lin man.
"We should have an awful ferment, a chaos, an immediate bankruptcy.
But let us have it. Let us make the experiment, and thus for ever
settle the question. To return to the priests. The people of Ireland
have not the franchise, which is monopolised by a few thousand priests
and bishops. The Nationalist members, the dauntless seventy-one, are
as much the nominees of the Catholic clergy as the old pocket-borough
members were nominees of the local landlords. And the same thing will
hold good in future. People tell you it will not be so, but that's all
humbug. It may be different in five-and-twenty years, when the people
are educated, when the National Schools have done their work, but half
that time is enough to ruin England. Thanks to agitators, Ireland
cannot be any worse off than she is."

Some time ago there was a Convention in Dublin, a Home Rule
Convention. There were five hundred delegates, sent up by the votes of
the people. Four hundred and nine were priests, who had returned
themselves. Can the English Gladstonians get away from the
suggestiveness of this fact? Is it sufficiently symptomatic? Can they
not diagnose the progress of the disease?

One of the Galway Town Commissioners, also a Roman Catholic, declared
that the Irish people, once the kindliest, most honest, most
conscientious amongst the nations of the earth, had for years been
taught a doctrine of malevolence. "They were naturally benevolent, but
their nature has been changed, and I regret to say that in a large
measure the priests are responsible for the change. Where once mutual
help and perfect honesty reigned, you now find selfishness and mutual
distrust. The priests have made the altar a hustings, and even worse
than electioneering has been done on that sacred spot. From the altar
have been denounced old friends and neighbours who had dared to have
an opinion of their own, had dared to show an independent spirit, and
to hold on what they thought the true course in spite of the
blackguard population of the district. Take the case of O'Mara, of
Parsonstown. He was the principal merchant of the place, a very kindly
man, of decided politics, a Catholic Conservative, like myself. He
sold provisions to what the local priest called the 'helmeted minions
of our Saxon taskmasters.' In other words, he sold bread to the
constabulary at a time when outrage and murder were being put down
with a strong hand. The priest threatened him with boycotting,