four
shillings a load, instead of making the land produce all it will. Go
to their houses at ten in the morning, and you will find them smoking
over the fire. My people are up and at work by six o'clock every
morning in the week. The Scots farmers round Strabane are that keen on
getting on that you can't get them away from their work, which is
their pleasure. They are so keen on making the most of the ground that
they are doing away with the hedges, and substituting barbed wire,
merely to gain the difference in area of ground to till. Look at yon
brae-face. Every yard tilled right up to the top. The Papist peasantry
would never do that. You want to know what's the reason? Goodness
knows. All the Protestants round here have got on till they have
farms. There are no Protestant labourers. If English working men,
agricultural fellows, would settle in Ireland, they would soon get
their Three acres and a cow. The people who can and will do the best
with the land ought to have it, that's my theory. Ireland everywhere
illustrates the principle of the survival of the fittest. The only way
to succeed is by work. The Catholic Irish are so accustomed to leave
everything to the priest that they have no self-reliance, and in
worldly matters they always ask, who will help us? They are all
beggars by nature. The Duchess of Marlborough and other kind but
mistaken ladies have pauperised some districts of Donegal. The people
have a natural indisposition to work, and a natural disposition to
beg. As for loyalty and tolerance, they have none of either. You never
saw industry without other virtues, you never saw laziness without
other vices. These everlasting grumblers are a generation of vipers.
They are a peevish and perverse set of lazy, skulking swindlers. They
can pay. Every man could pay his rent and be comfortably off if he
liked. The Protestant farmers pay and get along. And we agree that the
landlords favour the other sect. They know that we will do the right
thing, and they let us do it, but the Papists may do less--for less
than the right thing is what the landlord expects from them. He thinks
himself lucky if his Papist tenants come anyway near the mark.
Therefore I say, and any Protestant will say, the Papists are favoured
by the landlords."

A staunch Conservative, though not a land-owner, said:--"We want
amendment of the Parliamentary voting regulations. No clergyman should
be allowed to sit in the Revision Court. Scandals wi