f
the people. Moore when he took the step, extraordinary for a man in his
position, of enrolling himself in that sworn and secret conspiracy can
hardly have failed to foresee the collapse of Fenianism as a fighting
force; but he recognised that (in his son's words) "the old complacent
toleration of schemers and dishonest politicians had vanished and a
sturdy independence had taken its place."

With the advent of that spirit the power of the Irish landlords was
doomed. They had made their choice; when they might have made common
cause with the whole people of Ireland they had refused to rise beyond
their immediate personal advantage and the interests of their class.
Moore, who was of themselves, who shared all their pleasures, who loved
them, was forced to take a hand in their overthrow. From 1858 onward he
had been almost entirely out of politics, living the life of a popular
country gentleman, racing and hunting more successfully than ever; his
most famous horse, "Croagh Patrick," ran in the 'sixties. But in 1868 he
flung all this aside, sold his horses, and undertook to fight the
alliance of Whig and Tory which had dominated County Mayo in the
landlord interest for ten years.

I shall have the question settled (he said) whether one lord shall
drive a hundred human souls to the hustings, another fifty, another
a score; whether this or that squire shall call twenty, or ten, or
five as good men as himself "his voters" and send them up with his
brand on their backs to vote for an omadhaun at his bidding.

He did settle it. Mayo beat the landlords then, and Mayo became the
cradle of popular movements ever after. This most typical of Irish
land-owning gentlemen had been forced to sever himself from his class
and even to injure his class, and it was not by advocacy of
self-government that he estranged so close a friend as Lord Sligo.
Fintan Lalor's policy, rejected by the Young Irelanders in 1846, was
beginning to take hold in 1868; the movement for self-government was
becoming linked on to the driving force of land-hunger. In the eyes of
Lord Sligo and all his class Tenant Right meant Landlord Wrong, and
Moore himself was not exempt from that feeling. He suffered indeed, for
rents that he had reduced to a figure fixed by the tenants' own
arbitrators were withheld from him. Yet he knew clearly that it was
necessary for the country, and not more necessary than just, to secure
the tenants in their h