le. His method of procedure
was to agree to advance the rent to the tenant at ten per cent., payable
at a near and certain date. This would reduce the landlord's reduction
at once, of course, for the tenant, to ten per cent., but that was not
to be disdained; and so the bargain would be struck. If the money was
repaid at the fixed date, it was not a bad thing for the usurer. But it
was almost never so repaid; and with repeated renewals the usurer, by
his own showing, used to receive eventually twenty, fifty, and, in some
cases, nearly a hundred per cent, for his loan."

It is the opinion of this gentleman that, under the "Plan of Campaign,"
a good deal of money-making is done in a quiet way by some of the
"trustees," who turn over at good interest, with the help of friendly
financiers, the funds lodged with them, being held to account to the
tenants only for the principal. "Of course," he said, "all this is
doubtless at least as legitimate as any other part of the 'Plan,' and I
daresay it all goes for 'the good of the cause.' But neither the tenants
nor the landlords get much by it!"

CHAPTER XIII.

DUBLIN, _Thursday, March 8._--At eight o'clock this morning I left the
Harcourt Street station for Inch, to take a look at the scene of the
Coolgreany evictions of last summer. These evictions came of the
adoption of the Plan of Campaign, under the direction of Mr. Dillon,
M.P., on the Wexford property of Mr. George Brooke of Dublin. The agent
of Mr. Brooke's estate, Captain Hamilton, is the honorary director of
the Property Defence Association, so that we have here obviously a
grapple between the National League doing the work, consciously or
unconsciously, of the agrarian revolutionists, and a combination of
landed proprietors fighting for the rights of property as they
understand them.

We ran through a beautiful country for the greater part of the way. At
Bray, which is a favourite Irish watering-place, the sea broke upon us
bright and full of life; and the station itself was more like a
considerable English station than any I have seen. Thence we passed into
a richly-wooded region, with neat, well-kept hedges, as far as Rathdrum
and the "Sweet Vale of Avoca." The hills about Shillelagh are
particularly well forested, though, as the name suggests, they must have
been cut for cudgels pretty extensively for now a great many years. We
came again on the sea at the fishing port of Arklow, where the stone
walls ab