l and other processes is averted by the presence of an
overwhelming body of armed constabulary. Fifty men and a couple of
sub-inspectors attended the serving of some civil-bill processes
towards Newport only a few days ago, and a similar body attended to
witness an abortive attempt at eviction on Miss Gardiner's property
near Ballina.

From all that I can ascertain, the position of the Lord-Lieutenant of
the country is by no means enviable. Having succeeded in losing his
chief tenant and been compelled, in order to farm his own land in
safety, to ask for "protection," he is now embroiled with a portion at
least of the Castlebar people, who think, rightly or wrongly, that the
lord of the soil and collector of tolls and dues has something to do
with providing the town with a market-place. Into the merits of the
question it is hardly necessary to enter. Suffice it to say that the
local Press has taken advantage of the occasion to renew the popular
outcry against "this old exterminator." Perhaps it does not hurt
anybody very much to be called an "exterminator," especially when the
extermination referred to occurred thirty years ago. The instance is
merely worth citing as showing the undying hatred felt in this part of
the country towards those who, acting wisely or unwisely, after the
famine, determined to get rid of a population which the soil had shown
itself unequal to support. There is no doubt that Lord Lucan brought
"a conscience to his work" and made a solitude around Castlebar. "On
the ruins of many a once happy homestead," continues the local scribe,
"do the lambs frisk and play, a fleecy tribe that has, through
landlord tyranny, superseded the once happy peasant." It is also urged
as an additional grievance that the sheep, cattle, and pigs raised by
"the old exterminator" are sent from the railway station "to appease
the appetite of John Bull." Thus Lord Lucan and in a minor degree John
Bull are shown up as the destroyers of the Irish peasant and devourers
of that produce which should have gone to support him in that
happiness and plenty which he enjoyed--at some probably apocryphal
period. Be this, however, as it may, the personal hatred of the
"exterminator" is a fact to be taken into account in any attempt to
reflect the public opinion of this part of Ireland.

Those able to look more impartially on the matter than is possible to
the children of the soil can perceive that the decay only too visible
in many pa