more thrift and knowledge--much better off than the same class in many
other parts of Ireland. There are no "Gombeen men" here, he says, and no
usurious shopkeepers. "The people back each other in a friendly way when
they need help." Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but
he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They
would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his
belief that agricultural schools and model farms would do more than
almost any measure that could be devised for bringing up the standard of
comfort and prosperity here, and making the country quiet.

It is the opinion of this man that the people of this place have been
led to regard the Papal Decree as a kind of attack on their liberties,
and that they are quite as likely to resist as to obey it. For his own
part, he thinks Ireland ought to have her own parliament, and make her
own laws. He is not satisfied with the laws actually made, though he
admits they are better than the older laws were. "The tenants get their
own improvements now," he said, "and in old times the more a man
improved the worse it was for him, the agent all the while putting up
the rents."

But he does not want Irish independence. "The people that talk that
way," he said, "have never travelled. They don't see how idle it is for
Ireland to talk about supporting herself. She just can't do it."

Not less interesting was my talk to-day with quite a different person.
This was a keen-eyed, hawk-billed, wiry veteran of the '48. As a youth
he had been out with "Meagher of the Sword," and his eyes glowed when he
found that I had known that champion of Erin. "I was out at Ballinagar,"
he said; "there were five hundred men with guns, and five hundred
pikemen." It struck me he would like to be going "out" again in the same
fashion, but he had little respect for the "Nationalists."

"There's too many lawyers among them," he said, "too many lawyers and
too many dealers. The lawyers are doing well, thanks to the League. Oh
yes!" with a knowing chuckle, and a light of mischief in his eye; "the
lawyers are doing very well! There's one little bit of a solicitor not
far from here was of no good at all four years ago, and now they tell me
he's made four thousand pounds in three years' time, good money, and got
it all in hand! And there's another, I hear, has made six thousand. The
lawyers that call themselves Nationalists, they just keep mis