r
than Mat, who has neither honor, nor ability, nor capital, nor
anything but mere brute labor and greed in him, Heaven help him!

DORAN. Well, we're not all foostherin oul doddherers like Mat.
[Pleasantly, to the subject of this description] Are we, Mat?

LARRY. For modern industrial purposes you might just as well be,
Barney. You're all children: the big world that I belong to has
gone past you and left you. Anyhow, we Irishmen were never made
to be farmers; and we'll never do any good at it. We're like the
Jews: the Almighty gave us brains, and bid us farm them, and
leave the clay and the worms alone.

FATHER DEMPSEY [with gentle irony]. Oh! is it Jews you want to
make of us? I must catechize you a bit meself, I think. The next
thing you'll be proposing is to repeal the disestablishment of
the so-called Irish Church.

LARRY. Yes: why not? [Sensation].

MATTHEW [rancorously]. He's a turncoat.

LARRY. St Peter, the rock on which our Church was built, was
crucified head downwards for being a turncoat.

FATHER DEMPSEY [with a quiet authoritative dignity which checks
Doran, who is on the point of breaking out]. That's true. You
hold your tongue as befits your ignorance, Matthew Haffigan; and
trust your priest to deal with this young man. Now, Larry Doyle,
whatever the blessed St Peter was crucified for, it was not for
being a Prodestan. Are you one?

LARRY. No. I am a Catholic intelligent enough to see that the
Protestants are never more dangerous to us than when they are
free from all alliances with the State. The so-called Irish
Church is stronger today than ever it was.

MATTHEW. Fadher Dempsey: will you tell him dhat me mother's ant
was shot and kilt dead in the sthreet o Rosscullen be a soljer in
the tithe war? [Frantically] He wants to put the tithes on us
again. He--

LARRY [interrupting him with overbearing contempt]. Put the
tithes on you again! Did the tithes ever come off you? Was your
land any dearer when you paid the tithe to the parson than it was
when you paid the same money to Nick Lestrange as rent, and he
handed it over to the Church Sustentation Fund? Will you always
be duped by Acts of Parliament that change nothing but the
necktie of the man that picks your pocket? I'll tell you what I'd
do with you, Mat Haffigan: I'd make you pay tithes to your own
Church. I want the Catholic Church established in Ireland: that's
what I want. Do you think that I, brought up to regard myself as
the son