ounty. This bent of his mind
towards the material improvement of the condition of the Irish people,
and the development of the resources of Ireland, is not only a mark of
his superiority to the rank and file of the Irish politicians--it goes
far to explain the stronger hold which he undoubtedly has on the people
in Ireland. "Home Rule," as now urged by the Irish politicians,
certainly excites much more attention and emotion in America and England
than it seems to do in Ireland. It seems so simple and elementary to
John Bull and Brother Jonathan that people should be suffered to manage
their own affairs! Yet the North would not suffer the South to do
this--and what would become of India if England turned it over in
fragments to the native races? The Land Question, on the contrary,
touches the "business and bosom" of every Irishman in Ireland, while it
is so complicated with historical conditions and incidents as to be
troublesome and therefore uninteresting to people not immediately
affected by it. If I am right in my impressions the collapse of the
National League will hardly weaken the hold of Mr. Davitt on the Irish
people in Ireland, and it may even strengthen his hold on the agrarian
movement in Wales, England, and Scotland, unless he identifies himself
too completely in that collapse with his Parliamentary instruments. On
the other hand, the triumph of the National League on its present lines
of action would diminish the value for good or evil of any man's hold
upon the Irish people, for the obvious reason that by driving out of
Ireland, and ruining, the class of "landlords" and capitalists, it would
leave the country reduced to a dead level of peasant-holdings, saddled
with a system of poor-rates beyond the ability of the peasant-holders to
carry, and at the mercy, therefore, of the first bad year. The "war
against the landlords," as conducted by the National League, would end
where the Irish difficulty began, in a general surrender of the people
to "poverty and potatoes."

CHAPTER VI.

ENNIS, _Saturday, Feb. 18._--I found it unnecessary to go on to Paris,
and so returned to Ireland on Thursday night; we had a passage as over a
lake. In the train I met a lively Nationalist friend, whose acquaintance
I made in America. He is a man of substance, but not overburdened with
respect for the public men, either of his own party or of the Unionist
side. When I asked him whether he still thought it would be safe to