ly,
and officially proposed to Mr. Smith-Barry that in addition to the 15
per cent. abatement they had just received on their rent he should
make a further remittance of 10 per cent. to enable them to assist the
Ponsonby tenants in carrying on the war against their landlord, on
whose side Mr. Smith-Barry was fighting. They said in effect, "You
have given us 3s. in the pound, to which we had no claim; now we want
2s. more, to enable us to smash the landlord combination, of which you
are the leader." This occurred in the proceedings of a business
deputation, and not in a comic opera.

Mr. Smith-Barry failed to see the sweet reasonableness of this
delightful proposition, and then the fun began.

O'Brien to the rescue, whirroo!

He rushed from Dublin, and told the Tipperary men to pay Smith-Barry
no rent. If they paid a penny they were traitors, slaves, murderers,
felons, brigands, and bosthoons. If they refused to pay they were
patriots, heroes, angels, cherubim and seraphim, the whole country
would worship them, they would powerfully assist the Ponsonby folks in
the next county, they would be saviours of Ireland.

And besides all this they would keep the money in their pockets. But
this was a mere detail.

The people took O'Brien's advice, withholding Mr. Smith-Barry's rent,
keeping in their purses what was due to him, in order that somebody's
tenants in the next county might get better terms. Still Mr.
Smith-Barry held out, and the Land League determined to make of him a
terrible example. He owned most of the town. Happy thought! let the
shopkeepers leave his hated tenements. Let their habitations be
desolate and no man to dwell in their tents. The Land League can build
another Tipperary over the way, the tenants can hop across, and Mr.
Smith-Barry will be left in the lurch! The end, it was thought, would
justify the means, and some sacrifice was expected. Things would not
work smoothly at first. The homes of their fathers were void; new
dunghills, comparatively flavourless, had to be made, the old
accretions, endeared by ancestral associations, had to be abandoned,
and the old effluvium weakened by distance was all that was left to
them. The new town was off the main line of trade and traffic, but it
was thought that these, with the old Tipperary odour, would come in
time. Streets and marts were built by the Land League at a cost of
L20,000 or more. The people moved away, but they soon moved back
again. The shopk