ured on highly respectable authority that the secrecy of the ballot
in Ireland is, in some parts, a questionable point. At the same time,
there is everywhere a strong opinion that another election will give
very different results in Ireland. And everywhere there is a growing
feeling that the Bill will not become law. This explains the slight
rise in the value of Irish securities.

Just outside Tuam I came upon a neatly built, deep-thatched villa,
with a flower garden in front, a carefully cultivated kitchen garden
running along the road, trim hedges, smart white palings, an orchard
of fine young trees, a general air of neatness, industry, prosperity,
which, under the circumstances, was positively staggering. I had
passed along a mile of cabins in every stage of ruin, from the
solitary chimney still standing to the more recent ruin with two
gables, from the inhabited pig-sty to the hut whereon grew crops of
long grass. I had noted the old lady clad in sackcloth and ashes, who,
having invested the combined riches of the neighbourhood in six
oranges and a bottle of pop, was sitting on the ground, alternately
contemplating the three-legged stool which held the locked-up capital
and her own sooty toes, immersed in melancholy reflections anent the
present depression in commercial circles. The Paradisaic cottage was
startling after this. I stopped a bare-legged boy, and found that the
place belonged to a Black Protestant, and, what was worse, a
Presbyterian, and, what was superlatively bad, a Scots Presbyterian.
Presently I met a tweed-clad form, red-faced and huge of shoulder,
full of strange accents and bearded like the pard. Berwickshire gave
him birth, but he has "done time" in Ireland.

"I'm transported this forty-three years. I thought I'd end my days
here, but if this bill passes we'll go back to Scotland. We'll have
Catholic governors, and they'll do what they like with us. Ye'll have
a tangled web to weave, over the Channel there. Ye'll have the whole
island in rebellion in five-and-twenty minutes after ye give them
power. Anybody that thinks otherwise is either very ignorant of the
state of things or else he's a born fule. No, I wouldn't say the folks
are all out that lazy, not in this part of Galway. They will work weel
enough for a Scots steward, or for an Englishman. But no Irish steward
can manage them. Anybody will tell you that. No-one in any part of the
country will say any different. Now, that's a queer thin