relative positions of the bishops and the priests and the curates.
He told harrowing stories of the destitution of the curates, and he
managed so well that his audience had not time to stop him. Everything
he thought that they could not agree with he sandwiched between things
that he knew they would agree with.

Father Murphy stood a little distance on his right, a thick-set man,
and as the sentences fell from Ned's lips he could see that Father
Murphy was preparing his answer, and he guessed what Father Murphy's
answer would be like. He knew Father Murphy to be an adroit speaker,
and the priest began in a low key as Ned had expected him to do. He
began by deploring the evils of emigration, and Mr. Carmady deserved
their best thanks for attracting popular attention to this evil. They
were indebted to him for having done this. Others had denounced the
evil, but Mr. Carmady's eloquence had enabled him to do so as well,
perhaps even better than it had been done before. He complimented Mr.
Carmady on the picturesque manner in which he described the emptying of
the country, but he could not agree with Mr. Carmady regarding the
causes that had brought about this lamentable desire to leave the
fatherland. Mr. Carmady's theory was that the emptying of Ireland was
due to the fact that the Irish priests had succeeded in inducing men to
refrain from the commission of sin. Mr. Carmady did not reproach the
priests with having failed; he reproached them with having succeeded. A
strange complaint. The cause of the emigration, which we all agreed in
deploring, was, according to Mr. Carmady, the desire of a sinless
people for sin. A strange accusation. The people, according to Mr.
Carmady, were leaving Ireland because they wished to indulge in
indecent living. Mr. Carmady did not use these words; the words he used
were "The joy of life," but the meaning of the words was well known.

"No race," he said, "had perhaps ever been libelled as the Irish race
had been, but of all the libels that had ever been levelled against it,
no libel had ever equalled the libel which he had heard uttered to-day,
that the Irish were leaving Ireland in search of sin.

"They had heard a great deal about the dancing-girl, and according to
Mr. Carmady it would seem that a nation could save itself by jigging."

"He is speaking very well, from his point of view," said Ned to himself.

Father Murphy was a stout, bald-headed man with small pig-like eyes,
and a