hey will tell you. There is Connaught
money in Australia, in America, in England, and in all kinds of
foreign bonds. Irishmen want to keep their hoardings secret. They like
to walk about barefoot and have money in their stocking. An old woman
who puts on and takes off her shoes outside the town has three sons
high up in the Civil Service, and could lend you eight hundred pounds.
You would take her for a beggar and might offer her a penny, and she'd
take it. Have you noticed the appalling mendicancy of Ireland? Have
you reflected on the 'high spirit' of the Irish people? Have you
remembered their pride, their repugnance to the Saxon? And have you
noticed the everlastingly outstretched hands which meet you at every
corner? Beggary, lying, dirt, and laziness invariably accompany
priestly rule, and are never seen in Ireland in conjunction with
Protestantism? I wish somebody would explain this. The Irish masses
are the dirtiest and laziest in the world, but there are no dirty,
lazy Protestants. Nobody ever heard of such a thing. And yet because
there are more dirty, lazy Catholics than clean, industrious
Protestants Mr. Gladstone would give the Catholic party the mastery,
and England in future would be ruled from Rome.

"Mr. Gladstone is not responsible for his actions. The Civil Service
will not employ a man after sixty-five. The British Government forbids
a man to work in its service after that time. The consensus of
scientific opinion has fixed sixty-five as the limit at which the
control of an office or the execution of routine office work should
cease. Slips of memory occur, and the brain has lost its keen edge,
its firm grip, its rapid grasp of detail. At sixty-five you are not
good enough for the Civil Service, but at eighty-four, when you are
nineteen years older, you may govern a vast empire. It is an anomaly.
Even the Nationalists think Mr. Gladstone past his work."

This statement was fully borne out by a strong anti-Parnellite of
Athlone. He said:--"The bill is a hoax, but it is better than nothing.
We'll take what we can get, an' we'll get what we can take--afterwards.
Ye wouldn't be surprised that the people's bitter about the bill. Sure,
'tis no Home Rule it is at all, even if we got it as it first stood.
'Tis an insult to offer such a bill to the Irish nation. We want
complete independence. We have a sort of a yoke on us, an' we'll never
rest till we get it off. Ye say 'This'll happen ye, and That'll happen