of wind-bags feed the people on empty air. The starving poor
ask for bread, and they get a speech. They are told to go on
grumbling, and things will come all right. Nobody ever tells them to
work. Murder and robbery, outrage and spoliation, landlord-shooting
and moonlighting, are easier ways of getting what they want. The Plan
of Campaign, the No Rent combination, the Land League brotherhood when
rightly considered, were just so many substitutes for honest work.
Ireland will be happy when Ireland is industrious, and not a moment
before.

No need to say that the Westporters are Home Rulers. The clean and
tidy folks, the Protestant minority, are heart and soul against the
bill, but the respectable voters are swamped all over Ireland, by
devotees of the priests. "We think the franchise much too low," said a
Presbyterian. "We think illiterate Ireland, with its abject servility
to the Catholic clergy, quite unfit to exercise the privilege of
sending men to Parliament. We think the intelligent minority should
rule, and that the principles which obtain in other matters might well
be applied to Parliamentary elections. These ignorant people are no
more fit to elect M.P.'s than to elect the President of the Royal
Society or the President of the Royal Academy. And yet if mere numbers
must decide, if the counting of heads is to make things right or
wrong, why not let the people decide these distinctions? The West of
Ireland folks know quite as much of art or science as of Home Rule, or
any other political question. They have returned, and will in future
return, the nominees of the priests."

One of the highest legal authorities in Ireland, himself a Roman
Catholic, said to me:--

"You saw the elections voided by reason of undue priestly influence.
That was because, in the cases so examined, money was available to pay
the costs of appeal. If there had been money enough to contest every
case where a Nationalist was returned, you would have seen every such
election proved equally illegal, and every one would have been
adjudicated void."

The Westport folks are looking for great things from the great
Parliament in College Green. A Sligo man who has lived in Dublin was
yesterday holding forth on these prospective benefits, his only
auditor being one Michael, an ancient waiter of the finest Irish
brand. Michael is both pious and excitable, and must have an abnormal
bump of wonder. He is a small man with a big head, and is very
de