d at all, speak of them
with acerbity, call them the Colonists, the perverts, the Soupers, the
Jumpers, the heretics; and look forward to the time when a Dublin
Parliament will banish law and order, so that these interlopers may be
for ever swept away, and their fields and houses become the property
of the Faithful. They complain that the Protestants have all the best
land, and that the Papist population were wrongfully driven from the
ground now occupied by the colony. Like other Catholic poor all over
Ireland they will tell you that they have been ground down, harried,
oppressed, grievously ill-used, habitually ill-treated by the English
Government, which has never given them a chance. They explain the
prosperity of their Protestant neighbours by knowing winks and nods,
and by plain intimations that all Irish Protestants are secretly
subsidised by England, that they have privileges, that they are
favoured, petted, kept in pocket money. To affect to doubt this is to
prove yourself a dissembler, an impostor, a black-hearted enemy of the
people. Your Achil friend will drop the conversation in disgust, and
by round-about ways will call you a liar. He is sure of his facts, as
sure as he is that a sprinkling of holy water will cure rheumatism,
will keep away the fairies from the cow, will put a fine edge on his
razor, will keep the donkey from being bewitched. He knows who has had
money and how much, having reasoned out the matter by inference. He
could sell himself to-morrow, but is incorruptible, and will remain a
strong rock to the faith, will still buttress up the true hierarchy of
heaven. He cannot be bought, and this is strange, for he never looks
worth twopence.

It was during a famine that one Mr. Nangle, a Protestant parson from
the North, went to Achil and found the people in deepest distress.
They were dying of starvation, and their priests had all fled. Mr.
Nangle had no money, but he was prompt in action. He sent a thousand
pounds' worth of meal to the island on his own responsibility, and
weighed down by a sense of the debt he had incurred, went to London to
beg the money. He was successful, and afterwards founded the Achil
mission at Dugort, now called the Colony. Needless to say that all the
land belonging to the mission was duly bought and paid for, and that
the Protestants have been the benefactors of Achil. The stories of
wrong-doing, robbery, and spoliation, which the peasantry repeat, are
of course tot