e beauty of the scenery, but Ireland as compared with
England, France, Holland, Belgium, or Germany may almost be called a
treeless country. Strange to say, the Home Rule Bill, which affects
everything, threatens to deprive the country of its few remaining
trees. A Scotsman resident thirteen years in Ireland said to me:--

"The timber you see lying there is not American, but Irish. The people
who have timber are in many cases cutting it down, because they
foresee a state of general insecurity and depression, and they need
all the cash they can command. But there is another reason for the
deforesting of the country, which is--that if Home Rule becomes law,
the landowners are disposed to believe that no allowance will be made
for the timber which may be on the land when the land is sold to the
tenant under some unknown Act to be passed at some future day." This
fits into the point raised by a tenant farmer living just outside the
town, an extraordinary character said to rise at seven o'clock in the
morning. He said:--

"They say the farmer is to get the land--but what then? Somebody must
own the land, and whoever has it will be reckoned a bloody tyrant.
Won't the owner be a landlord? No, say they, no more landlords at all,
at all. But isn't that nonsense, says I? If ye split up the land into
patches as big as yer hand and give every man a patch, wouldn't some
men have twenty or a hundred, or maybe a thousand patches in five
years? An' thin, thim that was lazy an' wasteful an' got out o' their
land would be for shootin' the savin', sthrivin' man that worked his
way up by buying out the drones. For wouldn't he be a landlord the
moment he stopped workin' all the land himself. An' that would be sure
to happen at wanst. Lord Gough is landlord here, an' ye'll not better
him in Ireland. Look at the town there--all built of stone an' paved,
wid a fine public well in the square, an' a weigh-house, an' the
groves of lilac an' laburnums all out in flower an' dippin' in the
wather; where ye may catch mighty fine trout out iv yer bedroom
window, bedad ye may, or out of yer kitchin, an' draw them out iv the
wather an' dhrop thim in' the fryin' pan off the hook with the bait in
their mouths, an' their tails waggin', finishing their brakefasts
thimselves while they get yours ready! Throth ye can. None iv us that
has any sinse belaves in Home Rule. 'Tis only the ignorant that'll
belave anything. No, we're quiet hereabouts, never shot any