on, these races were "within the king's law," and were never "mere
Irish" from the first planting of the Anglo-Norman power in Ireland. The
case of a priest, Shan O'Kerry, "an Irish enemy of the king," presented
"contrary to the form of statute" to the vicarage of Lusk, in the reign
of Edward IV. (1465), illustrates this. An Act of Parliament was passed
to declare the aforesaid "Shan O'Kerry," or "John of Kevernon," to be
"English born, and of English nation," and that he might "hold and enjoy
the said benefice."

There is a genealogy here of the M'Morroghs and Kavanaghs, most
gorgeously and elaborately gotten up many years ago for Mr. Kavanagh's
grandfather, which shows how soon the Norman and the native strains of
blood become commingled. When one remembers how much Norman blood must
have gone even into far-off Connaught when King John, in the early part
of the thirteenth century, coolly gave away that realm of the O'Connors
to the De Burgos, and how continually the English of the Pale fled from
the exactions inflicted upon them by their own people, and sought refuge
"among the savage and mere Irish," one cannot help thinking that the"
Race Question" has been "worked for at least all it is worth" by
philosophers bent on unravelling the 'snarl' of Irish affairs. If this
genealogy may be trusted, there was little to choose between the ages
which immediately preceded and the ages which followed the Anglo-Norman
invasion in the matter of respect for human life. Celtic chiefs and
Norman knights "died in their boots" as regularly as frontiersmen in
Texas. One personage is designated in the genealogy as "the murderer,"
for the truly Hibernian reason, so far as appears, that he was himself
murdered while quite a youth, and before he had had a chance to murder
more than three or four of his immediate relatives. It was as if the son
of Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Lady Constance should be branded in
history as "Arthur, the Assassin."

BORRIS, _March 4th._--This is a staunch Protestant house, and Mr.
Kavanagh himself reads a Protestant service every morning. But there is
little or nothing apparently in this part of Ireland of the bitter
feeling about and against the Catholics which exists in the North. A
very lively and pleasant Catholic gentleman came in to-day informally
and joined the house party at luncheon. We all walked out over the
property afterwards, visiting quite a different region from that which
we saw yesterday-