ishness. Now we, who
are not Protestants (thank God), are for the most part poor. Our
living is precarious. We don't know where to look, nor what to do, to
improve our worldly position. We think it likely that an Irish
Parliament would do something for us. In what way? Why, in the
direction of public works and in the building of factories. Also in
the protection of Irish industries. Where would the money come from?
Why, from England, to be sure. And if England wouldn't lend it, plenty
of other nations would; America, for instance. We shall have heaps of
money. Mr. Gladstone has said it, and he is famous as a financier.
There you have the reason why we want Home Rule, while the Protestants
don't. They are well enough off already.

"_Why_ are they well off, you ask? Also easy to answer. They have been
the spoiled children of fortune. They have been petted and pampered by
England for more than two hundred years. And although you will not of
course admit it, yet we know, everybody here knows, that they have
been secretly subsidised by every Tory Government. If they pay their
rents, where do they get the money? From the Tory party. And Tory
landlords give the best farms to Protestants, who having the pick of
the land, ought to be well off. Wherever you go you will find the
Protestants living on good land."

I submitted that authentic records show that Ulster was formerly the
most sterile, barren, unpromising part of Ireland, and that the change
was entirely due to the two centuries of unremitting labour which the
Scots settlers and their descendants had bestowed on the land; but,
waiving this point, I asked him why the Unionist, that is, the
Protestant, party were so much better educated, and why the heretics
were so much cleaner. He had stated that the Black-mouths were
subsidised by the Tory Party. Did the British Government also supply
them with soap?

At this point my friend's explanations became unintelligible, but his
general drift seemed to indicate that the people were too downtrodden,
too much oppressed, were groaning too painfully under the cruel
British yoke, to have the spirit to look after the duties of the
toilet. In other words, the Irish people will wash themselves when
they get Home Rule. At the next election Mr. Gladstone will doubtless
bring forward this aspect of the case as a sop to the soap-making
interest.

Another Ballyshannoner was of a diametrically opposite opinion. "We
are poor because we ha