had, how would
you like to be saddled with heavy tithe charges for a Disestablished
Church at the same time that your tenants were relieved of their dues
to you?"

I explained to him that so far from our having no landlords in America,
the tenant-farmer class is increasing rapidly in the United States,
while it is decreasing in the Old World, while the land laws, especially
in some of our older Western States, give the landlords such absolute
control of their tenants that there is a serious battle brewing at this
moment in Illinois[12] between a small army of tenants and their
absentee landlord, an alien and an Irishman, who holds nearly a hundred
thousand acres in the heart of the State, lives in England, and grants
no leases, except on the condition that he shall receive from his
tenants, in addition to the rent, the full amount of all taxes and
levies whatsoever made upon the lands they occupy.

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the gentleman who goes to Norwich, "if
that is the kind of laws your American Irish will give us with Home
Rule, I'll go in for it to-morrow with all my heart!"

After an early dinner, I set out with Lord Ernest to see the
Morley-Ripon procession. It was a good night for a torchlight
parade--the weather not too chill, and the night dark. The streets were
well filled, but there was no crowding--no misconduct, and not much
excitement. The people obviously were out for a holiday, not for a
"demonstration." It was Paris swarming out to the Grand Prix, not Paris
on the eve of the barricades; very much such a crowd as one sees in the
streets and squares of New York on a Fourth of July night, when the city
fathers celebrate that auspicious anniversary with fireworks at the City
Hall, and not in the least such a crowd as I saw in the streets of New
York on the 12th of July 1871, when, thanks to General Shaler and the
redoubtable Colonel "Jim Fiske," a great Orange demonstration led to
something very like a massacre by chance medley.

Small boys went about making night hideous with tom-toms, extemporised
out of empty fig-drums, and tooting terribly upon tin trumpets. There
was no general illumination, but here and there houses were bright with
garlands of lamps, and rockets ever and anon went up from the
house-tops.

We made our way to the front of a mass of people near one of the great
bridges, over which the procession was to pass on its long march from
Kingstown to the house of Mr. Walker, Q.C.,