all over the building, and thence
proceeded to the residence of Mr. Burke near by, a large and very
commodious house. All the formalities were gone through with, a
detachment of policemen was put in charge, and the rest of the forces
set out on their return to Portumna, before the organised "defenders" of
Cloondadauv, hastily called out of their comfortable beds or from their
breakfast-tables had realised the situation, and got the populace into
motion. A mass meeting was held in the neighbourhood, and many speeches
were made. But the castle and the farm-house and the holding all remain
in the hands of a cool, quiet, determined-looking young Ulsterman, who
tells me that he is getting on very well, and feels quite able with his
police-guard to protect himself. "Once in a while," he said, "they come
here from Loughrea with English Parliament-men, and stand outside of the
gate, and call me 'Clanricarde's dog,' and make like speeches at me; but
I don't mind them, and they see it, and go away again."

Of Mr. Burke, the evicted tenant here, Mr. Crawford, the Protestant
clergyman at Portumna, told me that he was abundantly able to pay his
rent. The whole debt for which Burke was evicted was L115; and Mr.
Crawford said he had himself offered Burke L300 for the holding. Burke
would have gladly taken this, but "the League wouldn't let him." When
his right was put up for sale at Galway for L5, he did not dare to buy
it in, and he is now living with his wife and children on the League
funds. Lord Clanricarde's agent offered to take him back and restore his
right if he would pay what he owed; but he dared not accept. This farm
comprises over one hundred and ten English acres, which Burke held at a
rent--fixed by the Land Court--of L77, the valuation for taxes being
L83.

To call the eviction of such a tenant in such circumstances from such a
holding a "sentence of death," is making ducks and drakes of the English
language. Mr. Crawford's opinion, founded upon a thorough personal
knowledge of the region, is that there is no exceptional distress in
this part of Ireland, and that over-renting has nothing to do with such
distress as does exist here. The case of a man named Egan, one of the
"victims" of the Woodford evictions of 1886, certainly bears out this
view of the matter. Egan, who was a tenant, not at all of Lord
Clanricarde, but of a certain Mrs. Lewis, had occupied for twenty years
a holding of about sixteen Irish acres, or mo