so
until the ballot made the country a prey to self-seeking political
agitators.

Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him
into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager
accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime.

Yet this happened after Fenianism had practically died out in the early
seventies.

I myself heard Mr. Gladstone say that landlords had been weighed in the
balance and had not been found wanting, for the bad ones were
exceptional.

None the less were they and their representatives delivered over to
their natural opponents, who were egged on by the Land League and by its
tacit or active supporters in the House of Commons.

Emphatically I repeat the assertion that neither Mr. Parnell nor the
Land League would have been formidable without the active help of Mr.
Gladstone.

Before 1870 Kerry used to be represented by gentlemen of the county. The
present members in 1904 are an attorney's clerk, an assistant
schoolmaster, a Dublin baker, and a fourth of about the same class.

This was no more foreseen by the landlords when the ballot was
introduced any more than we anticipated the way in which we were to be
plundered. Many considered that the confiscation of the Irish Church,
which had been established since the reign of Elizabeth, was an inroad
into the rights of property very likely to be followed up by further
aggressions, but we never looked for such a wholesale violation as
ensued.

By the Act of 1870 no tenant could be turned out without being paid a
sum averaging a fourth of the fee-simple in addition to being paid for
his improvements, and there the most observant of us thought the worst
had been reached.

When the Act of 1881 was passed, I met Lord Spencer, one of the authors
of it, and said to him:--

'This Act will have as much effect in settling Ireland as throwing a cup
of dirty water into the Thames would have in creating a flood.'

My words were soon proved right, for the tenants, having obtained half
the landlord's property by it, thought that by well working their voting
and shooting powers they would get the remainder.

I have been getting away from my own experiences to give my own
convictions. When you have meditated for twenty years amid the ruins of
what you had been building up all your life long and know that it is due
to Irish outrage and English misrule, there is a temptation to speak
plainly on breaking silence.