6 bill, and the Belfast man drew in his horns. He told me that
he would not risk a farthing in any speculative venture while the
threat of Home Rule was held over us. He was quite right. The
Ballyshannon men were relieved from the trouble of deciding how they
would spend their surplus money, and they ranged themselves on the
bridge or at their usual corners, where you may now see them, propping
up the old houses with their lazy backs, and discussing the wrongs of
Ireland. What they would do without their supposed, wrongs nobody
knows. In English hands this would be a money-making place. We have
enormous advantages of situation, and the water power is almost
unequalled in Ireland. Yet from here to Belleek, a distance of four
miles, there is nothing whatever being done with it.

"The backwardness of the Irish and their poverty are, in my opinion,
due to their inferiority as a race of men. Wherever there is a
factory, you will find all the foremen Protestants--that is, Saxons.
And Irishmen expect it. They will not work under Irish foremen, if
they can help it. The Catholic labourer will work for the Protestant
farmer, for choice, every time. The Catholic housekeeper goes to the
Protestant shop, by preference. Where their own personal and earthly
interests are concerned, the Papist population always prefer the
guidance of the cursed heretic. And yet they express for the
Black-mouths the greatest contempt and aversion, and would willingly
put them out of the country to-morrow. That is because they wish to
possess our goods. They vote for Home Rule in the belief that they are
paving the way for a dismissal of Protestants, and the division of
their property. They do not know the name of the man who represents
them, the title of the Parliamentary division for which he sits, or
even, in many cases, the name of the county in which they themselves
reside. To talk reason to such people would be absurd. Trained from
their infancy to regard England as an enemy, they would not listen to
anyone speaking on her behalf. They declare that they are barefoot
because England wears their shoes, that they are starving that England
may be over-fed. The how, the why, the wherefore are not within their
ken, but they are sure of the facts. They had them from Father Dick,
Tom, or Harry, and the holy man would not tell a lie. Stupid people
over the Channel, listening to this iterated complaint, are acting as
though it were true. Gladstone took it up