at
petition, although here in Dublin, the thing would be known at Tralee,
200 miles away, before I reached home--and a hundred to one that the
first blackguard that passed would put a match in my thatch, would
burn my stacks, would hough or mutilate my cattle." The speaker was a
Roman Catholic farmer from Kerry. Mr. Morley, in stating that the
prosecution of the Rev. Robert Eager had ceased and determined, was
utterly wrong. The rector's cousin, Mr. W.J. Eager, also of Tralee,
told me that threatening letters with coffins and cross-bones were
still pouring in in profusion. Mr. Eager was calmly requested to give
up land which he had held for 15 years to a man who had previously
rented it, and as the good parson failed to see the force of this
argument he is threatened with a violent death. In England such a
thing could only happen in a pantomime, but some of the Irish think it
the quintessence of reasonable action. These are the class that
support the Bill; these are the men Mr. Gladstone and his
conglomeration of cranks and faddists hope to satisfy. A brilliant
kind of prospect for poor John Bull.

Mr. John Morley should accompany me in my peregrinations among the
intelligent voters who have placed him and his great chief in power,
along with the galaxy of minor stars which rise with the Grand Man's
rising and set at his setting. "The British Government won't allow us
to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get the Bill
every man can take a shpade, an' begorra! can dig what he wants." "The
Phaynix Park is all cramfull o' coal that the Castle folks won't allow
us to dig, bad scran to them. Whin we get the Bill wu'll sink thim
mines an' send the Castle to Blazes." But the quaintest, the funniest,
the most sweetly ingenuous of the lot was the reason given by a
gentleman of patriarchal age and powerful odour, whom I encountered in
Hamilton's Lane. He said, "Ye see, Sorr, this is the way iv it. 'Tis
the Americans we'll look to, by raison that they're mostly our own
folks. They're powerful big invintors, but bedad, they haven't the
wather power to work the invintions. Now _we_ have the wather power,
an' the invintions 'll be brought over here to be worked. An' that'll
give the poor folks imploymint."

The poor man's ignorance was doubtless dense, his credulity amusing,
his childlike simplicity interesting. But the darkness of his
ignorance was no blacker, the extent of his credulity no more amazing,
than t