could possibly eat, and not one of them
was half-boiled. But otherwise the meal was well enough, and the service
excellent. Beer could be got for us, but the house had no licence, Lord
Carysfort, the owner of the property, thinking, so our hostess said,
that "there were too many licences in the town already." Lord Carysfort
is probably right; but it is not every owner of a house, or even of a
lease in Ireland, I fear, who would take such a view and act on it to
the detriment of his own property.

Dr. Dillon lives in the main square of Arklow in a very neat house. He
was absent at a funeral in the handsome Catholic church near by when we
called, but we were shown into his study, and he presently came in.

His study was that of a man of letters and of politics. Blue-books and
statistical works lay about in all directions, and on the table were the
March numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _Contemporary
Review_.

"You are abreast of the times, I see," I said to him, pointing to these
periodicals.

"Yes," he replied, "they have just come in; and there is a capital paper
by Mr. John Morley in this _Nineteenth Century_."

Nothing could be livelier than Dr. Dillon's interest in all that is
going on on both sides of the Atlantic, more positive than his opinions,
or more terse and clear than his way of putting them. He agreed entirely
with Father O'Neill as to the pressure put upon the Coolgreany tenants,
not so much by Mr. Brooke as by the agent, Captain Hamilton; but he
thought Mr. Brooke also to blame for his treatment of them.

"Two of the most respectable of them," said Dr. Dillon, "went to see Mr.
Brooke in Dublin, and he wouldn't listen to them. On the contrary, he
absolutely put them out of his office without hearing a word they had to
say."[22]

I found Dr. Dillon a strong disciple of Mr. Henry George, and a firm
believer in the doctrine of the "nationalisation of the land." "It is
certain to come," he said, "as certain to come in Great Britain as in
Ireland, and the sooner the better. The movement about the sewerage
rates in London," he added, "is the first symptom of the land war in
London. It is the thin edge of the wedge to break down landlordism in
the British metropolis."

He is watching American politics, too, very closely, and inclines to
sympathise with President Cleveland. Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, he
tells me, in his passage through Ireland the other day, did not hesitate
to express