stand firm, and would be supported by
priests and people. The British Grenadiers would then come in, and
where would be the Union of Hearts? Irishmen are fond of a catch-word.
Like the French, they will go to death for a phrase. But the Union of
Hearts never tickled them. The words never fell from Irish lips except
in mockery.

"Protection would be the great rallying cry of a Home Rule Government.
The bill refuses power to impose protective duties, but Ireland would
commence by conceding bounties to Irish manufacturers, who would there
and then be able to undersell English traders. No use going further
into the thing, there is not a good point in it for either country. No
use flogging a dead horse. There never will be any Home Rule, and
there's no use in discussing it. A liberal measure of Local
Self-Government will be the upshot of this agitation, nothing more.
And that will come from the Tory party, the only friends of poor
Ireland."

The Parnellites are strong in Roscommon, and to hear them revile the
priests is both strange and sad. These are the only Catholics who
resent clerical dictation. They seem in a quandary. Their action seems
inconsistent with their expressed sentiments. They plainly see that
Home Rule means Rome Rule, and, while deprecating priestly influence,
they do their best to put the country into priestly hands. They speak
of the Anti-Parnellites with contempt and aversion, calling them
rogues and vagabonds, liars and traitors, outside the pale of
civilisation, and yet they work for Home Rule, which would put their
beloved Ireland in the power of the very men whose baseness and crass
incompetence they cannot characterise in terms sufficiently strong.
For the Anti-Parnellites outnumber the Parnellites by eight to one; so
that the smaller party, although monopolising all virtue, grace and
intellect, would have no show at all, unless, indeed, the Nationalists
were further subdivided, on which contingency the Parnellites probably
count with certainty. I interviewed a champagny little man whose views
were very decided. He said:--

"I think the seventy-three Federationists, as they want to be called,
are not only traitors to the greatest Irishmen of the age, but also
mean-spirited tools of the Catholic bishops. A man may have proper
respect for his faith, and may yet resent the dictation of his family
priest. I admit his superior knowledge of spiritual matters, but I
think I know what politics suit me