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he have to walk several miles to work and home again, and be allowed to live on a scant supply of potatoes and bread, washed down with too much of the whisky of the country. An ill-fed man can no more work well than an ill-fed horse, and inasmuch as the sooner the work is done the less interest will be paid on the Government loan, it is obviously important to get the work done as soon as possible. Hence high wages, on the condition that a certain proportion shall be spent on food and lodging, in a range of labourers' houses admirably built of iron lined with wood, perfectly warmed and lighted, and kept wonderfully clean. There are a store-house and a refectory, a cooking department and dormitories, perfectly ventilated and swept and garnished every day. Tea, beer, and other beverages except whisky can be obtained, and there is an abundant supply of books and newspapers. Every facility and encouragement is given to the priests to visit their people. In short, the colony on the Fergus Reclamation Works is one of the most extraordinary sights in the West of Ireland. As the entire work will hardly be completed under five or six years, the influence of such a community of people doing their work steadily and thoroughly ought to be very valuable. Such works, as well as the reclamation of mountain and bog suggested and tried by Mr. Mitchell Henry for the benefit of peasant cultivators, are absolutely required to quicken the industry of the languishing West. The poor people here require to be taught many things; notably to obey orders, to mind their own business, to hold their tongues, and to wash themselves; but it is impossible to expect four such virtues as obedience, industry, silence, and cleanliness to be acquired all at once by people who have been neglected for centuries. But there can be no radical defect in them, for they work hard enough in America, and under strict taskmasters too, for a Yankee farmer is like a Yankee skipper, inclined to pay good wages, but to insist on the money being earned. So far as discipline is concerned there is no better soldier or soldier-servant than a Western Irishman, none more patient under difficulty and privation, none so full of cheerfulness and resource. Probably the conditions of life are more favourable elsewhere, as they may easily be. Here in county Clare there seems to a perhaps too-hasty observer a complete want of social homogeneity. What lamps of refinement and intellectu
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