worse, if possible. He is deaf to all the arguments of Irish sense and
Irish culture, and proposes to finally resolve the unresolvable, to
settle the Irish difficulty by a Catholic Parliament. As well go out
with a net to catch the wind. He listens to the representatives of
ruffianism, counting them first. We kept silent too long. We thought
the donkeys might bray for ever without shaking down the stars. We
were wrong. Now we are almost powerless. For what are a handful of
reasonable men against a crowd of blackguards with big sticks?"

While conversing with Detective Magee, that astute gentleman pointed
out The O'Connor, lineal King of Connaught, and a staunch Unionist! A
devout Catholic and intensely Irish, yet the uncrowned King is a
loyalist. But The O'Connor is a man of superior understanding. After
this I saw three Home Rulers--yea, I conversed with four, one a
positive person whom I mistook for a farm labourer, but who proved to
be a National schoolmaster who absorbed whiskey like the desert sands.
A decent farmer who thought the Land League the finest thing in the
wuruld, complained that while the British Government have contracted
for hay at L8 15s., yet he and his friends could only get L3 for "best
saved." His idea of Home Rule was--No Rent to pay. A ferocious
commercial traveller, whose jaw and cheekbones were as much too large
as his eyes and forehead were too small, wanted to know "what right
had England to rule Ireland? Ye have no more right to rule Ireland
than to rule France." This was his only idea. He was a patriot of the
sentimental type, and wished that Ireland might take her place as an
independent nation with Belgium, Switzerland, Holland. His hero was
Paddy O'Donnell, of Bedlam--_clarum et venerabile nomen_--who for five
days held his house, since called the Fort, against a strong force of
police. "If all was like O'Donnell, we'd soon have the counthry to
ourselves," said my commercial friend. "An' if ye don't let us go,
we'll make ye wish ye did. Wait till ye get into throuble with France.
The Siam business may yet turn up thrumps." He was very voluble, very
loud, very illiterate, and I declined to discuss the question except
in Irish, which he did not speak. Like most of the patriot orators of
Ireland, he was as ignorant of his native language as of his native
literature, and every other. This is the class from whom the political
speakers who infest country places are drawn. At first sight they