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