The Aran Islanders seem to have passed most of their time in a state of chronic starvation. The land seems to grow little but rock, and the burning of seaweed, the kelp trade, does not seem to have helped them much. True, the Atlantic was all before them, where to choose, but what Father Mahony would call the teeming treasures of the deep were practically left untouched. If we accept the plain meaning of the good priest's speech, we must believe that the Aran Islanders and Irish fishermen generally preferred to starve rather than to catch fish, unless an Irish Parliament were fixed on College Green. They had no objection to accept charitable aid, no matter from what quarter it came, and the Araners required assistance every other year. They were not unwilling to catch fish, but they had nothing to catch them with; and, strange as it may seem, these islanders, who could scarcely move five yards in any direction without falling into the sea, these amphibious Irishmen, did not know the art of catching fish! They tinkered and slopped around the shoals in the vicinity of the island, but they were never able to catch enough fish to keep themselves from starvation, much less to supply the Dublin and London markets. Their boats were the most primitive affairs imaginable, and showed the Irish spirit of conservatism to perfection. These coraghs are practically the same boat as the Welsh coracle, but much larger. Those I examined were from ten to fifteen feet long and three feet wide. Oak ribs, over which are nailed laths of white deal, two inches wide and half an inch thick. Cover this slight skeleton with tarred canvas, and the ship is nearly complete. It only needs two pairs of wooden thole-pins, and two pairs of oars, long, light, and thin, coming nearly to a point at the water-end, having a perforated block which works on the thole-pins before-mentioned. You want no keel, no helm, no mast. Stay! You need a board or two for seats for the oarsmen. With these frail cockleshells the Araners adventure themselves twelve miles on the Atlantic, and mostly come home again. These makeshift canoes are almost useless for catching fish. Having no helm, it is hard to keep them straight; having no keel, it is needful to sit still, or at any rate to maintain a perfect balance, or over you go. A gust of wind spins the canoe round like a top. These primeval boats are made on the island, thrown together out of fifteen-pennyworth of wood, a few yards of canvas, and a pitch-pot. They have some virtues. They are cheap, and they will not sink. The coraghs always come back, even if bottom up. And when they reach the shore the two occupants (if any) invert the ship, stick a head in the stem and another in the stern, and carry her home to tea. This process is apt to puzzle the uninformed visitor, who sees a strange and fearful animal, like a huge black-beetle, crawling up the cliffs. He begins to think of "antres huge and deserts vast, and anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." He hesitates about landing, but if he be on the Duras, Captain Neal Delargy, who equally scoffs at big beetles and Home Rule, will explain, and will accompany him to the tavern on the cliff side, where they charge ordinary prices for beer and give you bread-and-cheese for nothing. And yet the Araners profess to be civilised.
In pursuance of his policy of helping the people to help themselves, Mr. Balfour determined to educate the Araners, and to give them sufficient help in the matter of boats and tackle to make their education of some avail. It was useless to give them boats and nets, for they knew not how to use them, and it is certain that any boat club on the Birmingham Reservoir, or any tripper who has gone mackerel fishing in Douglas Bay, could have given these fishermen much valuable information and instruction. Having once determined to attempt on a tolerably large scale the establishment of a fresh mackerel and fresh herring trade with England, Mr. Balfour set about the gigantic and discouraging task of endeavouring nothing less than the creation of the local industry. But how were the people to be taught the management of large boats, and the kind of nets that were used? After much inquiry, it was decided to subsidise trained crews from other parts of Ireland to show the local fishermen what earnings might be theirs, and at the same time to impart needful instruction to the Connemara and Aran people. It was also arranged to make loans for the purchase of boats and tackle to such persons as might prove likely to benefit by them. Accordingly arrangements were made with the crews of seven Arklow boats to proceed to the Aran Islands, and in order to indemnify them for the risk of working on an untried fishing ground, each crew received a bounty of £40 from the Congested Districts Board. But there was no use in catching fish unless it could be quickly put on the market, and again the necessary plant proved a matter involving considerable expenditure. A derelict Norwegian ship, which two or three years ago had been discovered at sea and towed into Queenstown Harbour, was purchased from the salvors, and anchored in Killeany Bay, outside the harbour of Kilronane, the capital city of the biggest Aran, as an ice-hulk. The Board then entered into an agreement with Mr. W.W. Harvey, of Cork, to market the mackerel at a fixed rate of commission, it being also arranged that he should pay the fishermen the English market price less by a deduction of 7s. a box to cover the cost of ice-packing, carriage, and English salesman's commission. The ice-hulk and boxes were provided by the Board, but Mr. Harvey was to purchase the ice and defray all the cost of labour except the salary of a manager.
In addition to the seven Arklow crews two boats were fitted out by Miss Mansfield for training crews from the parish of Carna, in Connemara; and Miss Skerritt also placed two English-built boats at the Board's disposal for the training of crews from the pretty watering place of Clifden, also in Connemara. An Aran hooker, belonging to Innishmore, joined the little fishing fleet, bringing up the number to exactly a dozen boats. The Rev. W.S. Green, a Protestant parson, who is said to have first discovered these fishing grounds, and who threw himself into the work with wonderful enthusiasm, superintended the experiment in the steamer Fingal, which was specially chartered for the purpose. Mr. Green as a skilled Fisheries Inspector, knew what he was about, and he was empowered to lend nets, where advisable, to the Aran beginners. Away they went to sea, to start with a fortnight's heart-breaking luck. The water in those regions was cold, and the fish were amusing themselves elsewhere. The ice-hulk with its two hundred tons of Norwegian ice was waiting, and its staff of packers might cool their ardour in the hold. The mackerel would not come to be packed, and the dozen boats, with their master and apprentice crews, cruised up and down on the deep blue sea, with the blue sky overhead, and hope, like Bob Acres' valour, gradually oozing out of their finger-ends. The Arklow men began to talk of going home again. Altogether it was a blue look-out.
At last the luck turned. On April 6th, 1892, six thousand mackerel were despatched to the English market. The weather during much of the season was stormy and unfavourable, but on May 18th, seventy-three thousand three hundred and fifty mackerel were sent to Galway, thirty miles away by sea, and were forwarded thence by two special trains. The Midland and Western Railway, under the management of Mr. Joseph Tatlow, has been prompt, plucky, and obliging, and runs the fish to Dublin as fast as they arrive in Galway. During the season of ten weeks the experienced Arklow crews made on an average £316 per boat, and the greenhorns who were learning the business earned about £70 per boat, although they could not fish at all at the beginning of the season. The total number of mackerel packed on the ice-hulk amounted to the respectable total of two hundred and ninety-nine thousand four hundred and eighty. The "teeming treasures of the deep" were not left untouched on this occasion, though, doubtless, "still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke."
Mr. Balfour's benefactions have not been confined to the Aran Islands. Every available fishing place from top to bottom of the whole west coast has been similarly aided, and the value of their produce has increased from next to nothing to something like fifty thousand pounds per month. This on the authority of Father P.J. McPhilpin, parish priest of Kilronane, Innishmore, who said:—
"We never had a Chief Secretary who so quickly grasped the position, who so rapidly saw what was the right thing to do, and who did it so thoroughly and so promptly. Strange to say the Liberals are always the most illiberal. When we get anything for Ireland it somehow always seems to come from the Tories."
Having been carried from Galway to the ice-hulk in Killeany Bay, and having been duly put ashore in a boat, one of the first persons I saw was Father Thomas Flatley, coadjutor of Father McPhilpin, an earnest Home Ruler, like his superior, and like him a great admirer of Mr. Balfour. Father Flatley wore a yachting cap, or I might have sheered off under all sail—the biretta inspires me with affright—but his nautical rig reassured me, and yawing a little from my course, I put up my helm and boarded him. Too late I saw the black flag—I mean the white choker—but there was nothing of the pirate about Father Tom. He was kindly, courteous, earnest, humorous, hospitable, and full of Latin quotations. Before our acquaintance was two minutes old he invited me to dinner. Then I ran aground on an Arklow boatman, James Doyle by name, a smart tweed-suited sailor, bright and gay. The Post Office was near, and the letters were being given out. Three deliveries a week, weather permitting. The parish priest was there, grave, refined, slightly ascetic, with the azure blue eyes so common in Connaught, never seen in England, although frequently met with in Norway and North Germany. The waiting-women were barefoot, but all the men were shod. The Araners have a speciality in shoes—pampooties, to wit. These are made of raw hide, hair outwards, the toe-piece drawn in, and the whole tied on with string or sinew. The cottages are better built than many on the mainland. Otherwise the winter gales would blow them into the Atlantic main. The thatch is pegged down firmly, and then tied on with a close network of ropes. The people are clean, smart, and good-looking. Miss Margaret Flanagan, who escorted me in my search after pampooties, would pass for a pretty girl anywhere, and the Aran Irish flowed from her lips like a rivulet of cream. She spoke English too. An accomplished young lady, Miss Margaret Kilmartin, aged nineteen, said her father had been wrongfully imprisoned for two and a half years for shooting a bailiff. The national sports are therefore not altogether unknown in the Arans. Miss Kilmartin was en route for America, per Teutonic, first to New York, and then a thousand miles by rail, alone, and without a bonnet. She had never been off the island. This little run would be her first flutter from the paternal nest.
The Araners know little of politics, save that the Balfour Government lifted them out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock and established their goings. The Balfour boats are there, the Balfour nets are full of fish, the Balfour boys are learning a useful occupation, and earning money meanwhile. If there is anything in the Aran cupboards, the Araners know who enabled them to put it there. If the young ladies have new shoes, new shawls, new brooches; if the Aran belles make money by mending nets; if the men sometimes see beef; if they compass the thick twist; if they manage without the everlasting hat going round, they have Mr. Balfour to thank, and they know it. They own it, not grudgingly or of necessity, but cheerfully. One battered old wreck raised his hat at every mention of the name. I saw no Morley boats. I saw no Gladstone nets. I saw no Home Rule fish. The Araners do not care for the Grand Old Mendacium. Perhaps they lack patriotism. It may be that they do not share what Mr. Gladstone calls the Aspirations of a people. So far as I could judge, their principal aspiration is to get something to eat. A pampootied native who has often visited the main-land, and is evidently looked upon as a mountain of sagacity and superior wisdom, said to me—
"Not a bit they care but to look afther the wife and childher an' pray to God for good takes o' fish. An' small blame to thim. Before Balfour the people were starvin', an' ivery other year Father Davis that's dead this six months would go round beggin' an' prayin' for a thrifle to kape life in thim. The hardships and the misery the poor folks had, God alone knows. An' would ye say to thim, 'tis Home Rule ye want?
"There was a young fellow fishin' here from Dublin. He went out in the hookers an' injoyed himself all to pieces, a dacent sthrip of a boy, but wid no more brains than a scalpeen (pickled mackerel). He got me to be interpreter to an owld man that would spake wid him over on Innishmair, an' the owld chap wos tellin' his throubles. So afther a bit, the young fellow says, says he,
"''Tis Home Rule ye want,' says he.
"'No,' says the owld chap, shakin' his head, 'tis my dinner I want,' says he.
"An' that young fellow was mad whin I thranslated it. But 'twas thrue, ivery word iv it. 'Ah! the ignorance, the ignorance,' says he. But then he was spakin' on a full stomach, an' 'tis ill arguin' betwixt a full man and a fastin'.
"I wouldn't say but they'd take more notice afther a while. But they're not used to bein' prosperous, an' they don't know themselves at all. Ye can't cultivate politics on low feed. 'Tis the high livin' that makes the Parliamint men that can talk for twenty-four hours at a sthretch. An' these chaps is gettin' their backs up. In twelve months' time they'll be gettin' consated. 'Tis Balfour that's feedin' thim into condition. Vote against him? Av coorse they will, ivery man o' thim. Sure they'll be towld to vote for a man, an' they'll do it. How would they ondhersthand at all? Av 'twas Misther Balfour himself that wanted their vote he'd get it fast enough. But 'tisn't. An' they'll vote agin' him without knowin' what they're doin'."
Father McPhilpin said, "It is very hard to get them to move. The Irish people are the most conservative in the world. They will not stir for telling, and they will not stir when you take them by the collar and haul them along. They are wedded to the customs of their ancestors; and yet, when once they see the advantage to be obtained by any given change, no people are so quick to follow it up. The difficulty is to start them. The Araners had actually less knowledge of the sea, of boats, nets, and fishing, than people coming here from an inland place. Surprising, but quite true."
Speaking on the general question of Home Rule, I asked Father McPhilpin if the people of Ireland would be loyal.
"Loyal to what?" said the Father, replying quickly.
"Loyal to England, to the Crown, to Queen Victoria."
"The Irish people have always been loyal—much more loyal than the English people. You have only to look at English history. How far shall I go back, Father Tom?" said my genial host to the coadjutor, who just then entered the room. "Shall we go back to Henry II.? Where shall we begin, Father Tom?"
"Well," said Father Tom, "I'd not be for going back quite so far. I think if we began with Charles I.——"
"Very good. Now, were not the Irish loyal when the English people disloyally favoured their Oliver Cromwell and their William the Third?"
I proceeded with the imbibition of Father McPhilpin's excellent tea. The answer was obvious, but Father Tom clearly believed that his senior had me on the hip, and good-naturedly came in with a Latin quotation or two. Both clerics were deeply interested in the condition of the poor in their charge, and indeed all over Ireland, and their profound belief that a Home Rule Bill would benefit the poorer classes, by changing the conditions affecting the tenure or ownership of land, was apparently their chief reason for advocating a College Green Parliament. Father McPhilpin holds some honorary official position in connection with the Aran fisheries, and from him I derived most of my information. Another authority assured me that the Araners were not grateful to England nor to Mr. Balfour, and spoke of the viper that somebody warmed in his bosom with disagreeable results. But, as Father Tom would say, Omnis comparatio claudicat, and all my experience points to a proper appreciation of the great ex-Secretary's desire to do the country good. The people know how thoroughly he examined the subject; how he spent weeks in the Congested Districts; how he saw the parish priests, the head men of the districts, the cotters themselves. Every Irishman, whatever his politics, will readily agree that Mr. Balfour knows more about Ireland than any Englishman living, and most of them credit him with more knowledge of the subject than any Irishman. My thorough-going friend, Mr. McCoy, of Galway, hater of England, avowed Separatist, longing to wallow in the brutal Saxon's gore, thinks Mr. Balfour the best friend that Ireland ever had. "I'd agree with you there," said Mr. McCoy. "I don't agree with charity, but I agree with putting people in a way to do things for themselves, which is what Mr. Balfour has done."
Back on the ice-hulk by favour of Thomas Joyce, of Kilronane, skipper and owner of a fishing smack. Mr. William Fitzgerald showed the factory, the great hold with the ice, the windmill which pumps the hulk, the mountains of boxes for fish, the mackerel in process of packing, sixty in a box, most of them very large fish. An unhappy halibut, which had come to an untimely end, stood on his tail in a narrow basket, his mouth wide open, looking like a Home Rule orator descanting on the woes of Ireland. He was slapped into a box and instantly nailed down, which summary process suggested an obvious wish.
Mr. Fitzgerald said: "The fisheries have been a great success, and have done much good. The spring fishery paid well on account of the great price we got for the mackerel. It is not customary to catch fish so early, but when you can do it it pays splendidly. Just now the price is not up to the mark, but we hope for better times. The Arklow men are not subsidised this year. They didn't need it. The ground proved productive, and they were glad to come on their own hook. If they had required a second subsidy they would not have got it."
"Why not?"
"I'm no politician," said Mr. Fitzgerald. "The Araners are so strong and hardy that they would surprise you. They will stand all day on the ice, with nothing on but those pampooties, and you would think they'd need iron soles, instead of a bit of skin. They work hard, and come regularly and give no trouble. No, I could not find any fault with them. They mostly speak Irish among themselves. It's Greek to me, but I can make out that they think a great deal of Mr. Balfour."
A week on the hulk would be refreshing, for on one side there is no land nearer than America. However, I have to go, for the Duras is getting uneasy, so I leave the hulk, the mackerel, the big sea trout which are caught with the mackerel, and steam back to Galway. A splendid fellow in the cabin discloses his views. "We must have complete independence. We shall start with 120,000 men for the Army of Independence. That will be only a nucleus. We shall attract all the brave, chivalrous, adventurous spirits of America. England has India to draw from. Trot your niggers over, we'll make short work of them. We draw from America, Australia, every part of the world. We draw from 24,000,000 of Irishmen all willing to fight for nothing, and even to pay money to be allowed to fight against England. An Irish Republic, under the protection of America. That's the idea. It's the natural thing. Work the two countries together and England may slide. We'll have an Independent Irish Republic in four years; perhaps in three years. Rubbish about pledges of loyalty. The people must be loyal to themselves, not to England. Our members will do what the people want, or they will be replaced by men who will. We have the sentiments of the people, backed by the influence of religion, all tending to complete independence. Who's going to prevent it? We'll have a Declaration of Independence on Saint Patrick's Day, 1897, at latest. Who'll stop it? Mr. Gladstone? Why long before that time we'll convert him, and ten to one he'll draw up the document. What'll you bet that he doesn't come over to Dublin and read it in The House?"
Galway, May 20th.
The people of Moycullen with whom I have spent a day are hardly patriotic. So far as I can gather, they have always paid their rents and worked hard for their living. They know nothing of Home Rule, and they do not murder their friends and neighbours. They send forth a strong contingent of men to work on Mr. Balfour's railway between Galway and Clifden, and find the weekly wages there earned very convenient. They vote as they are told, and do not trouble themselves with matters which are too high for them. If a candidate proposes to make the land much cheaper, or even to spare the necessity of paying any rent at all, the Moyculleners give him their voice. Like every Catholic villager in Ireland they look to Father Pat, Tom, Dick, or Harry for advice, and the good priest gives them the right tip. He points out that Micky O'Codlin promises to support such legislation as shall place the land in the hands of the tillers of the soil, while the Protestant Short declares that the thing is not honest, and cannot be done. The result is precisely what might be expected. The Nationalist members are returned, and Mr. Gladstone, with his most grandiose manner, and with the abject magnanimity he always shows when thoroughly beaten, comes forward and declares he can no longer resist the aspirations of a people. The Separatist sheep tumble over each other in their nervous anxiety to keep close on the heels of the bell-wether, and the Empire is threatened with disintegration to suit the convenience of a party of priests. An eminent Roman Catholic lawyer of Dublin, a Home Ruler, said to me:—
"I vote for Home Rule because the sooner the thing is settled the better, and it will never be settled until we get Home Rule in some form or other. The country is weary of the agitation of the last twenty years, and I am of opinion that Home Rule would do much to restore the freedom of Ireland. For Ireland is in a state of slavery—not to England, but to the priesthood. I believe in the fundamental doctrines of the faith, but I don't believe everything the priests choose to tell me. I am ready to admit that they have more spiritual gifts and graces than anybody else, but I will not believe that they know more about politics, and I will not submit to their dictation. They control the course of affairs both sacred and secular. At the present moment they are running the British Empire. You cannot get away from the fact that they return the Irish majority, and you will admit that the Irish majority is now the ruling power. Let me illustrate my point.
"You in England think we have the franchise in Ireland. Nothing of the kind. There may be a hundred thousand in the North who vote as they think proper, but an overwhelming majority of the South are absolutely in the hands of the clergy, who in many cases lead or drive them in hundreds to the poll."
Here an English civil engineer said:—"When I was engaged on a line at Mayo I actually saw the priest walking in front of some hundreds of voters brought into the town from the rural districts. I was driving along in a car, and my driver shouted 'Parnell for ever!' He was struck on the head and face, his cheek cut open, and himself knocked off the car. How the priestly party do hate the Parnellites! I wonder what would happen if the Nationalists got into power."
"They would exterminate each other, if possible," said the Dublin man. "We should have an awful ferment, a chaos, an immediate bankruptcy. But let us have it. Let us make the experiment, and thus for ever settle the question. To return to the priests. The people of Ireland have not the franchise, which is monopolised by a few thousand priests and bishops. The Nationalist members, the dauntless seventy-one, are as much the nominees of the Catholic clergy as the old pocket-borough members were nominees of the local landlords. And the same thing will hold good in future. People tell you it will not be so, but that's all humbug. It may be different in five-and-twenty years, when the people are educated, when the National Schools have done their work, but half that time is enough to ruin England. Thanks to agitators, Ireland cannot be any worse off than she is."
Some time ago there was a Convention in Dublin, a Home Rule Convention. There were five hundred delegates, sent up by the votes of the people. Four hundred and nine were priests, who had returned themselves. Can the English Gladstonians get away from the suggestiveness of this fact? Is it sufficiently symptomatic? Can they not diagnose the progress of the disease?
One of the Galway Town Commissioners, also a Roman Catholic, declared that the Irish people, once the kindliest, most honest, most conscientious amongst the nations of the earth, had for years been taught a doctrine of malevolence. "They were naturally benevolent, but their nature has been changed, and I regret to say that in a large measure the priests are responsible for the change. Where once mutual help and perfect honesty reigned, you now find selfishness and mutual distrust. The priests have made the altar a hustings, and even worse than electioneering has been done on that sacred spot. From the altar have been denounced old friends and neighbours who had dared to have an opinion of their own, had dared to show an independent spirit, and to hold on what they thought the true course in spite of the blackguard population of the district. Take the case of O'Mara, of Parsonstown. He was the principal merchant of the place, a very kindly man, of decided politics, a Catholic Conservative, like myself. He sold provisions to what the local priest called the 'helmeted minions of our Saxon taskmasters.' In other words, he sold bread to the constabulary at a time when outrage and murder were being put down with a strong hand. The priest threatened him with boycotting, his friends urged him to give way, and let the police get their 'prog' from a distance, but O'Mara, who was an easy-going man, and who had never obtruded his politics on anyone, showed an unexpected obstinacy, and said he would do as he chose, spite of all the priests on earth. They denounced him from the altar, but, although they tried hard, they failed to ruin him. In other cases, clerical influence has dragged men from positions of competency and caused them to end their days in the workhouse. Then, again, the priests never denounced outrage. They might have stopped the fiendish deeds of the murderous blackguards whose evil propensities were fostered and utilised by the Land League, but they said no word of disapproval. On the contrary they tacitly favoured, or seemed to favour, the most awful assassinations. When the Phœnix Park murders took place, a Galway priest whom I will not name said that he had been requested to ask for the prayers of the faithful in favour of Mr. Burke, one of the murdered men, who belonged to an old Galway family. And what was the remark made by that follower of Jesus Christ? He said, 'I have mentioned the request. You can pray for his soul—if you like.' What he meant was plain enough."
"Let me tell you of something even worse," said the Dublin lawyer. "In a certain Catholic church which I regularly attend, and on a Sunday when were present two or three eminent Judges, with a considerable number of the Dublin aristocracy, a certain dignitary, whom I also will not name before our Sassenach friend, actually coupled the names of honest people who had died in their beds with the names of Curley and the other assassins who were hanged for the Phœnix Park murders. We were invited to pray for their souls en bloc! And this, mind you, not at the time of the execution, but a year afterwards, on the anniversary of the day, and when the thing might well have been allowed to drop. Did you ever hear of anything more outrageous than the conduct of this priest, who took upon himself to mention these brutal murderers in the same breath with the blessed departed, whose friends and relations were kneeling around? The fact that this cleric could so act shows the immunity of the Irish priesthood, and their confidence in their influence over the people. Don't forget that this was in the capital of Ireland, and that the congregation was aristocratic. How great must be priestly influence over the unlettered peasantry. You see my point? What would the English say to such an exhibition? What would the relatives of decent people in England do if they had been submitted to such an insult by a Protestant parson?"
I disclaimed any right to speak for the brutal Saxon with any degree of authority, but ventured to say that to the best of my knowledge and belief the supposititious reverend gentleman, when next he took his walks abroad, might possibly become acquainted with a novel but vigorous method of propulsion, or even might undergo the process so familiar to Tim Healy, not altogether unconnected with a horsewhip.
The Galway Town Commissioner said:—"We respectable Catholics are in a very awkward position. We have to live among our countrymen who are of a different way of thinking, and unhappily we cannot express our honest opinions without embarassing consequences. In England, where people of opposite politics meet on terms of most sincere friendship, you do not understand our difficulties. We are denounced as unpatriotic, as enemies to our native land, and as aiders and abettors of the hated English rule. Now we know very well—my friend from Dublin, who understands law, will bear me out—we know very well that the English laws are good, excellent, liberal. We know that the English people are anxious to do what is fair and right, and that they have long been doing their best to make us comfortable. But we must keep this knowledge to ourselves, for such of us who are in business would run great risk of loss, besides social ostracism, if we ventured to boldly express our views. Moreover, we do not care to put ourselves in open conflict with the clergy, upon whom we have been taught to look from earliest childhood with reverence and awe. It is almost, if not quite, a matter of heredity. I declare that, in spite of what I might call my intellectual convictions, I am to some extent overawed by any illiterate farmer's son, who has been ordained a priest. I feel it in my blood. I must have imbibed it with my mother's milk. No use for Conservative Catholics to kick against it. We are too few, and we are bound hand and foot."
So did the Galway man deliver himself. I was reminded of Mr. O'Ryan, of Larne, a devoted Catholic, who said, "I protest from my innermost heart against Home Rule. I protest not only for myself, but also on behalf of my co-religionists that dare not speak, because if they did speak their lives might not be worth an hour's purchase, not being situated, as I am, in the midst of a loyal, and law-abiding population. I believe that all that Ireland requires is a just settlement of the land question, and a fair, reasonable measure of local self-government. For several generations past England has been doing all the good she could for Ireland, and none have more reason than the Roman Catholics of Ireland to be thankful for that good. The loyal Roman Catholics of Ireland are convinced that Home Rule would be the ruin of Ireland in particular and of the British Empire in general, which would find itself deprived in a few hours of a Constitution the workmanship of centuries, and the admiration of the whole nineteenth-century civilisation."
This is tolerably outspoken for an Irish Roman Catholic, but Mr. O'Ryan lives in Ulster, where people do not shoot their neighbours for difference of political opinion. He said more: "We loyal Catholics could never submit to Mr. Gladstone's ticket-of-leave men placed in power over us in this country, and rather than submit to them we are prepared for the worst, and ready, if need be, to die with the words, 'No surrender,' on our lips."
Archbishop Walsh cursed the Dublin Bazaar for the Irish Masonic Orphanage until he was black in the face, but neither he nor any other Catholic Bishop denounced the perpetrators of outrage, of mutilation, of foul assassinations. When Inspector Martin was butchered on the steps of the presbytery at Gweedore; when Joseph Huddy and John Huddy were murdered and their bodies put in sacks and thrown into Lough Mask; when Mrs. Croughan, of Mullingar, was murdered because she had been seen speaking to the police, four shots being fired into her body; when Luke Dillon, a poor peasant, was shot dead as he walked home from work; when Patrick Halloran, a poor herdsman, was shot dead at his own fireside; when Michael Moloney was murdered for paying his rent; when John Lennane, an old man who had accepted work from a boycotted farmer, was shot dead in the midst of his family; when Thomas Abram met precisely the same fate under similar circumstances; when Constable Kavanagh was murdered; when John Dillon had his brains beaten out and his ears torn away; when Patrick Freely was murdered for paying his rent; when John Curtin was shot dead by moonlighters, to whom he refused to give up his guns; when John Forhan, a feeble old man of nearly seventy years, was murdered for having induced labourers to work on a boycotted farm; when James Ruane, a labourer who worked for a boycotted farmer, was murdered by three shots; when James Quinn was wounded by a bullet, and while disabled, killed by having his throat cut; when Peter McCarthy was murdered because it was thought he meant to pay rent; when James Fitzmaurice, aged seventy, was shot dead in the presence of his daughter Norah, because he had taken a farm which his brother had left, the latter declining to pay rent, although the landlord offered a reduction of 66 per cent.; when Margaret Macmahon, widow, and her little children were three times fired at because the poor woman had earned a few pence by supplying turf to the police; when Patrick Quirke, aged seventy-five, was murdered for taking a farm which somebody else wanted; when the wife of John Collins was indecently assaulted while her husband was being brutally beaten for caretaking; when John Curtin (another John Curtin), a school-master, was shot, and his wife received forty-two slugs in her face, neck, and breast for something they had not done, the school also being fired into, and all children attending it boycotted; when John Connor's wife was shot in the head by moonlighters who wished to vex the husband; when Cornelius Murphy was shot dead while sitting at his "ain fireside" chatting with his wife and children; when Daniel O'Brien, aged seventy-five, talking with his wife, aged seventy, was murdered by a shot; when Patrick Quigley had the roof of his skull blown away for taking some grazing; when David Barry was shot in the main street of Castleisland; when Patrick Taugney was murdered in the presence of his wife and daughters; when Edmund Allen was shot dead because of a right-of-way dispute—he was a Protestant; when young Cashman, aged twenty, was beaten to death for speaking to a policeman; when poor Spillane was murdered for acting as a caretaker; when Patrick Curtin, John Rahen, and a farmer named Tonery were murdered; when James Spence, aged sixty-five, was beaten to death; when Blake, Ruane, Linton, Burke, Wallace, Dempsey, Timothy Sullivan, John Moylan, James Sheridan, and Constable Cox were shot dead; when James Miller, Michael Ball, Peter Greany, and Bridget McCullagh were murdered—the last a poor widow, who was beaten to death with a spade; when Ryan Foley was brutally murdered; when Michael Baylan was murdered; when Viscount Mountmorres was murdered, and the dead body left on the road, the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse the shelter of a barn; when a car-driver named John Downey was killed by a bullet intended for Mr. Hutchins, J.P.; when young Wheeler, of Oolagh, whence I dated a letter, was shot dead, to punish his father, who was an agent—when all these murders took place, every one of them, and as many more, the work of the Land League, which also was responsible for more outrages, filthy indecencies, and gross brutalities than the entire Gazette would hold, and which would in many cases be unfit for publication—then were the clergy SILENT. No denunciations from the altar; no influence exerted in the parish. In many cases a direct encouragement to persevere in the good path. When John Curtin's daughters attended church after their father's murder they were attacked by a hostile crowd. The police were compelled to charge the infuriated mob. Otherwise the pious Papists would in all probability have consummated the good work by murdering the remainder of the family, after having, in the presence of daughters who nobly fought the murderers, assassinated the father.
What did the good priest, Father O'Connor, say to all this; how express his deep sense of this abject cowardice, this atrocious savagery, this unheard-of-sacrilege?
He "took no notice of the occurrence"—good, easy man. But I am forgetting something. Mr. Curtin was killed by a gang of moonlighters, who knocked him up, and, presenting loaded rifles at the children, asked for the father's arms. Before the terrified boys and girls could comply the father appeared and shot a moonlighter dead in his tracks. The rest fled precipitately, but unhappily Curtin gave chase and was killed. Good Father O'Connor attended the funeral of the moonlighter, who did not belong to his parish, and refused to attend that of Mr. Curtin, who did!
The Catholic Bishops of Ireland stood by and looked on all this without a word of censure. Silence gives consent. Had they fulminated against outrage and secret wholesale murder of poor working men, for nearly all those I have cited were of this class; had they used their immense influence to stem the murderous instincts of ruffians who in many cases took advantage of the prevailing disregard for human life to wreak their private revenge on their neighbours, satisfied that no man dare testify, and that the clergy would aid them to frustrate the law—had the Bishops done this, even the dull and sluggish brain of the brutal Saxon could have understood their action. They uttered no single word of condemnation. An eminent Catholic, a clever professional man, who reveres the faith in which he was bred, but holds its priesthood in lowest contempt, said to me:—"You cannot find a word of condemnation uttered by any Bishop during the whole period when brutal murders were of daily occurrence. I give you your best. I would stake anything on my statement. I have challenged people over and over again, but nobody has ever been able to produce a syllable of censure, of warning, of reprobation. The Bishops were strangely unanimous in their silence."
But when the Irish Masons try to provide for the orphans of their brethren the Archbishop's back is up at once; for Masons have secrets which they may not tell even to priests; and therefore Dr. Walsh declares that whosoever gives sixpence to this cause of charity, or associates with its promoters, shall be cast into hell, there to abide in torture everlastingly—unless previously whitewashed by himself in person. And as I have clearly shown, the influence of Archbishop Walsh and his kind is at this moment supremely powerful in matters affecting the prestige and integrity of England and her people. Wherefore I do not wonder at the saying of an earnest Irishman of famous name, a baronet of long descent, whom I saw yesterday—
"When I see how the thing is being worked, and when, as a Catholic, I recognise the progress and character of the Church policy, and when I see England walking so stupidly into the trap, I don't know what to do—whether to swear, or to go out and be sick."
Moycullen (Connemara), May 23rd.
Mr. Balfour's railway from Galway to Clifden will be exactly fifty miles long, and will run through Crooniffe, Moycullen, Ross, Oughterard, and the wildest and most desolate parts of Connemara. The line has been in contemplation for thirty years at least, but the strong suit of its Irish projectors was talking, not doing, and the project might have remained under discussion until the crack of doom but for Mr. Balfour's energy and administrative power. The Irish patriots had no money, or they would not invest any. The Galway authorities would not authorise a county rate. Anybody who chose might make the line, but the local "powers that be" refused to spend a single penny on an enterprise which would for years provide employment for the starving people of Connemara, and would afterwards prove of incalculable benefit to the whole West of Ireland by opening up an attractive, an immense, an almost inaccessible tourist district, besides affording facilities of transit for agricultural stock and general market produce, and powerfully aiding the rapidly-developing fish trade of the western sea-board. Not a bit of it. The Western Irish are always standing about waiting for something. They talked about the line for a generation or two, but they cut no sod of turf. They harangued meetings convened to hear the prospective blessings of the line, but they declined to put any money on their opinions. The starving peasants of Connemara might have turned cannibals and eaten each other before Irishmen had commenced the railway. The people of the congested districts were unable to live on the sympathy of their fellow-countrymen, and nothing else was offered to them. The Connemarans have an occasional weakness for food. They like a square feed now and again. Their instincts are somewhat material. They think that Pity without Relief is like Mustard without Beef. They like Sentiment—with something substantial at the back of it. Their patriot-brethren, those warm-hearted, dashing, off-hand, devil-may-care heroes of whom we read in Charles Lever, sometimes visited the district, to rouse the people against the brutal Saxon, but they did no more than this. Sometimes, I say, not often, did the patriots patrol Connemara. There were two reasons for this. First, the Irish patriots do not speak their native language; and the Connemarans are not at home with English. Secondly, and principally, the Connemarans had nothing to give away. They cannot pay for first-class patriotism like that of Davitt, Dillon, O'Brien, and Tim Healy, who latterly have never performed out of London.
And so the Galway folks went on with their railway discussions, and the poor Connemarans went on with their starving. Suddenly Mr. Balfour took the thing up, and the turf began to fly. The Midland and Western Railway Company, in consideration of a grant of £264,000, agreed to make the line, and to afterwards run it, whether it paid or not. The contractors were not allowed to import unskilled labour. The Connemarans were to make the line whether they knew the work or not. They had never seen navvy labour. They knew nothing outside the management of small farms. They had never done regular work. Their usual form is to plant their bit of ground and then to sit down till the crops come up, on which they live till next season. A failure of crops means starvation. This was their normal condition. They enjoyed what Mr. Gladstone would call a "chronic plethora" of hunger. The liverish tourist who adventured himself into these barbarous regions in hopeless quest of appetite for his breakfast, would see the Connemarans in hopeless quest of breakfast for their appetites. The region is healthy enough. As Justice Shallow would say, "Beggars all, beggars all. Marry, good air."
The first thing you see is a twenty-thousand-pound bridge across the Corrib, not very far from the salmon weir, where are more fish than you can count splashing up the salmon stairs, which are arranged to save the salmon the effort of a long jump. Then the line running along the Corrib Valley on a high embankment, past the ruins of what was first a convent, then a whiskey distillery, now a timekeeper's office. An entire field is being dug up and carted away, the soil being excavated to a depth of eight or ten feet, over an area of several acres required for sidings and railway buildings. A strolling Galway man of Home Rule tendencies imparts information. He is eminently discontented, and thinks the way in which the work is conducted another injustice to Ireland. "The people are working and getting wages, but what wages! Thirteen and sixpence a week! Would English navvies work for that? You are getting the labour at starvation prices, and even then you bully the men. They work in gangs, each with a ganger swearing at them in the most offensive and outrageous way. See that gang over there. You can hear the ganger shouting and swearing even at this distance. The poor men are treated like dogs, and even then they can hardly keep body and soul together. They have to come miles and miles to the work, and some live so far away that they can only return home once a week. So they have to camp out in hovels. You are going down the line? Then you will be shocked at the slave-driving you'll see. It reminds me of Legree in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I am surprised that the men do not drop dead over the work. Not a moment's rest or relaxation. Work, work, work from morning to night, for next to nothing. It ought not to be allowed in a civilised country. And on the top of all this slavery we are expected to be very much obliged for the opportunity of working at all. You chuck us a crust just as you would chuck a bone to a dog, and then you want us to go down on our knees and pour blessings on Balfour's head. We're tired of such stuff; but, thank God, we shall soon have things in our own hands. All these men are small farmers, or small farmers' sons. They can't get a living out of the land, and they are obliged to come to this. Bullied and driven from week's end to week's end, they are the very picture of starvation. A shame and disgrace to the English Government."
I may as well say at once that all this proved to be untrue. No doubt the Galway Home Rulers invent and circulate these falsehoods to discount the effect of the good work of a Conservative Government, and it is, therefore, well that the facts should be placed on record. I pushed on to a cutting where fifty men were busily engaged in loading earth into trucks, having first dug it from a great bank of gravelly soil. An Irish ganger walked to and fro along the top, keeping his eye on the men, and occasionally shouting in an excited tone. But he was not swearing at, or otherwise abusing, the men, who were as fine a company of peasants as you could see anywhere, well-built, well-grown, and muscular. Not a trace of starvation, but, on the contrary, a well-fed, well-nourished look. The ganger, Sullivan, seemed good-tempered enough, only shouting to let off his superfluous vitality. He used no bad language. "Cheer up, my lads," he cried. "In wid the dirt. Look alive, look alive, look alive. Whirroo! Shove it up, my lads, shove it up. Away ye go. Look out for that fall of earth. There she goes. Whirroo!" English navvies would have preferred silence, would have requested him to hold his condemned jaw, would have spent some breath in applying an explosive mining term to his eyes, but these Irish labourers seemed to understand their superior officer, and to cheerfully accept the situation. Mr. Sullivan was civil and good-humoured. "These are a picked lot. Splendid set of fellows, and good workers. No, they do not walk for miles before they reach their work. The engine runs along the line to pick them up in the morning, and to drop them again in the evening. They have half-an-hour for dinner, and half-an-hour for tea. They get about fifteen shillings a week. Boys get less, but thirteen shillings and sixpence is the very bottom. Rubbish about low wages. Nine bob a week is the regular farmer's wage, and these men would have been glad to work for six bob. All have some land, every man of them. They have just come back from planting it. We have been very short of men. They went away at the beginning of April, and they were away for a fortnight or three weeks. Small blame to them. Half or three-quarters of them went to look after their bits of ground. But, barrin' that, they turn up very regularly. They get fifteen shillings a week, where they got nothing. And every man knows the convenience the line will be to him to get his bit of stuff to Galway market, and also that it will bring money into a country where there was none. They are as contented as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. We have not heard a grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. These Home Rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle. Since the work came from the Tories it must be bad. There must be a curse on it. Now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (Excuse me, Sir.) Whirroo, my boys. Look out! In wid it, thin! Whirroo!"
A big tank for engine water was being filled by an old man in shirt and trousers, his naked chest shining a hundred yards away. Luke Whelan was his name; a vigorous pumper, he. "'Tis hard work it is, ye may say it. I have another tank or two to fill, an' keep filled, but I have long rests, and time for a grain o' baccy, glory be to God! Thirteen-an'-sixpence it is, but I lost my place at Palmer's flour mills, the work gave out, an' but for this I'd have nothin' at all. Was in the Fifth Fusiliers, but lost me sight (partly) in Injee. Was in the army long enough to get a pension of ninepence a day. Me rint is two pounds a year, and I've only the owld woman to kape. Ah, but Balfour was a blessin' to us altogether! They talk about Home Rule, but what good will that do us? Can we ate it, can we dhrink it, can we shmoke it? The small farmers thinks they'll have the land for nothin', but what about the labourers? Everything that's done is done for the farmers, an' the workin' men gets nothin' at all. In England 'tis the workin' men gets all the consideration; but in this counthry 'tis the farmers, an' the workin' men that have no land may hang themselves. When the big farms is all done away who'll employ the labourers? The gintry that spint money an' made things a bit better is all driven out of the counthry by the Land League. Ye see all around ye the chimneys of places that once was bits of manufactories. All tumblin' down, all tumblin' down. Nobody dares invest money for fear he'd be robbed of his property, the same as the landlords was robbed, an' will be robbed, till the end of the chapther. 'Tis nothin' but robbery ye hear of, an' gettin' other people's property for nothin'. The Home Rule Bill would dhrive all the workin' men out of the counthry to England and America. They must have employment, an' they must go where it is to be had. Engineers have been threatenin' this line for forty years, first one route an' then another, but divil a spade was put in it. England found us the money to build the line, an' the labourers get work. Where will we get work whin nobody would lend us money to build lines? An Irish Parlimint wouldn't build a line in a thousand years. For nobody would thrust thim wid the cash. Yes, wid ninepence a day and thirteen shillings and sixpence a week, I'm comfortable enough. But begorra, the pump leaks, an' I have to pump a quarther more than I should. Av the pump worked right 'tis little grumblin' ye'd hear from Luke Whelan."
Mr. George William Wood, contractors' agent, said:—"The men work as well as they can, but they do not get over the ground like English navvies. They are very regular, very quiet, very sober, and never give the least trouble. Of course, they had to be taught, and they did not like the big navvy shovels. They were used to the six-foot spades with no cross-bar. Yes, you might think it harder work with such tools, but then the Irish labourer dislikes to bend his back. The long handle lets him keep his back straight, there's the difference. However, we insist on the big, short shovels, and they have taken to them all right. These men are not so strong as they seem, and they are not worth nearly so much as English navvies. They may be willing, but they have not the same stamina. The English navvy eats about two pounds of beef for his dinner and washes it down with about two quarts of ale. These men never see meat from one year's end to another. They live on potatoes, and bits of dry bread and water. At three in the afternoon they are not worth much, clean pumped out—might almost as well go home. No, they don't live in hovels. Those who go home but once a week are housed in good wooden sheds, or corrugated iron buildings, with good beds and bedclothes. There are about forty of them in a hut, with a hut-keeper to look after them and to keep order. For this excellent lodging they are charged sixpence a week, and all their prog is supplied at wholesale prices. We buy largely in Dublin, bring it down, of course, carriage free, and both the men and their wives and families are supplied to any amount. They effect a saving of at least twenty per cent., but probably much more, as village stores are terribly dear. The whole district has found out this advantage, and they flock to the hut-store from all parts. So Balfour is a boon to the country at large."
Next day I went down sixteen miles of line to a spot about a mile from Oughterard. It was pay-day, and I clung to the engine along with the engineer, Mr. Wood, and a pay-clerk, armed with several yards of pay-sheet, and a couple of black tin cash-boxes. A wild and stony country, a range of high mountains on the left, wide, flat plains on the right, through which the Corrib serpentined, with big rocks rising from the channel brilliantly white. "They whitewash the rocks, so that they can be seen by the boats and the Cong steamer. Englishmen would blow them up and have done with them, but Irishmen prefer to whitewash them and sail round them. More exciting I suppose, matter of taste." This from the engineer, a Saxon of the usual type. On through bogs, past nameless lakes, and a chaos of limestone rocks and huge granite boulders, lakes, bogs, rocks, in endless succession, with the long mountain reek beside us, and a still higher range in the purple distance. Now and then a green patch sternly walled in, a few cows grazing, a lonely donkey, a few long-tailed black sheep, or a couple of goats. Here and there acres of white blossom, looking like a snowfall. This was the bog bean, growing on a stem a foot high, a silvery tuft of silky bloom hanging downward, two inches long and the bigness of a finger. Sometimes we dashed past walled enclosures so full of stone that they looked like abandoned graveyards, and the only use of the fences, so far as I could see, was to keep thoughtless cattle out. Very little tillage. Just a few ridges of potatoes, but the people who had planted them seemed to have vanished for ever. At long intervals a diminutive white cot, but nothing else to break the succession of lake, rock, and bog. Moycullen, six miles from Galway, is to have a station; another will be built at Ross, ten miles, a third at Oughterard, sixteen and a half miles. Not a stone laid as yet. At Ross a great excavation. The men had just laid bare a huge boulder of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and Mr. Wood, observing my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot. "No granite in situ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." Ten miles from Galway a cutting was being regularly quarried for building purposes, and most of the sixteen or seventeen miles of line I saw was fenced with a Galway wall of uncemented stone four feet six inches high and eighteen inches thick. "The men build stone walls with great skill," said Mr. Wood, "but half the number of English navvies would do more excavating."
The pay-clerk stopped the engine at every gang, and the men came forward for their money. All had the same well-nourished sturdy look, and all seemed well satisfied with their wages. They conversed in Irish, but they mostly understood English, even if they could not speak it themselves. Whole villages were there seemingly of the same name, and strange were the distinctive appellations. There was John Toole and John Toole Pat, John Pat Toole and Pat Toole John. Permutation was the order of the day. There was Tom Joyce Pat and Pat Tom Joyce, Tom Joyce Sally and Tom Joyce boy. Besides this change ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had Pat Tom Joyce Red and Pat Tom Joyce Black, Red Pat Tom Joyce and Black Tom Joyce Pat. This is called Joyce's country, before Balfour's time depopulating to desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-Joyceing in fact. Nearly seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in 1894 the great civiliser will steam from Galway to Clifden, inaugurating (let us hope) a new era of prosperity.
In Oughterard I met an American tourist who said, "I should think Home Rule would about settle Old England. The Irish people show a most unfriendly spirit, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no such word as gratitude in the Irish language. There is some change in this district, and the people seem willing to work, but wherever the agitators have been everything is going to the bad. Nothing but distrust and suspicion. No Irishman would invest in Irish securities. They prefer South Americans! That startled me. I am told that Tim Healy is worth £30,000, all got out of Home Rule, and my informant says that Tim would not risk a penny in his own country. Tim is a blackguardly kind of politician, but he is mighty cute, and shirks Irish securities. Where are the business managers of the Irish nation coming from? That's what I want to know."
I told him of the Galway Harbour Commissioners, who, having been forgiven a Government debt of nearly £10,000, conceived the idea of building a new, grand, splindid, iligant, deep dock, which should increase the trade of the place by allowing ships of great draught to unload in the harbour. Let me repeat the story for the readers of the Gazette.
The Harbour Board consulted an eminent engineer, who said the right thing would cost £80,000. They sent him to the right about, and called in another man. "Now," said they, "we can only raise £30,000 by loans from the Board of Works. Will not that suffice? We give you 5 per cent. on the outlay, &c., &c., &c." The new man said £30,000 was ample, took the job, and the work was commenced. Ultimately they borrowed £40,000, which they spent, along with the £10,000 in hand. Then it was found that big ships could not get to the dock at all! No use in a deep dock unless you can swim up to it. To get the big vessels in you required to hoist them out of the water, carry them a few hundred yards, and drop them into the dock. As the Galway men still groan beneath the cruel English yoke, this operation was found impracticable. During some blasting operations a big rock was tumbled out of the dock in process of manufacture, dropping in front of another dock in full working order. The stone was just in the way of the vessels, but as there was no Parliament in College Green, the Harbour Board had not the heart to fish it up. So it crashed through the bottom of a Henderson collier, the owner of which sued the Harbour Board for damages, and was awarded a thousand pounds. The money never was paid, and never will be. The fortunate winner of the suit will sell his claim for £5 in English gold. He was thought to have done well in winning, and my informant, a typical Irishman, admired the complainant's successful attack on the Harbour Board. "But what good come of it at last," I ventured to put in. "Nay, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a glorious victory."
The Galway Harbour Board spent £50,000 or so on a deep dock which they have not got, and the harbour is in pawn to the Board of Works, which collects the tolls, and otherwise endeavours to indemnify itself. The Harbour Board meets as usual, but it has no powers, no money, no credit, no anything. This is a fair specimen of the business management which characterises the breed of Irishmen who favour Home Rule. The party paper, once a fine property, has in their hands sunk below zero, and they built New Tipperary on land to which they had no title; so that the money was completely thrown away. Almost every Board of Guardians in the country is insolvent, except in those cases where the Government has kicked out the Poor Law Guardians elected by the Parish, and restored solvency by sending down paid men to run the concern for a couple of years. This has been done in several instances, and in every case the paid men, drawing salaries of several hundred a year, have in two years paid off debts, leaving all in good working order, with a balance in the bank. The inference is obvious. Would the Belfast folks have made such a fiasco of a dock? Would Englishmen have exposed themselves to the ridicule of a story which is curiously remindful of Robinson Crusoe and his big canoe? Would the Galway folks ever have built the railway they wanted so badly; or sans England and Mr. Balfour, would not the Connemara men have proceeded to starve until the end of time? A keen old railway man who had thravelled, and who had done railway work in California, said to me, "Whin we get an Oirish Parlimint the labourers may jist put on their hats and go over to England. Thank God, we'll know something besides farm work now, the whole of us. We can get railroad work in England. There'll be none in Oireland, for every mother's son that has money will cut the country. I could take ye fourteen Oirish miles from Galway, along a road that was spotted wid great jintlemen's houses, an' ivery one of thim's in ruins. The owners that used to live in them, and be a blessin' to the counthry, is all ruined by the land agitation. All are gone, an' their foin, splindid houses tumblin' down, an' the people worse off than iver. If the Bill becomes law the young men will all be off to England and America. There'll be no work, no money in the counthry. Did ye hear what the cyar-dhriver said to Mr. Morley?"
I confessed that the incident escaped my recollection.
"Why the cyar-man was a dacent boy, an Mister Morley axed him how was thrade, an' av he was busy."
"No," says the dhriver, "things is quite, very quite," says he.
"Ye'll be busy when ye get Home Rule," says Mister Morley.
"But that'll only last a week," says the cyar-man.
"An' why so?" says the Irish Secretary, bein' curious an' lookin' round at the dhriver.
"Och," says Pat; "'twill only take a week to dhrive thim to the boats."
"Who d'ye mane, wid yer dhrivin' to the boats?" says owld Morley.
"All the dacent folks that has any money to pay for dhrivin'," says Pat, "for bedad they'll be lavin' the counthry."
"That was a thriminjus rap for owld Morley, but 'twas thrue, an' the Divil himself couldn't deny it."
"An' can ye tell me why the farmers should have all the land an' not the labourers? An' could ye say why them murdherin' Land Leaguers in Parliament wasn't hung up, the rampagious ruffians?"
I could throw no light on these points. My friend had much to say about the Land League M.P.'s, and a score of times asked me why they had not been hanged.
A hard question to answer, when you come to think of it. Does anybody know?
Oughterard (Connemara), May 23rd.