hey have not paid their rents
any better than before. They have so many people agitating for them,
both here and in England, that whatever they do or fail to do, they
know they are sure of substantial support. While Irishmen only were
working for them, they felt less secure, but now Mr. Gladstone and his
following have taken their cause in hand, they feel more sure of their
ground, and accordingly they have lapsed into confirmed laziness and
dishonesty. They have found out the strength of combination, and the
possibility of withholding payment of rent, and year by year they are
falling lower and lower. Their morality is sapped at the root. They
have the utmost confidence in their clergy, and their conduct being
supported, and even advised from the altar, they spend all their money
quite comfortably, sure that in case of eviction the country will be
up in arms for their assistance, and that weak but well-meaning
English tourists, seeing their apparent condition, will help them
liberally. The English tourist has much to answer for. He couples dirt
and nakedness with misfortune and poverty, and nine times out of ten
he is altogether wrong. People with five hundred pounds in the bank
will go about barefoot, unwashed, and in rags. No Englishman can
possibly know his way about until he has lived for some time in the
country, remaining in one spot long enough to find out the real state
of things. He runs about hurriedly from place to place, observing
certain symptoms which in England mean undeserved poverty and
suffering. His diagnosis would be right for England, but for Ireland
it is hopelessly wrong. What he sees is not so often symptomatic of
undeserved misfortune, as of laziness, improvidence, and rank
dishonesty. The Irish are a complaining people. Self-help is
practically unknown among them, at any rate, among the Catholic
population. They have reduced complaining to a system, or, if you
will, they have elevated it to the level of a fine art. The recent
agitations have demolished any rudimentary backbone they ever had, and
the No-rent Campaign, with its pleas of poverty and financial
inability, has done more to pauperise the people than all the famines
Ireland ever saw.

"You can do nothing for them. One great argument for Home Rule is the
fact that the people are leaving the country. Best thing they can do.
Let them get to some country where they must work or starve. Then they
will do well enough. They work like horses