ing the Finnigan's
wake business with the furniture legs of the College Green Lunatic
Asylum, even then we would not take it seriously. We shall never think
it worth while to be serious until we see the British army firing on
us. It's too ridiculous. We pay no attention to the Irish Nationalist
members, whom we regard as a bankrupt lot of bursted windbags. Why,
hardly one of them could be trusted with the till of a totty-wallop
shop. To how many of them would Gladstone lend a sovereign? How many
of them could get tick in London for a new rig-out? Dublin is out of
the question, of course, because in Dublin these statesmen are known.
Would Englishmen let such men govern their country? Not likely. Nor
will we."

I submitted that, so far as at present enacted, these very heroes were
really going to govern both England and Ireland. The great organ of
English Roman Catholicism objecting to this has given great offence to
the Irish Papists, and the Nationalist press is shrieking with futile
rage. English Catholicism and Irish Catholicism seem to be entirely
different politically. Englishmen are Englishmen first, and Catholics
next. Irishmen look first to Rome, and cordially hate England,--there
is the difference. The Conservative Catholic organ says, referring to
the retention of members at Westminster:--

"With just as much reason might we import a band of eighty South
Africans, and whether they were eighty Zulus or eighty Archangels in
disguise, their presence in the British House of Commons would be a
gross violation of the principles of representative government. At
present, as members of the common Parliament of an United Kingdom,
English and Irish members have correlative rights, but when Irish
affairs are withdrawn from the Parliament at Westminster, on that day
must the Irish members cease to take part in purely British
legislation. We are asked to grant Home Rule to Ireland in deference
to the wishes of the local majority, and then we are told we must let
the local majority in Great Britain be dictated to by eighty men who
have neither stake in the country nor business in her Parliament, and
who do not represent so much as even a rotten borough between them."

My Warrenpoint friend may well say that he cannot take it seriously.
The dignity of the English Parliament is, however, a matter of great
concern to Englishmen, and that for the present seems consigned to the
charge of Dillon, Healy, and Co. And all to furthe