t favourite
with his men.

"How long were you in Ireland before you changed your mind?" I asked.

"Well," said Mr. Beddoes, "to tell the truth, I began to have my
doubts during the first week."

A prosperous Presbyterian of Galway said:--"To say that the Irish
people, the masses, want an Irish Parliament is the height of
absurdity; and to argue that their aspirations are expressed by their
votes is a gross perversion of the truth. The ignorance of the people
explains everything. They voted as the priests told them to vote,
without the smallest conception of what they were voting for, without
the smallest idea of what Home Rule really means. They are quite
incapable of understanding a complicated measure of any kind, and they
naturally accept the guidance of their spiritual advisers, whom they
are accustomed to regard as men of immense erudition, besides being
gifted with power to bind and loose, and having the keys of heaven at
command. You know how they canvass their penitents in the
confessional, and how from the altar they have taught the people to
lie, telling them to vote for one man and to shout down the streets
for another. The Irish priests are wonderfully moral men in other
respects, and cases of immorality in its ordinary sense are so rare as
to be practically unknown. I could forgive their politics, and even
their confessional influence, if they were not such awful liars. Their
want of truthfulness reacts on the people, and if you send a man to do
a job, he will return and get his money when he has only half done it.
'Oh, yes,' he'll say, as natural as possible, 'I've done it well, very
well.' And they are not ashamed when they are proved to be liars. They
think nothing of it. And the way they cheat each other! A few days ago
I met a man who pulled out a bundle of one-pound notes, and said, 'I'm
afther selling thirteen cows, an' I'm afther buying thirteen more. I
sowld me cows to Barney So-and-So, afther givin' him six noggins of
poteen, an' I got out of him twenty per cint. more than the price that
was goin', thanks be to God!' They are so pious--in words."

"What they want is emancipation from the priests and from the
superstitions of the dark ages. They believe in the fairies still, and
attribute all kinds of powers to them. Look at the _Tuam News_ of
yesterday evening. Perhaps the English people would hesitate before
conferring self-government on the poor folks who read that paper, if
they could only