em rich without work.
Or you could make a law which required every priest in the country to
clear out in twenty-four hours, on penalty of death. That is as
impossible as sinking the island, but it would be quite as sure a
cure. Those are my opinions, and those must be the opinions of every
man who has lived here and looked about him for a reasonable length of
time. The Scots Gladstonians are very decent folk. They mean well, and
they are friendly to Ireland. Their only fault lies in following their
hero, and in thinking that he cannot do wrong. If they knew what I
know, they would be of my mind. For I was as great a Gladstonian as
any of them."

A Presbyterian farmer said:--"On this estate the whole of the tenants
are Presbyterians. The agent told me that early in June the whole of
the rents up to May were paid, and that he would think that there was
not such another case in Ireland. How is that? Well, if the tenants
had been Romanists they would have so many things to pay. The priests
live like fighting cocks. Father McFadden, of Gweedore, makes from a
thousand to fifteen hundred a year. That is the man on whose door-step
Inspector Martin was murdered. The crowd beat out his brains with
palings, and when he tried to get into the priest's house, the door
was shut in his face. The clergy live well, and drink like troopers.
The easiest job in Ireland, and--if your conscience would allow
it--the best in every way. You are treated with great respect, you
have great influence, you have nothing to do, and you are extremely
well paid for it. Sometimes I think that humbug pays better than hard
work. The priests do _not_ look after the poor. They do _not_ work
among the destitute and ignorant after the fashion of the English
clergy. They are always extracting, extracting, extracting. The poor
are ground down by their exactions till they can't pay their rent. And
that is why the agent said that probably no other estate in Ireland
could show such a record as ours.

"Home Rule will not satisfy the people. An Irish Parliament will do
them no good, no, nor fifty Irish Parliaments. They are unfriendly to
England because she is Protestant. People of the only true faith
cannot bear to be governed by a heretic nation. The laws are all
right, and they know it, but their animosity is excited by stories of
wrong-doing in their forefathers' days, and while on the one hand they
feel that they might easily be better off, on the other they ar