all in big print. The
Irish folks are naturally quick-witted. They are simple and confiding,
many of them very ignorant, if you will, but they find out their
friends in the long run. Look at Balfour. Not a man in the whole world
for whom the people have so much affection. Which do you think would
get the best welcome to-morrow--Balfour or Morley? Balfour a hundred
thousand times. Ah, now; my countrymen know the real article when they
see it. Home Rule we want for convenience and for cheapness. We don't
want to be compelled to rush to London before we can build a bridge.
But rather a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than
hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow.
We're not such fools as ye take us for. Don't we know these heroes?
And when we see them and Gladstone and Morley and Humbug Harcourt with
his seventeen chins, all rowling together in Abraham's bosom (as ye
may say)--Harcourt licking Harrington's boots, when only yesterday Tim
was spittin' in his eye--we say to ourselves 'Wait yet awhile, my
Boys, wait yet awhile.' But when ye've finished yer slavering and
splathering, and when Tim Healy can find time to take his heel off
Morley's neck, then, and not before, we'll have something to say to
you.

"But you should call on my friend on the right. He is also a Home
Ruler--like myself."

Number three had powerfully-developed opinions. He said--"Home Rule on
Conservative lines is my ticket. We'll get it on no other. I console
myself with that idea. Otherwise it would be a frightful business, and
what would become of us, I cannot tell. But I do not believe that even
Gladstone would be so insane as to give it us. I cannot believe that
the middle class voters of England would stand by and see the
corresponding class in this country exterminated. Home Rule as much as
you like, if we had the right men. The very poorest peasants are
becoming alive to the fact that under present circumstances the thing
would never do for them. They want the right men, that is, men of
money and character, to come forward. And I declare most solemnly,
that I am convinced that the Irish people would fall into line, and
see the bill thrown out with perfect quietude. Now the push has come,
they really do not want Home Rule, and, what is more, they absolutely
dread it, and I firmly believe that a general election at the present
moment would send a majority of Unionists to power. The priests are
working fo