, entrusting us as we grow stronger
with heavier tasks. Give us Home Rule at this moment and you ruin us.
We should have several factions, more intent on getting power and in
damaging each other, than on solving all or any of the very
complicated and difficult questions which would come before them.
There would be no spirit of mutual accommodation such as prevails in
English assemblies. And our troubles would be your troubles. Keep it
back for a few years, and lead us up to Home Rule by easy gradations.

"My anti-Parnellite friends say they will not return the members now
representing them. I believe they will. And if not, then they will
send others of no better social standing, and with no Parliamentary
training at all. They will send worse men, extreme men, men who have
not pledged themselves to the British Government. The pledges of
Dillon and Davitt--what are they worth? Surely nobody is so foolish as
to rely on such 'safeguards' as these.

"I am sure that three-fourths of the educated Catholics of Ireland are
at this moment opposed to Home Rule in any shape or form, but--they
dare not say so. Ireland is a land of tyranny, clerical tyranny.
Ireland will not be free until the clergy withdraw their influence
from politics. If they continue in their present course, there will be
a reaction as education advances, and their last state will be worse
than the first. I know that some of them would gladly drop politics,
but they have to look to their bishops."

A Nationalist tradesman said:--"The Protestants are favoured in every
way. Statistics recently given in the _Freeman_ show that the money
annually paid to the favoured few, who hold appointments which ought
to be open to all, amount to five pounds a head for every Protestant
man, woman, and child in the country. The same favouritism runs
through everything. If a Catholic bids for a field of grass a
Protestant bid is taken, even if lower. I saw it done yesterday."

My friend lost his temper when I asked him to say why the heretic
farmers were thriving while those of the true faith were starving, why
the heretics were clean while the others were dirty. He at last said
that the British Government subsidised all Soupers out of the secret
service money, and making a contemptuous grimace, to express his
opinion of such miscreants, curled up his hand and passed it behind
his back, thus dramatically indicating the underhand way in which the
money is conveyed to the favour