nd the people of County Clare cheered heartily--was to
unite with Lord Moyne, Babberly, Malcolmson and even the Dean in the
work of regenerating holy Ireland. Any little differences of religious
creed which might exist would be entirely forgotten as soon as the
Home Rule Bill was safely passed. They then went on to say that the
Belfast people, and the people of County Antrim and County Down
generally, were enthusiastically in favour of Home Rule. The fact that
they elected Unionist members of Parliament and held Unionist
demonstrations was accounted for by the existence of a handful of
rack-renting landlords, a few sweating capitalists and some clergymen
whose churches were empty because the people were tired of hearing
them curse the Pope.

Poor Moyne has sold every acre of his property and the Dean's only
difficulty with the majority of his large congregation is that he does
not curse the Pope often enough to please them. Cahoon, I am told,
only sweats in the old-fashioned intransitive sense of the word. He is
frequently bathed in perspiration himself. I never heard of his
insisting on his workmen getting any hotter than was natural and
necessary. But these criticisms are beside the mark. No one supposes
that a political orator means to tell the truth when he is making a
speech. Politics could not be carried on if he did. What the public
expects and generally insists on is that the inevitable lies should
have their loins girt about with a specious appearance of
truthfulness. Every speaker must offer distinct and convincing proofs
that his statements are strictly accurate reflections of fact. The
best and simplest way of doing this is by means of bold challenge. The
speaker offers to deposit a large sum of money with the local mayor to
be paid over to a deserving charity, if any opponent of the speaker
can, to the satisfaction of twelve honourable men, generally named,
disprove some quite irrelevant truism, or can prove to the
satisfaction of the same twelve men the falsity of some universally
accepted platitude. This method is very popular with orators, and
invariably carries conviction to their audiences.

The Nationalist members in County Clare broke away into a variant of
the familiar plan. They challenged the Government.

"Let the Government," they said, all three of them, "proclaim the
meeting to be held in Belfast on Monday next, and allow the public to
watch with contempt the deflation of the wind-distended