s opinion expressed to me by
a man of the country in March, I find in the _Dublin Express_ of July
19th this official news from the Athy Vice-Guardians:

"At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a
letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that
the two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district,
had been evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not
now in possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor
relief to the extent of L1 a week each on the ground of destitution.
The Auditor continued: 'The Collector tells me that they both
possess other lands, and have money in bank. The Collector is
satisfied that they are as good, if not better, securities for the
amount of his bond now than at the time they became sureties for
him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in this opinion.'

"It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board."

[25] _Explanatory Note attached to First Edition._--After this
chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend
who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it,
begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on
the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for
these poor men from the local tyrants.

I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my
publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the
nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal "coercion"
established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my
compliance with my friend's request. What can be said for the freedom of
a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it
to be "dangerous" for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of
this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests?

[26] It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr.
O'Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if
not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt,
when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and
out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa
as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of
dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement
to the Irish-American organi