number of years to be accounted for in the award diminishes asthe rental increases, a discrimination not unlikely to strengthen thepreference of the landlords for the large farm system. 

CHAPTER V. 

DUBLIN, _Tuesday, Feb. 14th. _--I left Abbeyleix this morning for Dublin, in company with Mr. And Mrs. Henry Doyle. Mr. Doyle, C. B. , a brother ofthat inimitable master of the pencil, and most delightful of men, Richard Doyle, is the Director of the Irish National Gallery. He waskind enough to come and lunch with me at Maple's, after which we wenttogether to the Gallery. It occupies the upper floors of a stately andhandsome building in Merrion Square, in front of which stands a statueof the founder, Mr. William Dargan, who defrayed all the expenses of theDublin Exhibition in 1853, and declined all the honours offered to himin recognition of his public spirited liberality, save a visit paid tohis wife by Queen Victoria. The collection now under Mr. Doyle's chargewas begun only in 1864, and the Government makes it an annual grant ofno more than £2500, or about one-half the current price, in these days, of a fine Gainsborough or Sir Joshua! "They manage these things betterin France, " was evidently the impression of a recent French tourist inIreland, M. Daryl, whose book I picked up the other day in Paris, forafter mentioning three or four of the pictures, and gravely affirmingthat the existence here of a gallery of Irish portraits proves thepassionate devotion of Dublin to Home Rule, he dismisses the collectionwith the verdict that "_ce ne vaut pas le diable_. " Nevertheless italready contains more really good pictures than the Musée either ofLyons or of Marseilles, both of them much larger and wealthier citiesthan Dublin. Leaving out the Three Maries of Perugino at Marseilles, andat Lyons the Ascension, which was once the glory of San Pietro diPerugia, the Moses of Paul Veronese, and Palma Giovanni's Flagellation, these two galleries put together cannot match Dublin with its Jan Steen, most characteristic without being coarse, its Terburg, a life-sizeportrait of the painter's favourite model, a young Flemish gentleman, presented to him as a token of regard, its portrait of a Venetianpersonage by Giorgione, with a companion portrait by Gian Bellini, itsbeautiful Italian landscape by Jan Both, its flower-wreathed head of awhite bull by Paul Potter, its exquisitely finished "Vocalists" byCornells Begyn, its admirable portrait of a Dutch gentleman by Murillo, and its two excellent Jacob Ruysdaels. A good collection is making, too, of original drawings, and engravings, and a special room is devoted tomodern Irish art. I wish the Corcoran Gallery (founded, too, by anIrishman!) were half as worthy of Washington, or the Metropolitan Museumone-tenth part as worthy of New York!

The National Gallery in London has loaned some pictures to Dublin, andMr. Doyle is getting together, from private owners, a most interestinggallery of portraits of men and women famous in connection with Irishhistory. The beautiful Gunnings of the last century, the not lessbeautiful and much more brilliant Sheridans of our own, Burke, Grattan, Tom Moore, Wellington, Curran, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, O'Connell, PegWoffington, Canning, and Castlereagh, Dean Swift, Laurence Sterne areall here--wits and statesmen, soldiers and belles, rebels and royalists, orators and poets. Two things strike one in this gallery of the "gloriesof Ireland. " The great majority of the faces are of the Anglo-Irish orScoto-Irish type; and the collection owes its existence to anaccomplished public officer, who bears an Irish name, who is a devoutCatholic, and who is also an outspoken opponent of the Home Rulecontention as now carried on. 

The gallery is open on liberal conditions to students. Mr. Doyle tellsme that a young sister of Mr. Parnell was at one time an assiduousstudent here. He used to stop and chat with her about her work as hepassed through the gallery. One day he met her coming out. "Mr. Doyle, "she said, "are you a Home Ruler?" "Certainly not, " he repliedgood-naturedly. Whereupon, with an air of melancholy resignation, theyoung lady said, "Then we can never more be friends!" and therewithflitted forth. 

A small room contains some admirable bits of the work of Richard Doyle, among other things a weird and grotesque, but charming cartoon of anelfish procession passing through a quaint and picturesque mediaevalcity. It is a _conte fantastique_ in colour--a marvel of affluent fancyand masterly skill. 

I found here this morning letters calling me over to Paris for a shorttime, and one also from Mr. Davitt, in London, explaining that my noteto him through the National League had never reached him, and that hehad gone to London on his woollen business. I have written asking him tomeet me to-morrow in London, and I shall cross over to-night. 

LONDON, _Wednesday, Feb. 15th. _--Mr. Davitt spent an hour with meto-day, and we had a most interesting conversation. His mind is just nowfull of the woollen enterprise he is managing, which promises, hethinks, in spite of our tariff, to open the American markets to theexcellent woollen goods of Ireland. He has gone into it with all hisusual earnestness and ability. This is not a matter of politics withhim, but of patriotism and of business. He tells me he has alreadysecured very large orders from the United States. I hope he is notsurprised, as I certainly am not, to find that the Parliamentarian Irishparty give but a half-hearted and lukewarm support to such enterprisesas this. Perhaps he has forgotten, as I have not, the efforts which acertain member of that party made in 1886 to persuade an Irish gentlemanfrom St. Louis, who had brought over a considerable sum of money for therelief of the distress in North-Western Ireland, into turning it overto the League, on the express ground that the more the people were madeto feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it wouldbe for the revolutionary movement. 

The Irish Woollen Company will, nevertheless, be a success, I believe, and a success of considerably more value to Ireland than the election ofMr. Wilfrid Blunt as M. P. For Deptford would be. 

As to this election, Mr. Davitt seems to feel no great confidence. Hehas spoken in support of Mr. Blunt's candidacy, and is hard at work nowto promote it. But he is not sanguine as to the result, as on allquestions, save Home Rule for Ireland, Mr. Blunt's views and ideas, hethinks, antagonise the record of Mr. Evelyn and the local feeling atDeptford. I was almost astonished to learn from Mr. Davitt that Mr. Blunt, by the way, had told him at Ballybrack, long before he was lockedup, how Mr. Balfour meant to lock up and kill four men, the "pivots" ofthe Irish movement, to wit, Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Harrington, Mr. Dillon, andMr. Davitt himself. But I was not at all astonished to learn that Mr. Blunt told him all this most seriously, and evidently believed it. 

"How did you take it?" I asked. 

"Oh, I only laughed, " said Mr. Davitt, "and told him it would take morethan Mr. Balfour to kill me, at any rate by putting me in prison. As forbeing locked up, I prefer Cuninghame Graham's way of taking it, that hemeant 'to beat the record on oakum!'"

If all the Irish "leaders" were made of the same stuff with Mr. Davitt, the day of a great Democratic revolution, not in Ireland only, but inGreat Britain, might be a good deal nearer than anything in the signs ofthe times now shows it to be. Mr. Parnell and the National League arereally nothing but the mask of Mr. Davitt and the Land League. Mr. Forster knew what he was about when he proclaimed the Land League inOctober 1881, six months or more after he had arrested and locked up Mr. Davitt in Portland prison. This was shown by the foolish No-Rentmanifesto which Mr. Parnell and his associates issued from Kilmainhamshortly after their incarceration, and without the counsel or consent atthat time of Mr. Davitt--a manifesto which the Archbishop of Cashel, despite his early sympathies and connection with the agrarian agitationof 1848, found it expedient promptly to disavow. It would have beenstill more clearly shown had not Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster partedcompany under the restiveness of Mr. Gladstone's Radical followers, andthe pressure of the United States Government in the spring of 1882. Butafter the withdrawal of Mr. Forster, and the release of Mr. Davitt, theEnglish lawyers and politicians who led Lord Spencer and Sir GeorgeTrevelyan into allowing the Land League to be revived under thetransparent alias of the National League, gave Mr. Davitt anopportunity, of which he promptly availed himself, to regain the groundlost by the blundering of the men of Kilmainham. From that time forth Ihave always regarded him as the soul of the Irish agitation, of the waragainst "landlordism" (which is incidentally, of course, a war againstthe English influence in Ireland), and of the movement towards Irishindependence. Whether the agitation, the war, and the movement have goneentirely in accordance with his views and wishes is quite anothermatter. 

I have too good an opinion of his capacity to believe that they have;and when the secret history of the Chicago Convention comes to bewritten, I expect to find such confirmation therein of my notions onthis subject as I could neither ask nor, if I asked, could expect to getfrom him. 

Meanwhile the manliness and courage of the man must always command forhim the respect, not to say the admiration, even of those who moststernly condemn his course and oppose his policy. 

Born the child of an evicted tenant, in the times when an eviction meantsuch misery and suffering as are seldom, if ever, now caused by theprocess--bred and maimed for life in an English factory--captured whenhardly more than a lad in Captain M'Cafferty's daring attempt to seizeChester Castle, and sent for fifteen years by Lord Chief-JusticeCockburn into penal servitude of the most rigorous kind, Michael Davittmight have been expected to be an apostle of hate not against theEnglish Government of Ireland alone, but against England and the Englishpeople. The truculent talk of too many of his countrymen presentsIreland to the minds of thoughtful men as a flagrant illustration of thetruth so admirably put by Aubrey de Vere that "worse than wasted weal iswasted woe. " But woe has not been wasted upon Michael Davitt, in this, that, so far as I know (and I have watched his course now with livelypersonal interest ever since I made his acquaintance on his first visitto America), he has never made revenge and retaliation upon Englandeither the inspiration or the aim of his revolutionary policy. I havenever heard him utter, and never heard of his uttering, in America, suchmalignant misrepresentations of the conduct of the English people andtheir sovereign during the great famine of 1847, for example, as thosewhich earned for Mr. Parnell in 1880 the pretty unanimous condemnationof the American press. How far he went with Mr. Parnell on the lines ofthat speech at New Ross, in which murder was delicately mentioned as "anunnecessary and prejudicial measure of procedure" in certaincircumstances, I do not know. But he can hardly have gone further thancertain persons calling themselves English Liberals went when theassassins of Napoleon III. Escaped to England. And he has a capacity ofbeing just to opponents, which certainly all his associates do notpossess. I was much struck to-day by the candour and respect with whichhe spoke of John Bright, whose name came incidentally into ourconversation. He seemed to feel personally annoyed and hurt as anIrishman, that Irishmen should permit themselves to revile and abuse Mr. Bright because he will not go with them on the question of Home Rule, inutter oblivion of the great services rendered by him to the cause ofthe Irish people "years before many of those whose tongues now wagagainst him had tongues to wag. " I was tempted to remind him that notwith Irishmen only is gratitude a lively sense of favours to come. 

I find Mr. Davitt quite awake to the great importance of the granitequarries of Donegal. He is bestirring himself in connection with somemen of Manchester, in behalf of the quarries at Belmullet in Mayo, which, if I am not mistaken, is his native county. This bent of his mindtowards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people, and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark ofhis superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians--it goesfar to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the peoplein Ireland. "Home Rule, " as now urged by the Irish politicians, certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and Englandthan it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary toJohn Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to managetheir own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to dothis--and what would become of India if England turned it over infragments to the native races? The Land Question, on the contrary, touches the "business and bosom" of every Irishman in Ireland, while itis so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to betroublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediatelyaffected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of theNational League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irishpeople in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarianmovement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himselftoo completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. Onthe other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present linesof action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man's holdupon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out ofIreland, and ruining, the class of "landlords" and capitalists, it wouldleave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddledwith a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders tocarry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The "waragainst the landlords, " as conducted by the National League, would endwhere the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the peopleto "poverty and potatoes. "

CHAPTER VI. 

ENNIS, _Saturday, Feb. 18. _--I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris, and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over alake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintanceI made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened withrespect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionistside. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to turnover Ireland to a Parliament made up of the Westminster members, of whomhe gave me such an amusing but by no means complimentary account, helooked at me with astonishment:--

"Do you suppose for a moment we would send these fellows to a Parliamentin Dublin?"

He told me some very entertaining tales of the methods used by certainwell-meaning occupants of the Castle in former days to capture Irishpopularity, as, for example, one of a Vice-Queen who gave a fancy dressball for the children of the local Dublin people of importance, and hada beautiful supper of tea and comfits, and cakes served to them, afterwhich she made her appearance, followed by servants bearing huge bowlsof steaming hot Irish potatoes, which she pressed upon the horrified andoverstuffed infants as "the true food of the country, " setting themherself the example of eating one with much apparent gusto, and a pinchof salt!

"Now, fancy that!" he exclaimed; "for the Dublin aristocracy who thinkthe praties only fit for the peasants!"

Of a well-known and popular personage in politics, he told me that heonce went with him on a canvassing tour. It was in a county thecandidate had never before visited. "When we came to a place, and thepeople were all out crying and cheering, he would whisper to me, 'Nowwhat is the name of this confounded hole?' And I would whisper back, 'Ballylahnich, ' or whatever it was. Then he would draw himself up to theheight of a round tower, and begin, 'Men of Ballylahnich, I rejoice tomeet you! Often has the great Liberator said to me, with tears in hisvoice, 'Oh would I might find myself face to face with the noble men ofBallylahnich!"

"A great man he is, a great man!

"Did you ever hear how he courted the heiress? He walked up and down infront of her house, and threatened to fight every man that came to call, till he drove them all away!"

A good story of more recent date, I must also note, of a well-knownpriest in Dublin, who being asked by Mr. Balfour one day whether thepeople under his charge took for gospel all the rawhead and bloody-bonestales about himself, replied, "Indeed, I wish they only feared and hatedthe devil half as much as they do you!"

In a more serious vein my Nationalist friend explained to me that forhim "Home Rule" really meant an opportunity of developing the resourcesof Ireland under "the American system of Protection. " About this he wasquite in earnest, and recalled to me the impassioned protests made bythe then Mayor of Chicago, Mr. Carter Harrison, against the RevenueReform doctrines which I had thought it right to set forth at the greatmeeting of the Iroquois Club in that city in 1883. "Of course, " hesaid, "you know that Mr. Harrison was then speaking not only forhimself, but for the whole Irish vote of Chicago which was solidlybehind him? And not of Chicago only! All our people on your side of thewater moved against your party in 1884, and will move against it again, only much more generally, this year, because they know that the realhope of Ireland lies in our shaking ourselves free of the British FreeTrade that has been fastened upon us, and is taking our life. " I couldonly say that this was a more respectable, if not a more reasonable, explanation of Mr. Alexander Sullivan's devotion to Mr. Blaine and theRepublicans, and of the Irish defection from the Democratic party thanhad ever been given to me in America, but I firmly refused to spend thenight between London and Dublin in debating the question whether Meathcould be made as prosperous as Massachusetts by levying forty per cent. Duties on Manchester goods imported into Ireland. 

He had seen the reception of Mr. Sullivan, M. P. , in London. "I believe, on my soul, " he said, "the people were angry with him because he didn'tcome in a Lord Mayor's coach!"

When I told him I meant to visit Luggacurren, he said, a little to mysurprise, "That is a bad job for us, and all because of WilliamO'Brien's foolishness! He always thinks everybody takes note of whateverhe says, and that ruins any man! He made a silly threat at Luggacurren, that he would go and take Lansdowne by the throat in Canada, and then hewas weak enough to suppose that he was bound to carry it out. Hecouldn't be prevented! And what was the upshot of it? But for theOrangemen in Canada, that were bigger fools than he is, he would havebeen just ruined completely! It was the Orangemen saved him!"

I left Dublin this morning at 7. 40 A. M. The day was fine, and therailway journey most interesting. Before reaching Limerick we passedthrough so much really beautiful country that I could not helpexpressing my admiration of it to my only fellow-traveller, a mostcourteous and lively gentleman, who, but for a very positive brogue, might have been taken for an English guardsman. 

"Yes, it is a beautiful country, " he said, "or would be if they wouldlet it alone!"

I asked him what he specially objected to in the recent action ofParliament as respects Ireland?

"Object?" he responded; "I object to everything. The only thing thatwill do Ireland any good will be to shut up that talking-mill atWestminster for a good long while!"

This, I told him, was the remedy proposed by Earl Grey in his recentvolume on Ireland. 

"Is it indeed? I shall read the book. But what's the use? 'For judgmentit is fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason. '"

This he said most cheerily, as if it really didn't matter much; and, bidding me good-bye, disappeared at Limerick, where several friends methim. In his place came a good-natured optimistic squire, who thinks"things are settling down. " There is a rise in the price of cattle. "Beasts I gave £8 for three mouths ago, " he said, "I have just sold for£12. I call that a healthy state of things. " And with this he also leftme at Ardsollus, the station nearest the famous old monastery of Quin. 

At Ennis I was met by Colonel Turner, to whom I had written, enclosing anote of introduction to him. With him were Mr. Roche, one of the localmagistrates, and Mr. Richard Stacpoole, a gentleman of position andestate near Ennis, about whom, through no provocation of his, a greatdeal has been said and written of late years. Mr. Stacpoole at onceinsisted that I should let him take me out to stay at his house atEdenvale, which is, so to speak, at the gates of Ennis. Certainly thefame of Irish hospitality is well-founded! Meanwhile my traps weredeposited at the County Club, and I went about the town. I walked up tothe Court-house with. Mr. Roche, in the hope of hearing a case set downfor trial to-day, in which a publican named Harding, at Ennis--anEnglishman, by the way--is prosecuted for boycotting. The parties werein Court; and the defendant's counsel, a keen-looking Irish lawyer, Mr. Leamy, once a Nationalist member, was ready for action; but for sometechnical reason the hearing was postponed. There were few people inCourt, and little interest seemed to be felt in the matter. TheCourt-house is a good building, not unlike the White House at Washingtonin style. This is natural enough, the White House having been built, Ibelieve, by an Irish architect, who must have had the Duke of Leinster'shouse of Carton, in Kildare, in his mind when he planned it. Carton wasthought a model mansion at the beginning of this century; and Mr. Whetstone, a local architect of repute, built the Ennis Court-house somefifty years ago. It is of white limestone from quarries belonging toMr. Stacpoole, and cost when built about £12, 000. To build it now wouldcost nearly three times as much. In fact, a recent and smallerCourt-house at Carlow has actually cost £36, 000 within the last fewyears. 

I was struck by the extraordinary number of public-houses in Ennis. Asergeant of police said to me, "It is so all over the country. " Mr. Roche sent for the statistics, from which it appears that Ennis, with apopulation of 6307, rejoices in no fewer than 100 "publics"; Ennistymon, with a population of 1331, has 25; and Milltown Malbay, with apopulation of 1400, has 36. At Castle Island the proportion is stillmore astounding--51 public-houses in a population of 800. In Kiltimaghevery second house is a public-house! These houses are perhaps a legacyof the old days of political jobbery. [19] No matter when or why granted, the licence appears to be regarded as a hereditary "right" not lightlyto be tampered with; and of course the publicans are persons ofconsequence in their neighbourhood, no matter how wretched it may be, or how trifling their legitimate business. Three police convictions arerequired to make the resident magistrates refuse the usual yearlyrenewal of a licence; and if an application is made against such arenewal, cause must be shown. The "publics" are naturally centres oflocal agitation, and the publicans are sharp enough to see the advantageto them of this. The sergeant told me of a publican here in Ennis, intowhose public came three Nationalists, bent not upon drinking, but upontalking. The publican said nothing for a while, but finally, in acareless way, mentioned "a letter he had just received from Mr. Parnellon a very private matter. " Instantly the politicians were eager to seeit. The publican hesitated. The politicians immediately called fordrinks, which were served, and after this operation had been three timesrepeated, the publican produced the letter, began with a line or two, and then said, "Ah, no! it can't be done. It would be a betrayal ofconfidence; and you know you wouldn't have that! But it's a veryimportant letter you have seen!" So they went away tipsy and happy. 

Only yesterday no fewer than twenty-three of these publicans fromMilltown Malbay appeared at Ennis here to be tried for "boycotting" thepolice. One of them was acquitted; another, a woman, was discharged. Tenof them signed, in open court, a guarantee not further to conspire, andwere thereupon discharged upon their own recognisances, after havingbeen sentenced with their companions to a month's imprisonment with hardlabour. The magistrate tells me that when the ten who signed (and whowere the most prosperous of the publicans) were preparing to sign, theonly representative of the press who was present, a reporter for _UnitedIreland_, approached them in a threatening manner, with such an obviouspurpose of intimidation, that he was ordered out of the court-room bythe police. The eleven who refused to sign the guarantee (and who werethe poorest of the publicans, with least to lose) were sent to gaol. 

An important feature of this case is the conduct of Father White, theparish priest of Milltown Malbay. In the open court, Colonel Turnertells me, Father White admitted that he was the moving spirit of allthis local "boycott. " While the court was sitting yesterday all theshops in Milltown Malbay were closed, Father White having publiclyordered the people to make the town "as a city of the dead. " After thetrial was over, and the eleven who elected to be locked up had left inthe train, Father White visited all their houses to encourage thefamilies, which, from his point of view, was no doubt proper enough; butone of the sergeants reports that the Father went by mistake into thehouse of one of the ten who had signed the guarantee, and immediatelyreappeared, using rather unclerical language. All this to an Americanresembles a tempest in a tea-pot. But it is a serious matter to see apriest of the Church assisting laymen to put their fellow-men under asocial interdict, which is obviously a parody on one of the graveststeps the Church itself can take to maintain the doctrine and thediscipline of the Faith. What Catholics, if honest, must think of thiswhole business, I saw curiously illustrated by some marginal notespencilled in a copy of Sir Francis Head's _Fortnight in Ireland_, at thehotel in Gweedore. The author of the _Bubbles from the Brunnen_published this book in 1852. At page 152 he tells a story, apparently onhearsay, of "boycotting" long before Boycott. It is to the effect that, in order to check the proselyting of Catholics by a combination ofProtestant missionary zeal with Protestant donations of "meal, " certainpriests and sisters in the south of Ireland personally instructed thepeople to avoid all intercourse of any sort with any Roman Catholic who"listened to a Protestant clergyman or a Scripture Reader"; and SirFrancis cites an instance--still apparently on hearsay--of a "shoemakerat Westport, " who, having seceded from the Church, found that not asingle "journeyman dared work for him"; that only "one person would sellhim leather"; and, "in short, lost his custom, and rapidly came to astate of starvation. "

On the margin of the pages which record these statements, certainindignant Catholics have pencilled comments, the mildest of which is tothe effect that Sir Francis was "a most damnable liar. " It is certainlymost unlikely that Catholics should have arrogated to themselves theChurch's function of combating heresy and schism in the fashiondescribed by Sir Francis. But without mooting that question, theseexpressions are noteworthy as showing how just such proceedings, as areinvolved in the political "boycottings" of the present day, must beregarded by all honest and clear-headed people who call themselvesCatholics; and it is a serious scandal that a parish priest should layhimself open to the imputation of acting in concert with any politicalbody whatever, on any pretext whatever, to encourage such proceedings. 

I asked one of the sergeants how the publicans who had signed theguarantee would probably be treated by their townspeople. He replied, there was some talk of their being "boycotted" in their turn by thebutchers and bakers. "But it's all nonsense, " he said, "they are thesnuggest (the most prosperous) publicans in this part of the country, and nobody will want to vex them. They have many friends, and the bestfriend they have is that they can afford to give credit to the countrypeople. There'll be no trouble with them at all at all!"

Walking about the town, I saw many placards calling for subscriptions inaid of a newsvendor who has been impounded for selling _United Ireland_. "It'll be a good thing for him, " said a cynical citizen, to whom I spokeof it, "a good deal better than he'd be by selling the papers. " And, infact, it is noticeable all over Ireland how small the sales of thepapers appear to be. The people about the streets in Ennis, however, seemed to me much more effervescent and hot in tone than the Dublinpeople are--and this on both sides of the question. One very decent andsubstantial-looking man, when I told him I was an American, assured methat "if it was not for the soldiers, the people of Ennis would clearthe police out of the place. " He told me, too, that not long ago thesoldiers of an Irish regiment here cheered for Home Rule in theCourt-house, "but they were soon sent away for that same. " On the otherhand, a Protestant man of business, of whom I made some inquiries aboutthe transmission of an important paper to the United States in time tocatch to-morrow's steamer from Queenstown, spoke of the Home Rulersalmost with ferocity, and thought the "Coercion" Government at Dublinought to be called the "Concession" Government. He was quite indignantthat the Morley and Ripon procession through the streets of Dublinshould not have been "forbidden. "

There are some considerable shops in Ennis, but the proprietor of one ofthe best of them says all this agitation has "killed the trade of theplace. " I am not surprised to learn that the farmers and their familiesare beginning seriously to demand that the "reduction screw" shall beapplied to other things besides rent. "A very decent farmer, " he says, "only last week stood up in the shop and said it was 'a shame theshopkeepers were not made to reduce the tenpence muslin goods tosixpence!'"

This shopkeeper finds some dreary consolation for the present state ofthings in standing at his deserted shop-door and watching the doors ofhis brethren. He finds them equally deserted. In his own he has had todismiss a number of his attendants. "When a man finds he is taking inten shillings a day, and laying out three pounds ten, what can he do butpull up pretty short?" As with the shopkeepers, so it is with themechanics. "They are losing custom all the time. You see the tenants areexpecting to come into the properties, so they spend nothing now onpainting or improvements. The money goes into the bank. It don't go tothe landlords, or to the shopkeepers, or the mechanics; and then we thathave been selling on credit, and long credit too, where are we?Formerly, from one place, Dromoland, Lord Inchiquin's house, we usedregularly to make a bill of a hundred pounds at Christmas, for blanketsand other things given away. Now the house is shut up and we makenothing!"

It is a short but very pleasant drive from Ennis to Edenvale--andEdenvale itself is not ill-named. The park is a true park, with finewide spaces and views, and beautiful clumps of trees. A swift riverflows beyond the lawn in front of the spacious goodly house--a riveralive with wild fowl, and overhung by lofty trees, in which many pairsof herons build. A famous heronry has existed here for many years, andthe birds are held now by Mr. And Mrs. Stacpoole as sacred as are thestorks in Holland. Where the river widens to a lake, fine terracedgardens and espalier walls, on which nectarines, apricots, and peachesripen in the sun, stretch along the shore. Deer come down to the furtherbank to drink, and in every direction the eye is charmed and the mind issoothed by the loveliest imaginable sylvan landscapes. 

EDENVALE, _Sunday, Feb. 19. _--I was awakened at dawn by the clamour ofcountless wild ducks, to a day of sunshine as brilliant and almost aswarm as one sees at this season in the south of France. Mrs. Stacpoolespeaks of this place with a kind of passion, and I can quite understandit. Clearly this, again, is not a case of the absentee landlord drainingthe lifeblood of the land to lavish it upon an alien soil! The demesneis a sylvan sanctuary for the wild creatures of the air and the wood, and they congregate here almost as they did at Walton Hall in the daysof that most delightful of naturalists and travellers, whose adventurousgallop on the back of a cayman was the delight of all English-readingchildren forty years ago, or as they do now at Gosford. Yet the crack ofthe gun, forbidden in the precincts of Walton Hall, is here by no meansunknown--the whole family being noted as dead shots. I asked Mr. Stacpoole this morning whether the park had been invaded by trespasserssince the local Nationalists declared war upon him. He said that hisonly experience of anything like an attack befell not very long ago, when his people came to the house on a Sunday afternoon and told himthat a crowd of men from Ennis, with dogs, were coming towards the parkwith a loudly proclaimed intent to enter it, and go hunting upon theproperty. 

Upon this Mr. Stacpoole left the house with his brother and anotherperson, and walked down to the park entrance. Presently the men of Ennismade their appearance on the highway. A very brief parley followed. Themen of Ennis announced their intention of marching across the park, andoccupying it. 

"I think not, " the proprietor responded quietly. "I think you will goback the way you came. For you may be sure of one thing: the first manwho crosses that park wall, or enters that gate, is a dead man. "

There was no show of weapons, but the revolvers were there, and this themen of Ennis knew. They also knew that it rested with themselves tocreate the right and the occasion to use the revolvers, and that if therevolvers were used they would be used to some purpose. To their credit, be it said, as men of sense, they suddenly experienced an almostCaledonian respect for the "Sabbath-day, " and after expressing theirdiscontent with Mr. Stacpoole's inhospitable reception, turned about andwent back whence they had come. 

This morning an orderly from Ennis brought out news of the arrestyesterday, at the Clare Road, of Mr. Lloyd, a Labour delegate fromLondon, on his return from an agitation meeting at Kildysart. Harding, the Englishman I saw awaiting his trial yesterday, became bail forLloyd. 

In the afternoon we took a delightful walk to Killone Abbey, a pile ofmonastic ruins on a lovely site near a very picturesque lake. The ruinshave been used as a quarry by all the country, and are now by no meansextensive. But the precincts are used as a graveyard, not only by thepeople of Ennis, but by the farmers and villagers for many miles around. Nothing can be imagined more painful than the appearance of theseprecincts. The graves are, for the most part, shallow, and closelyhuddled together. The cemetery, in truth, is a ghastly slum, a"tenement-house" of the dead. The dead of to-day literally elbow thedead of yesterday out of their resting-places, to be in their turndisplaced by the dead of to-morrow. Instead of the crosses and the freshgarlands, and the inscriptions full of loving thoughtfulness, which lenda pathetic charm to the German "courts of peace"--instead of thecarefully tended hillocks and flower-studded turf which make thechurchyard of a typical old English village beautiful, --all here isconfusion, squalor, and neglect. Fragments of coffins and bones liescattered among the sunken and shattered stones. We picked up a skulllying quite apart in a corner of the enclosure. A clean round bullethole in the very centre of the frontal bone was dumbly and grimlyeloquent. Was it the skull of a patriot or of a policeman? of a"White-boy" or of a "landlord"?

One thing only was apparent from the conformation of the grisly relic. It was the skull of a Celt. Probably, therefore, not of a land agent, shot to repress his fiduciary zeal, but perhaps of some peasantselfishly and recklessly bent on paying his rent. 

While we wandered amid the ruins we came suddenly upon a woman wearing along Irish cloak, and accompanied by two well-dressed men. One of themen started upon catching sight of Colonel Turner, who was of our party, grew quite red for a moment, and then very civilly exchanged salutationswith him. The party walked quietly away on a lower road leading toEnnis. When they had gone Colonel Turner told us that the man who hadspoken to him was a local Nationalist of repute and influence in Ennis. "He would never have ventured to be civil to me in the town, " he said. Adiscussion arose as to the probable object of the party in visitingthese ruins. A gentleman who was with us half-laughingly suggested thatthey might have been putting away dynamite bombs for an attack onEdenvale. Colonel Turner's more practical and probable theory was thatthey were looking about for a site for the grave of the Fenian veteran, Stephen J. Meany, who died in America not long ago. He was a native, Ibelieve, of Ennis, and his remains are now on their way across theAtlantic for interment in his birth-place. "Would a processional funeralbe allowed for him?" I asked. Colonel Turner could see no reason why itshould not be. 

One exception I noted to the general slovenliness of the graves. A newand handsome monument had just been set up by a man of Ennis, living inAustralia, to the memory of his father and mother, buried here twentyyears ago. But this touching symbol of a heart untravelled, fondlyturning to its home, had been so placed, either by accident or bydesign, as to block the entrance way to the vault of a family living, orrather owning property, in this neighbourhood. Until within a year ortwo past this family had occupied a very handsome mansion in a parkadjoining the park of Edenvale. But the heir, worn out with localhostilities, and reduced in fortune by the pressure of the times and ofthe League, has now thrown up the sponge. His ancestral acres have beenturned over for cultivation to Mr. Stacpoole. His house, a large finebuilding, apparently of the time of James II. , containing, I am told, some good pictures and old furniture, is shut up, as are the modelstables, ample enough for a great stud; and so another centre of localindustry and activity is made sterile. 

Near the ruins of Killone is a curious ancient shrine of St. John, beside a spring known as the Holy Well. All about the rude little altarin the open air simple votive offerings were displayed, and Mrs. Stacpoole tells me pilgrims come here from Galway and Connemara to climbthe hill upon their knees, and drink of the water. Last year for thefirst time within the memory of man the well went dry. Such was thedistress caused in Ennis by this news, that on the eve of St. Johncertain pious persons came out from the town, drew water from the lake, and poured it into the well!

As we walked away one of the party pointed to a rabbit fleeing swiftlyinto a hole in one of the graves. "I was on this hill, " he said, "oneday not very long ago when a funeral train came out from Ennis. As itentered the precincts a rabbit ran rapidly across the grounds. Instantlythe procession broke up; the coffin was literally dropped to theground, and the bearers, the mourners, and the whole company united in ahot and general chase of bunny. Of course, I need not say, " he added, "that there was no priest with them. The fixed charge of the priest fora burial is twenty shillings, but there is usually no service at thegrave whatever. "

This may possibly be a trace of the practices which grew up under thePenal Laws against Catholics. When Rinuccini came to Ireland in the timeof the Civil War, he found the observances of the Church all fallen intodegradation through these laws. The Holy Sacrifice was celebrated in thecabins, and not unfrequently on tables which had been coveredhalf-an-hour before with the remains of the last night's supper, andwould be cleared half-an-hour afterwards for the midday meal, andperhaps for a game of cards. 

Several guests joined us at dinner. One gentleman, a magistrate familiarwith Gweedore, told me he believed the statements of Sergeant Mahony asto the income of Father M'Fadden to fall within the truth. While hebelieves that many people in that region live, as he put it, "constantlywithin a hair's-breadth of famine, " he thinks that the great body ofthe peasants there are in a position, "with industry and thrift, notonly to make both ends meet, but to make them overlap. "

Mr. Stacpoole told us some of his own experiences nearer home. Not longago he was informed that the National League had ordered some decentpeople, who hold the demesne lands of his neighbour, Mr. Macdonald(already alluded to) at a very low rental, to make a demand for areduction, which would have left Mr. Macdonald without a penny ofincome. To counter this Mr. Stacpoole offered to take the lands over forpasture at the existing rental, whereupon the tenants promptly made uptheir minds to keep their holdings in defiance of the League. 

Last year a man, whom Mr. Stacpoole had regarded as a "good" tenant, came to him, bringing the money to pay his rent. "I have the rint, sorr, " the man said, "but it is God's truth I dare not pay it to ye!"Other tenants were waiting outside. "Are you such a coward that youdon't dare be honest?" said Mr. Stacpoole. The man turned rather red, went and looked out of all the windows, one after another, lifted up theheavy cloth of the large table in the room, and peeped under itnervously, and finally walked up to Mr. Stacpoole and paid the money. The receipt being handed to him, he put it back with his hand, eyed itaskance as if it were a bomb, and finally took it, and carefully put itinto the lining of his hat, after which, opening the door with a greatnoise, he exclaimed as he went out, "I'm very, very sorry, master, thatI can't meet you about it!" This man is now as loud in protestation ofhis "inability" to pay his rent as any of the "Campaigners. " Mr. Stacpoole thinks one great danger of the actual situation is that menwho were originally "coerced" by intimidation into dishonestly refusingto pay just rents, which they were abundantly able to pay, are beginningnow to think that they will be, and ought to be, relieved by the law ofthe land from any obligation to pay these rents. 

It seems to be his impression that things look better, however, of latefor law and order. On Monday of last week at Ennis an example was madeof a local official, which, he thinks, will do good. This was a Poor-LawGuardian named Grogan. He was bound over on Monday last to keep thepeace for twelve months towards one George Pilkington. Pilkington, itappears, in contempt of the League, took and occupied, in 1886, acertain farm in Tarmon West. For this he was "boycotted" from that timeforth. In December last he was summoned, with others, before the Boardof Guardians at Kilrush, to fix the rents of certain labourers'cottages. While he sat in the room awaiting the action of the Board, Grogan, one of its members, rose up, and, looking at Pilkington, said ina loud voice, "There's an obnoxious person here present that should notbe here, a land-grabber named Pilkington. " There was a stir in the room, and Pilkington, standing up, said, "I am here because I have had noticefrom the Guardians. If I am asked to leave the place, I shall not comeback. " The Chairman of the Board upon this declared that "while theordinary business of the Board was transacting, Mr. Pilkington would bethere only by the courtesy of the Board;" and treating the allusions ofGrogan to Pilkington as a part of the business of the Board, he said, "Amotion is before the Board, does any one second it?" Another guardian, Collins, got up, and said "I do. " Thereupon the Chairman put it to thevote whether Pilkington should be requested to leave. The ayes had it, and the Chairman of the Board thereupon invited Pilkington to leave themeeting which the Board had invited him to attend!

Grogan has now been prosecuted for the offence of "wrongfully, andwithout legal authority, using violence and intimidation to and towardsGeorge Pilkington of Tarmon West, with a view to cause the saidPilkington to abstain from doing an act which he had a legal right todo, namely, to hold, occupy, and work on a certain farm of land atTarmon West. "

Plainly this case is one of a grapple between the two Governments whichhave been and are now contending for the control of Ireland: theGovernment of the Queen of Ireland, which authorises Pilkington to takeand farm a piece of land, and the Government of the National League, which forbids him to do this. Is it possible to doubt which of the twois the government of Liberty, as well as the government of Law?

It illustrates the demoralising influence upon society in Ireland of theprotracted toleration of such a contest as has been waging between theauthority of the Law and the authority of the League, that, when thiscase came up for consideration ten days ago, an official here actuallythought it ought to be put off. Colonel Turner insisted it should bedealt with at once; and so Mr. Grogan was proceeded against, with theresult I have stated. 

The trees on this demesne are the finest I have so far seen in Ireland, beautiful and vigorous pencil-cedars, ilexes, Scotch firs, and Irishyews. There is one noble cedar of Lebanon here worth a special trip tosee. In conversation about the country to-night, Mr. Stacpoole mentionedthat tobacco was grown here, strong and of good quality, and he was muchinterested, as I remember were also the charming châtelaine of NewtownAnner and Mr. Le Poer of Gurteen four or five years ago, to learn howimmensely successful has been the tobacco-culture introduced intoPennsylvania only a quarter of a century ago, as a consequence of theCivil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not moreunfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were atfirst supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York andLancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshlyas it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irishtobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation asruined the Irish linen industries in the last century. The"Moonlighters" of 1888 lineally represent, if they do not simplyreproduce, the "Whiteboys" of 1760; and the domination of the "uncrownedking" constantly reminds one of Froude's vivid and vigorous sketch ofthe sway wielded by "Captain Dwyer" and "Joanna Maskell" from Mallow toWestmeath, between the years 1762 and 1765. On that side of the quarrelthere seems to be nothing very new under the sun in Ireland. But thespirit and the forms of the Imperial authority over the country haveunquestionably undergone a great change for the better, not only sincethe last century, but since the accession of Queen Victoria. 

Upon the question of land improvements, Mr. Stacpoole told me, to-night, that he borrowed £1000 of the Government for drainage improvements onhis property here, the object of which was to better the holdings oftenants. Of this sum he had to leave £400 undrawn, as he could not getthe men to work at the improvements, even for their own good. They allwanted to be gangers or chiefs. It reminded me of Berlioz's reply to thebourgeois who wanted his son to be made a "great composer. " "Let him gointo the army, " said Berlioz, "and join the only regiment he is fitfor. " "What regiment is that?" "The regiment of colonels. "

In the course of the evening a report was brought out from Ennis toColonel Turner. He read it, and then handed it to me, with anaccompanying document. The latter, at my request, he allowed me to keep, and I must reproduce it here. It tells its own tale. 

A peasant came to the authorities and complained that he was "tormented"to make a subscription to a "testimonial" for one Austen Mackay ofKilshanny, in the County Clare, producing at the same time a copy of thecircular which had been sent about to the people. It is acheaply-printed leaflet, not unlike a penny ballad in appearance, andthus it runs:--

"_Testimonial to_ Mr. AUSTEN MACKAY, _Kilshanny_, _County Clare_. 

"We, the Nationalists and friends of Mr. Austen Mackay, at a meetingheld in March 1887, agreed and resolved on presenting the long-tried andtrusted friend--the persecuted widow's son--with a testimonial worthy ofthe fearless hero who on several occasions had to hide his head in thecaves and caverns of the mountains, with a price set on his body. First, for firing at and wounding a spy in his neighbourhood, as was allegedin '65, for which he had to stand his trial at Clare Assizes. Again, forfiring at and wounding his mother's agent and under-strapper while inthe act of evicting his widowed mother in the broad daylight of Heaven, thus saved his mother's home from being wrecked by the robber agent, theshock of which saved other hearths from being quenched; but the noblewidow's son was chased to the mountains, where he had to seek shelterfrom a thousand bloodhounds. 

"The same true widow's son nobly guarded his mother's homestead and thatof others from the foul hands of the exterminators. This is the samewidow's son who bravely reinstated the evicted, and helped to rebuildthe levelled houses of many; for this he was persecuted and convicted atCork Assizes, and flung into prison to sleep on the cold plank beds ofCork and Limerick gaols. Many other manly and noble services did hewhich cannot be made known to the public. At that meeting you wereappointed collector with other Nationalists of Clare at home and abroad. This is the widow's son, Austen Mackay, whom we, the Committee to thistestimonial, hope and trust every Irishman in Clare will cheerfullysubscribe, that he may be enabled in his present state of health to getinto some business under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, wherehe is a citizen of. "

"Subscriptions to be sent to Henry Higgins, Ennis. 

"Treasurers: Daniel O'Loghlen, Lisdoonvarna; James Kennedy, Ennistymon. "

Then follow, with the name of the Society, the names of the committee. 

In behalf of the Stars and Stripes, "where he is a citizen of, " I thankedColonel Turner for this interesting contribution to the possible futurehistory of my country, there being nothing to prevent the election ofany heir of this illustrious "widow's son, " born to him in America, tothe Presidency of the Republic. The use of this phrase, the "widow'sson, " by the way, gives a semi-masonic character to this curiouscircular. 

One officer says in his report upon this Committee: "All the personsnamed are well known to their respective local police, and, except one, have little or no following or influence in their respective localities. They are all members of the National League. " The same officer subjoinsthis instructive observation: "I beg to add that I find no matter howpopular a man may be in Clare, start a testimonial for him, and fromthat time forth his influence is gone. "

Can it be possible that the "testimonial, " which, as the papers tell me, is getting up all over Ireland for Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, can have been"started" with a sinister eye to this effect, by local patriots jealousof any alien intrusion into their bailiwick? I am almost tempted tosuspect this, remembering that a Nationalist with whom I talked aboutMr. Blunt in Dublin, after lavishing much praise upon his disinteresteddevotion to the cause of Ireland, moodily remarked, "For all that, Idon't believe he will do us any good, for he comes of the blood ofMountjoy, I am told!"

EDENVALE, _Monday, Feb. 20. _--This morning Colonel Turner called myattention to the report in the papers of a colloquy between the ChiefSecretary for Ireland and Mr. J. Redmond, M. P. , in the House, on thesubject of last week's trials at Ennis. In speaking of the boycotting atMilltown Malbay of a certain Mrs. Connell, Mr. Balfour described thecase as one of barbarous inhumanity shown to a helpless old woman. Mr. Redmond denying this, asserted that he had seen the woman Connell afortnight ago in Court, and that so far from her being a decrepit oldwoman, she was only fifty years of age, hale and hearty, butdisreputable and given to drink; he also said she was drunk at thetrial, so drunk that the Crown prosecutor, Mr. Otter, was obliged toorder her down from the table. 

"What are the facts?" I asked. "Mr. Balfour speaks from report andbelief, Mr. Redmond asserts that he speaks from actual observation. "

"The facts, " said Colonel Turner quietly, "are that Mr. Balfour'sstatement is accurate, and that Mr. Redmond, speaking from actualobservation, asserts the thing that is not. "

"Where is this old woman?" I asked. "Would it be possible for me to seeher?"

"Certainly; she is at no great distance, and I will with pleasure send acar with an officer to bring her here this afternoon!"

"Meanwhile, how came the old woman into Court? and what is herconnection with the cases of boycotting last week tried?"

"Those cases arose out of her case, " said Colonel Turner; "the publicanslast week arraigned, 'boycotted' a fortnight ago the police andsoldiers who were called in to keep the peace during the trial of thedealers who 'boycotted' her. 

"Her case was first publicly made known by a letter which appeared inthe Dublin _Express_ on the 28th of January. That day a line was sent tome from Dublin ordering an inquiry into it. I endorsed upon the order, 'Please report. I imagine this is greatly exaggerated. ' This was onJanuary 30th. The next day, January 31st, I received a full report fromMilltown Malbay. Here it is, "--taking a document from a portfolio andhanding it to me--"and you may make what use you like of it. "

It is worth giving at length:--

 "James Connell, ex-soldier, and his mother, Hannah Connell, of Fintamore, in this sub-district are boycotted, and have been since July last. James Connell held a farm and a garden from one Michael Carroll, a farmer, who was evicted from his holding for non-payment of three years' rent, July 14, 1886. After the period of redemption, six months, had passed, the agent made Connell a tenant for his house and garden, giving him in addition about half an acre (Irish) of the evicted farm which adjoins his house. In consequence Connell was regarded by the National League here as a 'land-grabber. ' About the same time the agent also appointed him a rent-warner. 

 "On the 22d June last Connell received a letter through the Post-Office threatening him if he did not give up his place as a rent-warner. I have no doubt the letter was written by (here a resident was named). On the 10th, and again on the 17th, of July, Connell was brought before indoor meetings of the National League here for having taken the half acre of land, when he through fear declared he had not done it. 

 "At the first meeting the Rev. J. S. White, P. P. , suggested that in order to test whether Connell had taken the land, Carroll, the evicted tenant, should go and cut the meadowing on it, which he did, when Connell interfered and prevented him. At the next meeting Carroll brought this under notice, and Connell was thereupon boycotted. Immediately afterwards the men who had been engaged fishing for Connell refused to fish, saying that if they fished for him the sale of the fish would be boycotted, which was true. 

 "Since then Connell has been deprived of his means of livelihood, and no one dare employ him. He, however, through his mother, was able to procure the necessaries of life until about the 22d of November last, when his mother was refused goods by the tradesmen with whom she had dealt, owing to a resolution passed at a meeting of the 'suppressed' branch of the League here, to the effect that any person supplying her would be boycotted. December 23d she came into Milltown Malbay for goods, and was refused. The police accompanied her, but no person would supply her. On the 2d of January she came again, when one trader supplied her with some bread, but refused groceries. The police accompanied her to several traders, who all refused. Ultimately she was supplied by the post-mistress. On the 7th of January she came, and the police accompanied her to several traders, all of whom refused her even bread. Believing she wanted it badly, we, the police, supplied her with some. On these three occasions she was followed by large numbers of young people about the street, evidently to frighten and intimidate her, and their demeanour was so hostile that we were obliged to disperse them and protect her home. On a subsequent occasion she stated that stones were thrown at her. Since then she has not come here for goods, and, in my opinion, it would not be safe for her to do so without protection. She and her son are now getting goods from Mrs. Moroney's shop at Spanish Point, which she opened a few years ago to supply boycotted persons. 

 "The Connells find it hard to get turf, and are obliged to bring it a distance in bags so that it may not be observed. As for milk, the person who did supply them privately for a considerable time declined some weeks ago to do so any longer. They are now really destitute, as any little money Connell had saved is spent, and, although willing and anxious to work, no person will employ him. Summonses have been issued against the tradesmen for refusing to supply Hannah Connell on the occasions already referred to. I have only to add that I have from time to time reported fully the foregoing facts with regard to the persecution of this poor man and his aged mother; and I regret to say that boycotting and intimidation never prevailed to a greater extent here than at present. Connell's safety is being looked after by patrols from this and Spanish Point station. "

Three things seem to me specially noteworthy in this tale of cowardlyand malignant tyranny. The victims of this vulgar Vehmgericht areneither landlords nor agents. They are a poor Irish labourer and hisaged mother. The "crime" for which these poor creatures are thuspersecuted is simply that one of them--the man--chose to obey the law ofthe land in which he lives, and to work for his livelihood and that ofhis mother. And the priest of the parish, instead of sheltering andprotecting these hunted creatures, is presented as joining in the hunt, and actually devising a trap to catch the poor frightened man in afalsehood. 

Upon this third point, a correspondence which passed between FatherWhite and Colonel Turner, after the conviction of the boycotters of Mrs. Connell, and copies of which the latter has handed to me at my request, throws an instructive light. 

When the report of January 31st reached him, Colonel Turner ordered thetradespeople implicated in the persecution to be proceeded against. Sixof them were put on their trials on the 3d and 4th of February. All theshops in Milltown Malbay were closed, by order of the local League, during the trial, and the police and the soldiers called in were refusedall supplies. 

On the 4th, one of the persons arraigned was bound over forintimidation, and the five others were sentenced to three months'imprisonment with hard labour. 

A week later, February 11th, Colonel Turner addressed the followingletter to Father White, twenty-six publicans of Milltown Malbay havingmeanwhile been prosecuted for boycotting the police and the soldiers:--

 "DEAR SIR, --I write to you as a clergyman who possesses great influence with the people in your part of the country, to put it to you whether it would not be better for the interests of all concerned if the contemptible system of petty persecution, called boycotting, were put an end to in and about Milltown Malbay, which would enable me to drop prosecutions. If it is not put a stop to, I am determined to stamp it out, and restore to all the ordinary rights of citizenship. 

 "But I should very greatly prefer that the people should stop it themselves, and save me from taking strong measures, which I should deplore. The story of a number of men combining to persecute a poor old woman is one of the most pitiful I ever heard. --I am, sir, yours truly, ALFRED TURNER. "

As the cost of the extra policemen sent to Milltown Malbay at this timefalls upon the people there, this letter in effect offered the priest anopportunity to relieve his parish of a burden as well as to redeem itscharacter. 

The next day Father White replied:--

 "DEAR SIR, --No one living is more anxious for peace in this district than I. During very exciting times I have done my best to keep it free from outrage, and with success, except in one mysterious instance. [20] There is but one obstacle to it now. If ever you can advise Mrs. Moroney to restore the evicted tenant, whose rent you admitted was as high as Colonel O'Callaghan's, I can guarantee on the part of the people the return of good feelings; or, failing that, if she and her employees are content with the goods which she has of all kinds in her own shop, there need be no further trouble. 

 "I have a promise from the people that the police will be supplied for the future. This being so, if you will kindly have prosecutions withdrawn, or even postponed for say a month, it will very much strengthen me in the effort I am making to calm down the feeling. Regarding Mrs. Connell, the head-constable was told by me that she was to get goods, and she did get bread, till the police went round with her. This upset my arrangements, as I had induced the people to give her what she might really want. In fact she was a convenience to Mrs. Moroney for obvious reasons, and her son is now in her employment in place of Kelly, who has been dismissed since his very inconvenient evidence. It is, and was, well known they were not starving as they said, they having a full supply of their accustomed food. --Thanking you for your great courtesy, I am, dear sir, truly yours, "J. White. "

On the 14th Colonel Turner replied:--

 "My dear Sir, --We cannot adjourn the cases. But if those who are prosecuted are prepared to make reparation by promising future good conduct in Court, I can then see my way to interfere, and to prevent them from suffering imprisonment. 

 "These cases have nothing whatever to do with Mrs. Moroney. [21] They are simply between the defendants and the police and other officials, who were at Milltown Malbay that day. I am greatly pleased at your evident wish to co-operate with me in calming down the ill-feeling which unfortunately exists, and I am satisfied that success will attend our efforts. "

On Thursday and Friday last, as I have recorded, the cases came on ofthe twenty-six publicans charged. Between February 4th, when theoffences were committed, and the 17th of February, one of thesepublicans had died, one had fled to America, and there proved to be aninformality in the summons issued against a third. Twenty-three onlywere put upon their trial. As I have stated, one was acquitted and theothers were found guilty, and sentenced to be imprisoned. In accordancewith his promise made to Father White, Colonel Turner offered to relievethem all of the imprisonment if they would sign an undertaking in Courtnot to repeat the offence. Ten, the most prosperous and substantial ofthe accused, accepted this offer and signed, as has been already stated. One, a woman, was discharged without being required to sign theguarantee, the other eleven refused to sign, and were sent to prison. Father White, whose own evidence given at the trial, as his letter toColonel Turner would lead one to expect, had gone far to prove theexistence of the conspiracy, encouraged the eleven in their attitude. 

This was his way of "co-operating" with Colonel Turner to "calm down theill-feeling which exists"!

During the morning Mrs. Stacpoole sent for the clerk and manager of theestate, and asked him to show me the books. He is a native of theseparts, by name Considine, and has lived at Edenvale for eighteen years. In his youth he went out to America, but there found out that he had a"liver, " an unpleasant discovery, which led him to return to the land ofhis birth, and to the service of Mr. Stacpoole. He is perfectly familiarwith the condition of the country here, and as the accounts of thisestate are kept minutely and carefully from week to week, he was ablethis morning to show me the current prices of all kinds of farm produceand of supplies in and about Ennis--not estimated prices, but pricesactually paid or received in actual transactions during the last tenyears. I am surprised to see how narrow has been the range of localvariations during that time; and I find Mr. Considine inclined to thinkthat the farmers here have suffered very little, if at all, from thesefluctuations, making up from time to time on their reduced expenses whatthey have lost through lessened receipts. The expenses of the landlordhave however increased, while his receipts have fallen off. In 1881Edenvale paid out for labour £466, 0s. 1-1/2d. , in 1887 £560, 6s. 3-1/2d. , though less labour was employed in 1887 than in 1881. The wagesof servants, where any change appears, have risen. In 1881 a gardenerreceived £14 a year, in 1888 he receives 15s. A week, or at the rate of£39 a year. A housemaid receiving £12 a year in 1881, receives now £17 ayear. A butler receiving in 1881 £26 a year, now receives £40 a year. Akitchen maid receiving in 1881 £6, now receives £10, 10s. A year. Meanwhile, the Sub-Commissioners are at this moment cutting down theEdenvale rents again by £190, 3s. 2d. , after a walk over the property inthe winter. Yet in July 1883 Mr. Reeves, for the Sub-Commission, "thought it right to say there was no estate in the County Clare sofairly rented, to their knowledge, or where the tenants had less causefor complaint. " In but one case was a reduction of any magnitude made bythe Commission of 1883, and in one case that Commission actuallyincreased the rent from £11, 10s. To £16. In January 1883 the rental ofthis property was £4065, 5s. 1d. The net reduction made by theCommissioners in July 1883 was £296, 14s. 0-1/2d. 

After luncheon a car came up to the mansion, bringing a stalwart, good-natured-looking sergeant of police, and with him the boycotted oldwoman Mrs. Connell and her son. The sergeant helped the old woman downvery tenderly, and supported her into the house. She came in with sometrepidation and uneasiness, glancing furtively all about her, with thelook of a hunted creature in her eyes. Her son, who followed her, wasmore at his ease, but he also had a worried and careworn look. Both werewarmly but very poorly clad, and both worn and weatherbeaten of aspect. The old woman might have passed anywhere for a witch, so wizened andweird she was, of small stature, and bent nearly double by years andrheumatism. Her small hands were withered away into claws, and her headwas covered with a thick and tangled mat of hair, half dark, half grey, which gave her the look almost of the Fuegian savages who come off fromthe shore in their flat rafts and clamour to you for "rum" in theStraits of Magellan. Her eyes were intensely bright, and shone like hotcoals in her dusky, wrinkled face. It was a raw day, and she came inshivering with the cold. It was pathetic to see how she positivelygloated with extended palms over the bright warm, fire in thedrawing-room, and clutched at the cup of hot tea which my kind hostessinstantly ordered in for her. 

This was the woman of whom Mr. Redmond wrote to Mr. Parnell that she was"an active strong dame of about fifty. " When Mr. Balfour, in Parliament, described her truly as a "decrepit old woman of eighty, " Mr. Redmondcontradicted him, and accused her of being "the worse for liquor" in apublic court. 

"How old is your mother?" I asked her son. 

"I am not rightly sure, sir, " he replied, "but she is more than eighty. "

"The man himself is about fifty, " said the sergeant; "he volunteered togo to the Crimean War, and that was more than thirty years ago!"

"I did indeed, sir, " broke in the man, "and it was from Cork I went. AndI'd be a corpse now if it wasn't for the mercy of God and theprotection. God bless the police, sir, that protected my old mother, sir, and me. That Mr. Redmond, sir, they read me what he said, and surehe should be ashamed of his shadow, to get up there in Parliament, andtell those lies, sir, about my old mother!" I questioned Connell as tohis relations with Carroll, the man who brought him before the League. He was a labourer holding a bit of ground under Carroll. Carroll refusedto pay his own rent to the landlord. But he compelled Connell to payrent to him. When Carroll was evicted, the landlord offered to letConnell have half an acre more of land. He took it to better himself, and "how did he injure Carroll by taking it?" How indeed, poor man! Washe a rent-warner? Yes; he earned something that way two or three timesa year; and for that he had to ask the protection of the police--"theywould kill him else. " What with worry and fright, and the loss of hislivelihood, this unfortunate labourer has evidently been broken downmorally and physically. It is impossible to come into contact with suchliving proofs of the ineffable cowardice and brutality of this businessof "boycotting" without indignation and disgust. 

While Connell was telling his pitiful tale a happy thought occurred tothe charming daughter of the house. Mrs. Stacpoole is a clever amateurin photography. "Why not photograph this 'hale and hearty woman offifty, ' with her son of fifty-three?" Mrs. Stacpoole clapped her handsat the idea, and went off at once to prepare her apparatus. 

While she was gone the sergeant gave me an account of the trial, whichMr. Redmond, M. P. , witnessed. He was painfully explicit. "Mr. Redmondknew the woman was sober, " he said; "she was lifted up on the table atMr. Redmond's express request, because she was so small and old, andspoke in such a low voice that he could not hear what she said. Connellhad always been a decent, industrious fellow--a fisherman. But for thelady, Mrs. Moroney, he and his mother would have starved, and wouldstarve now. As for the priest, Father White, Connell went to him to askhis intercession and help, but he could get neither. "

The sergeant had heard Father White preach yesterday. "It was a curioussermon. He counselled peace and forbearance to the people, because theymight be sure the wicked Tory Government would very soon fall!"

Presently the sun came out with golden glow, and with the sun came outMrs. Stacpoole. It was a job to "pose" the subjects, the old womanevidently suspecting some surgical or legal significance in themachinery displayed, and her son finding some trouble in making herunderstand what it meant. But finally we got the tall, personablesergeant, with his frank, shrewd, sensible face, to put himself betweenthe two, in the attitude as of a guardian angel; the camera was nimblyadjusted, and lo! the thing was done. 

Mrs. Stacpoole thinks the operation promises a success. I suppose itwould hardly be civil to send a finished proof of the group to Mr. J. Redmond, M. P. 

APPENDIX. 

NOTE A. 

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE AMERICAN WAR. (Prologue, p. Xxix. )

This statement as to the action of Lord Palmerston in connection withMr. Gladstone's Newcastle speech of October 7th, 1862, made upon theauthority of a British public man whose years and position entitle himto speak with confidence on such a subject, appeared to me of so muchinterest, that after sending it to the printer I caused search to bemade for the speech referred to as made by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. My informant's statement was that Lord Palmerston insisted that SirGeorge Lewis should find or make an immediate opportunity of coveringwhat Mr. Gladstone had said at Newcastle. He was angry about it, and hisanger was increased by an article which Mr. Delane printed in the_Times_, intimating that Mr. Gladstone's speech was considered by manypeople to be a betrayal of Cabinet secrets. Sir George Lewis was farfrom well (he died the next spring), and reluctant to do what his chiefwished; but he did it on the 17th of October 1862 in a speech atHereford. Mr. Milner-Gibson was also put forward to the same end, andafter Parliament met, in February 1863, Mr. Disraeli gave theGovernment a sharp lashing for sending one or two Ministers into thecountry in the recess to announce that the Southern States would berecognised, and then putting forward the President of the Board of Trade(Milner-Gibson) to attack the Southern States and the pestilentinstitution of slavery. Mr. Gladstone's speech at Newcastle, coming asit did from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after the close of asession during which everybody knew that the Emperor of the French hadbeen urging upon England the recognition of the Confederate States, andthat Mr. Mason had been in active correspondence on that subject withLord Russell, was taken at Newcastle, and throughout the country, tomean that the recognition was imminent. Mr. Gladstone even went so faras to say he rather rejoiced that the Confederates had not been able tohold Maryland, as that might have made them aggressive, and so made asettlement more difficult, it being, he said, as certain as anything inthe future could be that the South must succeed in separating itselffrom the Union. This remark about Maryland distinctly indicatedconsultation as to what limits and boundaries between the South and theNorth should be recognised in the recognition, and on that account, itseems, was particularly resented by Earl Russell as well as by LordPalmerston. 

Sir George Cornewall Lewis's speech of October 17, 1862, was a mostskilful and masterly attempt to protect the Cabinet against theconsequences of what the _Times_, on the 9th of October, had treated asthe "indiscretion or treason" of his colleague. But it did not save theGovernment from the scourge of Mr. Disraeli, or much mitigate the effectin America of Mr. Gladstone's performance at Newcastle, which was a muchmore serious matter from the American point of view than any of thespeeches recently delivered about "Home Rule" in the American Senatecan be fairly said to be from the British point of view. 

NOTE B. 

MR. PARNELL AND THE DYNAMITERS. (Prologue, p. Xxxiii. )

The relation of Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates to what iscalled the extreme and "criminal" section of the Irish AmericanRevolutionary Party can only be understood by those who understand thatit is the ultimate object of this party not to effect reforms in theadministration of Ireland as an integral part of the British Empire, butto sever absolutely the political connection between Ireland and theBritish Empire. Loyal British subjects necessarily consider this objecta "criminal" object, just as loyal Austrian subjects considered theobject of the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 to be a "criminal" object. But the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 did not accept this view of theirobject. On the contrary, they held their end to be so high and holy thatit more or less sanctified even assassination when planned as a means tothat end. Why should the Italian Revolutionists of 1848 be judged by onestandard and the Irish Revolutionists of 1888 by another?

If Mr. Parnell and his Parliamentary associates were to declare inunequivocal terms their absolute loyalty to the British Crown, and theirdetermination to maintain in all circumstances the political connectionbetween Great Britain and Ireland, they might or might not retain theirhold upon Mr. Davitt and upon their constituents in Ireland, but theywould certainly put themselves beyond the pale of support by the greatIrish American organisations. Nor do I believe they could retain theconfidence of those organisations if it were supposed that they reallyregarded the most extreme and violent of the Irish Revolutionists, the"Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" as "criminals, " in the sense in whichthe "Invincibles" and the "dynamiters" are so regarded by the rest ofthe civilised world. Can it, for example, be doubted that any English orScottish public man who co-operates with Mr. Parnell and hisParliamentary associates would instantly hand over to the police any"Invincible" or "dynamiter" who might come within his reach? And can itfor a moment be believed that Mr. Parnell, or any one of hisParliamentary associates, would do this? There are thousands of Irishcitizens in the United States who felt all the horror and indignationexpressed by Mr. Parnell at the murders in the Phoenix Park, but Ishould be very much surprised to learn that any one of them all everdid, or ever would do, anything likely to bring any one of the authorsof these murders to the bar of justice. Mr. Parnell and hisParliamentary associates are held and bound by the essential conditionsof their political existence to treat with complaisance the most extremeand violent men of their party. Nor is this true of them alone. 

There is no more respectable body of men in the United States than theHibernian Society of Philadelphia. This society was instituted in 1771, five years before the declaration of American Independence. It is acharitable and social organisation only, with no political object orcolour. It is made up of men of character and substance. Its custom hasalways been to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by a banquet, to which themost distinguished men of the country have repeatedly been bidden. Immediately after the inauguration of Mr. Cleveland as President, onthe 4th of March 1885, Mr. Bayard, the new Secretary of State of theUnited States, was invited by this Society to attend its one hundred andfourteenth banquet. It will be remembered that, on the 30th of May 1884, London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuriesupon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as thatexplosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a"practical joke. " But it excited lively indignation on both sides of theAtlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the UnitedStates, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of theAmerican Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right torepeat as the Foreign Secretary of the United States in his reply to theinvitation of the Hibernian Society in March 1885. This reply ran asfollows:--

 "WASHINGTON, D. C. , _March_ 9, 1885. 

 "NICHOLAS J. GRIFFIN, Esq. , _Secretary of the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia. _

 "Dear Sir, --I have your personal note accompanying the card of invitation to dine with your ancient and honourable Society on their one hundred and fourteenth anniversary, St. Patrick's Day, and I sincerely regret that I cannot accept it. The obvious and many duties of my public office here speak for themselves, and to none with more force than to American citizens of Irish blood or birth who are honestly endeavouring to secure liberty by maintaining a government of laws, and who realise the constant attention that is needful. 

 "In the midst of anarchical demonstrations which we witness in other lands, and the echoes of which we can detect even here in our own free country, where base and silly individuals seek to stain the name of Ireland by associating the honest struggle for just government with senseless and wicked crimes, there are none of our citizens from whom honest reprobation can be more confidently expected than from such as compose your respected and benevolent Society. Those who worthily celebrate the birthday[22] of St. Patrick will not forget that he drove out of Ireland the reptiles that creep and sting. 

 "The Hibernian Society can contain no member who will not resent the implication that sympathy with assassins can dwell in a genuine Irish heart, which will ever be opposed to cruelty and cowardice, whatever form either may take. 

 "Present to your Society my thanks for the kind remembrance, and assure them of the good-will and respect with which I am--Your obedient servant, T. F. BAYARD. "

What was the response of this Society, representing all the bestelements of the Irish American population of the United States, to thisletter of the Secretary of State, the highest executive officer of theAmerican Government after the President, upon whom under an existing lawthe succession of the chief magistracy now devolves in the event of thedeath or disability of the President and the Vice-President?

_The letter was not read at the banquet. _

But it was given to the press by the officers of the Society, and themost influential Irish American newspaper in the United States did nothesitate to describe it as an "insulting letter, " going to show that itsauthor was "an Englishman in spirit who will not allow any opportunityto go by, however slight, without testifying his sympathy with theBritish Empire and his antipathy for its foes. "

This was capped by an American political journal which used thefollowing language: "Lord Granville himself would hardly strike a moreviolent attitude against the dynamite section of the Irish people. WhenLord Wolseley, whom it is proposed to make Governor-General of theSoudan, is offering a reward for the head of Ollivier Pain, it is hardlyin good taste for an American Secretary of State to condemn so bitterlya class of Irishmen which, while it includes bad men no doubt, alsoincludes men who are moved by as worthy motives as Lord Wolseley. "

In the face of this testimony to the "solidarity" of all branches of theIrish revolutionary movement in America, how can Mr. Parnell, or anyother Parliamentary Irishman who depends upon Irish American support, beexpected by men of sense to condemn in earnest "the dynamite section ofthe Irish people"?

NOTE C. 

THE AMERICAN "SUSPECTS" OF 1881. (Prologue, p. Xlvii. )

In his recently published and very interesting _Life of Mr. Forster_, Mr. Wemyss Reid alludes to some action taken by the United StatesGovernment in the spring of 1882 as one of the determining forces whichbrought about the abandonment at that time by Mr. Gladstone of Mr. Forster's policy in Ireland. Without pretending to concern myself herewith what is an essentially British question as between Mr. Forster andMr. Gladstone, it may be both proper and useful for me to throw somelight, not, perhaps, in the possession of Mr. Reid, upon the part takenin this matter by the American Government. Sir William Harcourt's"Coercion Bill" was passed on the 2d of March 1881, two days before theinauguration of General Garfield as President of the United States. Mr. Blaine, who was appointed by the new President to take charge of theForeign Relations of the American Government, received, on the 10th ofMarch, at Washington, a despatch written by Mr. Lowell, the AmericanMinister in London, on the 26th of February, being the day after thethird reading in the Commons of the "Coercion Bill. " In this despatchMr. Lowell called the attention of the American State Department to aletter from Mr. Parnell to the Irish National Land League, dated atParis, February 13, 1881, in which Mr. Parnell attempted to make whatMr. Lowell accurately enough described as an "extraordinary" distinctionbetween "the American people" and "the Irish nation in America. "

"This double nationality, " said Mr. Lowell, "is likely to be of greatpractical inconvenience whenever the 'Coercion Bill' becomes law. " By"this double nationality" in this passage, the American Minister, ofcourse, meant "this claim of a double nationality;" for neither by GreatBritain nor by the United States is any man permitted to considerhimself at one and the same time a citizen of the American republic anda subject of the British monarchy. Nor was he quite right inanticipating "great practical inconvenience" from this "claim, " uponwhich neither the British nor the American Government for a momentbestowed, or could bestow, the slightest attention. 

The "great practical inconvenience" which, first to the AmericanLegation in England, then to the United States Government at Washington, and finally to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone, did, however, arise fromthe application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 toAmerican citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell'spreposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States, but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to dealpromptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens inIreland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt's Act. 

As I have said, Sir William Harcourt's Act became law on the 2d ofMarch 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield atWashington. Without touching the question of the relations between GreatBritain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the IrishNational Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary ofState of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days afterSir William Harcourt's Bill went into force in Ireland, to informhimself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Billupon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling orsojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Governmentand to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist betweenhis own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affairof an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further theexecution of "Coercion Acts" in Ireland against British subjects. But itwas his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure ofany new and unusual perils, or "inconveniences, " to which Americancitizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by theBritish authorities of such Acts. 

And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the AmericanMinister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so muchas seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act at that date, three months after it had gone into effect; three months after manypersons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisonedunder it; and two months after his own official attention had beencalled by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, tothe arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who basedhis claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military serviceduring the Civil War, of residence and citizenship in New York, and ofthe granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen'spassport. And when he did finally take the trouble to look at this Act, Mr. Elaine seems to have examined it so cursorily, and with such slightattention, that he overlooked a provision made in it, under which, hadits true force and meaning been perceived by him, the State Departmentof the United States might, in the early summer of 1881, have securedfor American citizens in Ireland the consideration due to them as thecitizens of a friendly State. A curious despatch from Mr. SackvilleWest, the British Minister at Washington, to Earl Granville, publishedin a British Blue-book now in my possession, plainly intimates that inthe summer of 1881 the American Secretary of State had given the BritishMinister to understand that no representations made to him or to hisGovernment by the Government of the United States touchingAmerican-Irish "suspects" need be taken at all seriously. The wholediplomatic correspondence on this subject which went on between the twoGovernments while Mr. Blaine was Secretary of State, from the 4th ofMarch 1881 to the 20th of December 1881, was of a sort to lull theBritish Government into the belief that "suspects" might be freely andsafely arrested and locked up all over Ireland, with no more question oftheir nationality than of any evidence to establish their guilt or theirinnocence. During the whole of that time the State Department atWashington seems to have substantially remained content with thedeclaration of Earl Granville, in a letter sent to the American Legationon the 8th of July 1881, four months after the Coercion Act went intoeffect, that "no distinction could be made in the circumstances betweenforeigners and British subjects, and that in the case of Britishsubjects the only information given was that contained in the warrant. "

No fault can be found with the British Government for standing by thisdeclaration so long as it thus seemed to command the assent of theGovernment of the United States. 

But when Mr. Frelinghuysen was called into the State Department byPresident Arthur in December 1881, to overhaul the condition into whichour foreign relations had been brought by his predecessor, he found thatin no single instance had Mr. Blaine succeeded in inducing the BritishGovernment, either to release any American citizen arrested under ageneral warrant without specific charges of criminal conduct, and on"suspicion" in Ireland, or to order the examination of any such citizen. The one case in which an American citizen arrested under the CoercionAct in Ireland during Mr. Blaine's tenure of office had been liberatedwhen Mr. Frelinghuysen took charge of the State Department, was that ofMr. Joseph B. Walsh, arrested at Castlebar, in Mayo, March 8, 1881, anddischarged by order of the Lord-Lieutenant, October 21, 1881, notbecause he was an American citizen, nor after any examination, butexpressly and solely on the ground of ill-health. 

When Mr. Frelinghuysen became Secretary of State in December 1881 theCongress of the United States was in session. So numerous were theAmerican "suspects" then lying in prison in Ireland, some of whom hadbeen so confined for many months, that the doors of Congress were soonbesieged by angry demands for an inquiry into the subject. A resolutionin this sense was adopted by the House of Representatives, andforwarded, through the American Legation in London, to the BritishForeign Office. Memorials touching particular cases were laid beforeboth Houses of the American Congress. On the 10th of February 1882, Mr. Bancroft Davis, the Assistant-Secretary of State, instructed theAmerican Minister at London to take action concerning one such case, andto report upon it. The Minister not moving more rapidly than he had beenaccustomed to do under Mr. Blaine, Mr. Davis grew impatient, and on the2d of March 1882 (being the anniversary of the adoption of the CoercionAct in England) the American Secretary of State cabled to the Ministerin London significantly enough, "Use all diligence in regard to the latecases, especially of Hart and M'Sweeney, and report by cable. "

Mr. Lowell replied the next day, giving the views in regard to Hart ofthe American Vice-Consul, and of the British Inspector of Police atQueenstown, and adding an expression of his own opinion that neitherHart nor M'Sweeney was "more innocent than the majority of those underarrest. "

This was an unfortunate despatch. It roused the American Secretary ofState into responding instantly by cable in the following explicit andemphatic terms: "Referring to the cases of O'Connor, Hart, M'Sweeney, M'Enery, and D'Alton, American citizens imprisoned in Ireland, say toLord Granville that, without discussing whether the provisions of theForce Act can be applied to American citizens, the President hopes thatthe Lord-Lieutenant will be instructed to exercise the powers intrustedto him by the first section to order early trials in these and all othercases in which Americans may be arrested. "

There was no mistaking the tone of this despatch. It was instantlytransmitted to the British Foreign Secretary, who replied the same daythat "the matter would receive the immediate attention of Her Majesty'sGovernment. "

The reference made to the Coercion Act by Mr. Frelinghuysen touched aplain and precise provision, that persons detained under the Act"should not be discharged or tried by any court without the direction ofthe Lord-Lieutenant. " Had the Coercion Act received from Mr. Blaine inMarch 1881 the attention bestowed upon it in March 1882 by Mr. Frelinghuysen, this provision might have been used to obviate thedangerous accumulation of injustice to individuals, and of internationalirritation, resulting from the application to possibly innocent foreigncitizens in Ireland of the despotic powers conferred by that Act uponMr. Gladstone's Government, powers as nearly as possible analogous withthose which Mr. Gladstone himself, years before, had denounced inunmeasured terms when they were claimed and exercised by the Governmentof Naples in dealing with its own subjects. 

After the consideration by Her Majesty's Government of this despatch ofthe United States Government, it is understood in America that Mr. Forster, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, was invited to communicate withthe Lord-Lieutenant, and request him to exercise his discretion in thesense desired, and that Mr. Forster positively refused to do this. 

How this may be I do not pretend to say. But as no satisfactory replywas made to the American despatch, and as public feeling in the UnitedStates grew daily more and more determined that a stop should be put tothe unexplained arrest and the indefinite detention of American citizensin Ireland, the American Secretary of State made up his mind towards theend of the month of March to repeat his despatch of March 3d in a moreterse and peremptory form. As a final preliminary to this step, however, Mr. Frelinghuysen was induced to avail himself of the unusual andofficious intervention of his most distinguished living predecessor inthe State Department, Mr. Hamilton Fish. After measuring the gravity ofthe situation, Mr. Fish at the end of March sent a despatch to aneminent public man, well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and nowresident in London, with authority to show it personally to Mr. Gladstone, to the effect that if any further delay occurred in complyingwith the moderate and reasonable demand of the American Government forthe immediate release or the immediate trial of the American "suspects, "the relations between Great Britain and the United States would be veryseriously "strained. "

This despatch was at once communicated to Mr. Gladstone. Within theweek, the liberation was announced of six American "suspects. " Within afortnight, Mr. Parnell, Mr. O'Kelly, and Mr. Dillon, it is understood, imprisoned members of Parliament, were offered their liberty if theywould consent to a sham exile on the Continent for a few weeks, or evendays; and within a month Mr. Forster, in his place in Parliament, wasimputing to his late chief and Premier the negotiation of thatcelebrated "Treaty of Kilmainham, " which was repudiated with equalwarmth by the three Irish members already named, and by Mr. Gladstone. 

NOTE D. 

THE PARNELLITES AND THE ENGLISH PARTIES. 

(Prologue, p. 1. )

As I am not writing a history of English parties, I need not discusshere the truth or falsehood of this contention. But I cannot let it passwithout a word as to two cases which came under my own observation, andwhich aggravate the inherent improbability of the tale. In November 1885I went to America, and on my way passed through Stockport, where myfriend, Mr. Jennings, long my correspondent in England, was thenstanding as a Conservative candidate. I attended one of his meetings andheard him make an effective speech, much applauded, which turnedexclusively upon imperial and financial issues. That he had nounderstanding whatever with the "managers" of the Irish vote inStockport, I have the best reason to believe. But he was assured by themthat the Irish intended to vote for him; and at a subsequent time he wasrashly assailed in the House of Commons by an Irish member with thecharge that he had broken faith with the Irish who elected him. It wasan unlucky assault for the assailant, as it gave Mr. Jennings anopportunity, which he promptly improved, to show that he owed nothing tothe Irish voters of Stockport. Whether they voted for him in any numberin 1885 was more than doubtful; while in 1886 they voted solidly againsthim, with the result of swelling his majority from 369 to 518 votes. 

In January 1886 I returned to Europe, and going on a visit intoYorkshire, there met a prominent Irish Nationalist, who told me that hehad come into the north of England expressly to regiment the Irishvoters, and throw their votes for the Conservative candidates, on theground that it was necessary to make the Liberals fully understand theirpower. He had fully expected in this way to elect a Conservative memberfor the city of York. Great was his chagrin, therefore, when he foundthe Liberal candidate returned. Upon investigation he discovered, as hetold me, that the catastrophe was due to the activity of a local Irishpriest, _who was a devoted Fenian_, utterly opposed to the Parliamentaryprogramme, and who had exerted his authority over the local Irish tobring them to the polls for the Liberal candidate. 

Sir Frederick Milner, Bart. , the defeated Conservative candidate forYork, afterwards told me that the local priest referred to here was amost excellent man, and that so far from playing the part thus ascribedto him, he took the trouble, as a matter of fair dealing, to see hisparishioners on the morning of the election and warn them againstbelieving a pamphlet which was sedulously circulated among the Irishvoters on the night before the polling, with a message to the effectthat Sir Frederick despised the Irish, and wanted nothing to do withthem or their votes. Sir Frederick has no doubt, from his knowledge ofwhat occurred during the canvass, that direct instructions were sent byMr. Parnell or his agents to the Irish voters in York to throw theirvotes against the Radical candidates. These latter brought down a HomeRule lecturer to counteract the effect of these instructions, and thepamphlet above referred to was an eleventh-hour blow in the sameinterest. It was successful; the Irish votes, some 500 in number, beingpolled early in the morning under the impression produced by it. Themoral of this incident would seem to be, not that there was any realunderstanding in 1885 between the Parnellites and the EnglishConservatives at all, but simply that the English Radical wirepullersare more alert and active than either the Irish Parnellites or theEnglish Conservatives. It is interesting, too, as it illustrates thedeep dread and distrust of the "Fenians" in which the Parnelliteshabitually go. 

NOTE E. 

THE "BOYCOTT" AT MILTOWN-MALBAY. 

(Vol. I. P. 209. )

Father White of Miltown-Malbay, taking exception to the statement madeby me, upon the authority of Colonel Turner, that he was "the movingspirit" of the local "boycott" of policemen and soldiers at that place, addressed a note to Colonel Turner on the 5th of September, in which hedesired to know whether Colonel Turner, had given me grounds for makingthis statement. To this note Colonel Turner tells me he returned at oncethe following reply, which he kindly forwards to me for publication:--

 "ENNIS, _6th September_ 1888. 

 "REV. SIR, --I am in receipt of your letter of yesterday, and in reply thereto beg to state that I informed Mr. Hurlbert that you said 'in open court' that you had directed (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be 'made as a city of the dead' during the trials of 23 publicans who were charged for conspiracy in boycotting the forces of the Crown who had been employed in preserving the peace on the occasion of a former trial--this you said you did in the interests of peace. The magistrates, however, took a different view, viz. , that it was done with the object of preventing the military and police from obtaining any supplies, which they were unable to do; and that their view was the correct one was proved by the fact that half of the accused pleaded guilty to the offence, and on promise of future good behaviour were allowed out on their own recognisances. That the people followed your instructions on that day, coupled with the fact that in your letter to the _Freeman's Journal_, dated 17th March of this year, you stated that you offered me peace all round on certain conditions, thereby showing that at least you consider yourself possessed of authority to bring about a state of peace or otherwise, probably led Mr. Hurlbert, to whom I showed a copy of this letter, to infer that you admitted that you were the moving spirit of all this 'local boycott, ' while you only did so in the particular case above mentioned. Whether Mr. Hurlbert is correct in drawing the inference he does as to your being the moving spirit, and as to your conduct, may perhaps be gathered from the numerous numbers of _United Ireland_ and other papers which he saw giving reports of illegal meetings of the suppressed branch of the Miltown-Malbay National League, at which you were stated to have presided, and at some of which condemnatory resolutions were passed, and also from the fact that you are reported to have presided at a meeting on Sunday, April 8, which was held at Miltown-Malbay in defiance of Government proclamation. --I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, ALFRED E. TURNER. 

 "Rev. P. White, P. P. , Miltown-Malbay. "

On further investigation of his records, Colonel Turner found itnecessary to follow up this letter with another, a copy of which, through his courtesy, I subjoin:--

 "ENNIS, _10th September_ 1888. 

 "REV. SIR, --A slight inaccuracy has been pointed out to me in my letter to you of the 6th inst. , which I hasten to correct. It occurred in transcribing my letter from the original draft. I should have said that I told Mr. Hurlbert that you stated in open court, at the trial of 23 publicans charged with boycotting the forces of the Crown on the occasion of a former trial, that you had told the people (I believe from the altar) that the town was to be made as a city of the dead during the former trial; and that in consequence the soldiers and police could get nothing to eat or drink in Miltown that day. 

 "I also told him that this boycotting of the police was by no means new, since on the 13th March 1887, at a meeting of the Miltown-Malbay branch of the League at which you are reported to have presided, in _United Ireland_ of 19/3/87, the following resolution was unanimously adopted:--

 "'That from this day any person who supplies the police while engaged in work which is opposed to the wishes of the people with drink, food, or cars, be censured by this branch, and that no further intercourse be held with them. '

 "I regret that through inadvertence I have had to trouble you with a second letter. --I am, Rev. Sir, yours faithfully, "ALFRED E. TURNER. 

 "Rev. P. White, P. P. "

[1] Vol. Ii. P. 376. 

[2] Vol. Ii. P. 364-370. 

[3] The exasperation of the local agitators under the cool anddetermined treatment of Mr. Tener may be measured by the facts stated inthe following communication received by me from Mr. Tener on the 20th ofSeptember. I leave them to speak for themselves:--

 "POLICE BARRACKS, WOODFORD, _17th Sept. _ 1888. 

 "DEAR MR. HURLBERT, --I enclose you _a printed_ placard found posted up in Woodford district on Sunday morning the 9th inst. It alludes to _tenants_ who had paid me their rent, --and broken the 'unwritten law of the League. ' All the men named are now in great danger. The police force of the district has been increased--for their protection; but the police are very anxious about their safety!

 "I send you also a _pencil_ copy taken from a more _perfect_ placard which the police preserve. John White or Whyte is the tenant whose name I already have given you. He is the tall dark man whom you saw (with an ex-bailiff) at Portumna. He was then an "Evicted Tenant. " He has since been, on payment of his rent, restored to his farm by me. And now, as you see in the placard, he is held up to the vengeance of the "League of Hell, " as P. J. Smyth called it. --Yours, etc. 

 "ED. TENER. 

 "_P. S. _--The evictions were finished on the 1st of September, and on the 9th (_after_ it became known that the men whose names are in the placard had paid) the placard was issued. "

 _(Placard. )_

 "IRISHMEN!--Need we say in the face of the desperate Battle the People are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come for every HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand to the MEN in the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The answer is plain. 

 "Let those who have become traitors to their neighbours and their Country be shunned as if they were possessed by a devil. Let no man buy from them or sell to them, let no man work for them. Leave them to Tener and his Emergency gang. The following are a few of the greatest traitors and meanest creatures that ever walked--John Whyte, of Dooras; Fahey (of the hill) of Dooras; big Anthony Hackett, of Rossmore; Tom Moran, of Rossmore! Your Country calls on you to treat them as they deserve. Bravo Woodford! Remember Tom Larkin!--'GOD SAVE IRELAND!'"

[4] Appendix, Note A. 

[5] Appendix, Note B. 

[6] Appendix, Note C. 

[7] Appendix, Note D. 

[8] Since this was written fifteen Catholic bishops in England, headed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, have united (April 12, 1888) in a public protest against the Optional Oaths Bill, in which theysay: "To efface the recognition of God in our public legislature is anact which will surely bring evil consequences. " Yet how can therecognition of God be more effectually "effaced" than by the unqualifiedassertion that the will of the people, or of a majority, is the onelegitimate source of political authority?

[9] Mr. Blair was then a member of the Lincoln Cabinet, and its"fighting member. "

[10] Mr. Quill stated that the Savings-Banks deposits increasedin Ireland during 1887 eight per cent. More than in thrifty Scotland, and _forty per cent. _ more than in England and Wales!

[11] This was the Provost's last appearance in public. He diedrather suddenly a few weeks afterwards. 

[12] In the Census of 1880 it appears that of 255, 741 farms inIllinois, 59, 624 were held on the métayer system, pronounced by Toubeauthe worst of systems, and 20, 620 on a money rental. 

[13] I have since learned that Father M'Fadden sold anotherholding, rental 6s. 8d. , for £80. He has three more holdings fromCaptain Hill, at 15s. , 6s. 8d. , and 11s. 2d. , for which he was inarrears for two years in April 1887, when ejectment decrees wereobtained against him. For his house holding he pays 2s. A year! So hewas really fighting his own battle as a tenant in the Plan of Campaign. 

[14] Yet of Connemara, Cardinal Manning, in his letter to theArchbishop of Armagh, August 31, 1873, cites the "trust-worthy" evidenceof "an Englishman who had raised himself from the plough's tail, " andwho had gone "to see with his own eyes the material condition of thepeasantry in Ireland. " It was to the effect that in abundance andquality of food, in rate of wages, and even if the comfort of theirdwellings, the working men of Connemara were better off than theagricultural labourers of certain English counties. 

[15] For this holding, of 10 Irish acres, I have since learnedthe widow O'Donnell pays 10s. A year. She is in the receipt of outdoorrelief, there being fever in the house (May 1888). 

[16] This "townland" is a curious use of a Saxon term todescribe a Celtic fact. The territory of an Irish sept seems to havebeen divided up into "townlands, " each townland consisting of four, orin some cases six, groups of holdings, occupied by as many families ofthe "sept. " The chief of the "sept" divided up each "townland"periodically among these groups, while the common fields were cut upamong the families as they increased and multiplied according to thesystem--against which Lord George Hill battled at Gweedore--known as"rimdale" or "rundeal, " from the Celtic, "ruindioll, " a "partition" or"man's share. " This is quite unlike the Russian "mir" or collectivevillage, and not more like the South Slav "zadruga" which makes eachfamily a community, the land belonging to all, as, according to M. Eugene Simon, it does in China. But it is as inconsistent with HenryGeorge's State ownership of the land or the rents as either of thosesystems. 

[17] From a question just asked (July 12) in the House ofCommons, and answered by the Postmaster-General, I gather that this"local question" has been further complicated by the removal of Mr. Sweeney, the sub-postmaster, under an official regulation. 

[18] The incident occurred in Clare. See p. 45. 

[19] Or they may date back to the Parliament of Grattan, whowrote to Mr. Guinness that he regarded the brewery of Ireland as "theactual nurse of the people, and entitled to every encouragement, favour, and exemption. "

[20] This refers, I am told, to the murder, in open daylight, in 1881, of an old man, Linnane, who acted as a "caretaker" for Mrs. Moroney. It should gratify Father White to know that, as I am nowinformed (May 21, 1888), a clue has just been found to the assassins, who appear to have received the same price for doing their work that waspaid the murderers of Fitzmaurice. 

[21] Mrs. Moroney, so often referred to here, is the widow of agentleman formerly High Sheriff and Deputy-Lieutenant for the CountyClare, who died in 1870. She lives at Milton House, and has fought thelocal League steadily and successfully.