ave an answer for everything, sir. But your plans
leave one question still unanswered: how to get butter out of a
dog's throat.

BROADBENT. Eh?

KEEGAN. You cannot build your golf links and hotels in the air.
For that you must own our land. And how will you drag our acres
from the ferret's grip of Matthew Haffigan? How will you persuade
Cornelius Doyle to forego the pride of being a small landowner?
How will Barney Doran's millrace agree with your motor boats?
Will Doolan help you to get a license for your hotel?

BROADBENT. My dear sir: to all intents and purposes the syndicate
I represent already owns half Rosscullen. Doolan's is a tied
house; and the brewers are in the syndicate. As to Haffigan's
farm and Doran's mill and Mr Doyle's place and half a dozen
others, they will be mortgaged to me before a month is out.

KEEGAN. But pardon me, you will not lend them more on their land
than the land is worth; so they will be able to pay you the
interest.

BROADBENT. Ah, you are a poet, Mr Keegan, not a man of business.

LARRY. We will lend everyone of these men half as much again on
their land as it is worth, or ever can be worth, to them.

BROADBENT. You forget, sir, that we, with our capital, our
knowledge, our organization, and may I say our English business
habits, can make or lose ten pounds out of land that Haffigan,
with all his industry, could not make or lose ten shillings out
of. Doran's mill is a superannuated folly: I shall want it for
electric lighting.

LARRY. What is the use of giving land to such men? they are too
small, too poor, too ignorant, too simpleminded to hold it
against us: you might as well give a dukedom to a crossing
sweeper.

BROADBENT. Yes, Mr Keegan: this place may have an industrial
future, or it may have a residential future: I can't tell yet;
but it's not going to be a future in the hands of your Dorans and
Haffigans, poor devils!

KEEGAN. It may have no future at all. Have you thought of that?

BROADBENT. Oh, I'm not afraid of that. I have faith in Ireland,
great faith, Mr Keegan.

KEEGAN. And we have none: only empty enthusiasms and patriotisms,
and emptier memories and regrets. Ah yes: you have some excuse
for believing that if there be any future, it will be yours; for
our faith seems dead, and our hearts cold and cowed. An island of
dreamers who wake up in your jails, of critics and cowards whom
you buy and tame for your own service, of bold rogues who help
you to p