sed 194 per cent. during that time.

On the south-west coast of Kerry lie the Blasquets, a group of islands
the property of Lord Cork, one of them inhabited by some twenty-five
families. The old rental was L80, which was regularly paid. This was
reduced by Lord Cork to L40, the Government valuation being L60. Now
this island reared about forty milch cows, besides young cattle and
sheep, and at the period when might meant right in Ireland the
inhabitants, having some surplus stock, took possession of another
island to feed them on.

This island was let to another man, but he was not able to resist the
tenants any more than the mouse nibbling a piece of cheese is able to
fight a cat.

For ten years up to 1887 those tenants paid no poor rate. They
successfully resisted the payment of county cess, to the detriment of
their fellow taxpayers, and they only paid one half year's rent out of
six, and that not until they had been served with writs. And these
people, in the year 1886, sent a memorial to the Government to save them
from starvation.

This is a remarkable case, and proves that poverty and the cry of
starvation are not always the result of rents and taxes, as the Irish
patriots and their English separatist allies so frequently assert.

I am going to quote a colloquy overheard at a Kerry fair to show how
deeply the teaching of Messrs. Parnell, Gladstone, Dillon, Morley,
Davitt, Biggar, and Company has taken root in the Irish mind.

Jim from Castleisland meeting Mick from Glenbeigh, asks:--

'Well, Mick, an' how are ye getting on?'

'Illigant, glory be to the Saints.'

'How's that, Mick? Sure, prices is low.'

'True for you, Jim, prices is low; but what we _has_ we _has_, for we
pays nobody.'

And to that I will add another observation.

Somebody asked me:--

'If Ireland were to get Home Rule, what would become of the agitator?'

I replied:--

'He would be called a reformer, unless it paid him better to clamour for
a fresh Union. He'd sell all his patriotism for five shillings, and his
loyalty could be bought by a few glasses of whisky.'

And that's the whole truth of the matter.

CHAPTER XVIII

A GLANCE AT MY STEWARDSHIP

Davitt called the generation after O'Connell's 'a soulless age of
pitiable cowardice.'

I should call the generation that was active in the early eighties 'a
cowardly age of pitiless brutality.'

Times had begun to mend in Ireland from 1850, and had continued to do