I., the
other day at Rome, President Cleveland's curious Jubilee gift of an
emblazoned copy of what a Monsignore of my acquaintance calls "the
godless American Constitution."[8]

We made a quick quiet passage to Kingstown. These boats--certainly the
best appointed of their sort afloat--are owned, I find, in Dublin, and
managed exclusively by their Irish owners, to whom the credit therefore
belongs of making the mail service between Holyhead and Kingstown as
admirable, in all respects, as the mail services between Dover and the
Continental ports are not.

I landed at Kingstown with Lord Ernest Hamilton, M.P. for North Tyrone,
with whom I have arranged an expedition to Gweedore in Donegal, one of
the most ill-famed of the "congested districts" of Ireland, and just now
made a point of special interest by the arrest of Father M'Fadden, the
parish priest of the place, for "criminally conspiring to compel and
induce certain tenants not to fulfil their legal obligations."

I could understand such a prosecution as this in America, where the
Constitution makes it impossible even for Congress to pass laws
"impairing the validity of contracts." But as the British Parliament has
been passing such laws for Ireland ever since Mr. Butt in 1870 raised
the standard of Irish Land Reform under the name of Home Rule, it seems
a little absurd, not to say Hibernian, of the British authorities to
prosecute Father M'Fadden merely for bettering their own instruction in
his own way. I could better understand a prosecution of Father M'Fadden
on such grounds by the authorities of his own Church.

A step from the boat at Kingstown puts you into the train for Dublin.
Before we got into motion, a weird shape as of one just escaped from
the Wild West show of Buffalo Bill peered in at the window, inviting us
to buy the morning papers, or a copy of "the greatest book ever
published, 'Paddy at Home!'" This proved to be a translation of M. de
Mandat Grancey's lively volume, _Chez Paddy_. The vendor, "Davy," is one
of the "chartered libertines" of Dublin. He is supposed to be, and I
dare say is, a warm Nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and
alertly suits his cries to his customers. Recognising the Conservative
member for North Tyrone, he promptly recommended us to buy the _Irish
Times_ and the _Express_ as "the two best papers in all Ireland." But he
smiled approval when I asked for the _Freeman's Journal_ also, in which
I found a report o