terrestrial paradise, and that it is
a district teeming with gentle landlords, pious priests, and industrious
peasants, without a plague-spot on the face of the county, except it be
the police-barrack, and the company of lazy vagabonds with crossbelts and
carbines that lounge before it. When, therefore, the press of Dublin at
first, and afterwards of the empire at large, related the night attack for
arms at Kilgobbin Castle, the first impulse of the county at large was
to rise up in the face of the nation and deny the slander! Magistrates
consulted together whether the high-sheriff should not convene a meeting of
the county. Priests took counsel with the bishop, whether notice should not
be taken of the calumny from the altar. The small shopkeepers of the small
towns, assuming that their trade would be impaired by these rumours of
disturbance--just as Parisians used to declaim against barricades in the
streets--are violent in denouncing the malignant falsehoods upon a quiet
and harmless community; so that, in fact, every rank and condition vied
with its neighbour in declaring that the whole story was a base tissue
of lies, and which could only impose upon those who knew nothing of
the county, nor of the peaceful, happy, and brother-like creatures who
inhabited it.

It was not to be supposed that, at such a crisis, Mr. John McGloin would be
inactive or indifferent. As a man of considerable influence at elections,
he had his weight with a county member, Mr. Price; and to him he wrote,
demanding that he should ask in the House what correspondence had passed
between Mr. Kearney and the Castle authorities with reference to this
supposed outrage, and whether the law-officers of the Crown, or the adviser
of the Viceroy, or the chiefs of the local police, or--to quote the exact
words--'any sane or respectable man in the county' believed on word of the
story. Lastly, that he would also ask whether any and what correspondence
had passed between Mr. Kearney and the Chief Secretary with respect to a
small house on the Kilgobbin property, which Mr. Kearney had suggested as
a convenient police-station, and for which he asked a rent of twenty-five
pounds per annum; and if such correspondence existed, whether it had any or
what relation to the rumoured attack on Kilgobbin Castle?

If it should seem strange that a leading member of the 'Goat Club' should
assail its president, the explanation is soon made: Mr. McGloin had long
desired to