nch and bar. My
neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King's
Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T.W.
Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues,
an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La
Tosca, and goes in fear of the re-establishment of the Holy Office in
Dublin and London. In view of the clamours about the severity of the
bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by
the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were
hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in
their cases. He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have
dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of
murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative
instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the
police.

Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the
Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his
physical graces.

A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour,
"And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?"

"He is indeed!"

"Well, then, I don't wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!"

Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, "The whole
thing is a business operation mainly--a business operation with the
people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger--and a
business operation for the agitators who live by it. Its main strength,
outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or
foment it, is in the small country solicitors. The five hundred thousand
odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive. They are
always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or
the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman. So
the solicitors know the whole country."

"When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the 'Plan of
Campaign,' the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it. The
poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to
lose by it. But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and
promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the
League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events
have to pay the costs of the proceedings.