land. Nature has
been so bountiful to us that we can take three, and even six, crops
off the land after a single dose of manure. Of course the farmer
grumbles, and no wonder. The price of stock and general produce is so
depressed that Irish farmers are pinched. But so they are in England.
And yet you have no moonlighting. You don't shoot your landlords. If
the land will not pay you give it up and take to something else. An
Irishman goes on holding, simply refusing to pay rent. His neighbours,
who are in the same fix, support him. When the landlord wishes to
distrain, after waiting seven years or so, he has to get a decree. The
tenants know of it as soon as he, and they set sentinels. When the
police are signalled the cattle are driven away and mixed with those
of other farmers--every difficulty that Irish cleverness can invent is
placed in the way. Then the landlord, whether or not successful in
distraining, is boycotted, and the people reckon it a virtue to shoot
him down on sight. Conviction is almost, if not quite, impossible, for
even if you found a willing witness--a very unlikely thing I can tell
you--even then the witness knows himself marked for the same fate. If
he went to America or Australia he would be traced, and someone would
be found to settle him. Such things have happened over and over again,
and people know the risk is great. But about rack-rents.

"I have told you of Irish avariciousness in the matter of land, and
have explained the reason of it. Rents have been forced up by people
going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their
eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. Landlords are
human; agents, if possible, still more human. They handed over the
land to the highest bidder. What more natural? The farmers are not
business men. They offered more than the land could pay. You know the
results. But why curse and blaspheme the landlords for what was in
many cases their own deliberate act?"

On Friday last I had a small object-lesson in Irish affairs. Colonel
O'Callaghan, of Bodyke, went to Limerick to buy cattle for grazing on
his estate. The cattle were duly bought, but the gallant Colonel had
to drive them through the city with his own right hand. I saw his
martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and
even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting
interesting matter, did I swoop down on the unhappy Colonel, startling
him s