Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home Rule

A smart car driver, named Matthew Henay, was dubious as to the benefits accruing from Home Rule. His driving was a study, and his conversations with Maggie, his little mare, wer...

This is the most depressing town I have seen as yet. Except on market and fair days, literally nothing is done. The streets are nearly deserted, the houses are tumbling down, ga...

I tested a number of English commercials on this point. All confirmed the statement above given. Many had been Gladstonians, but now all were Unionists. None of them knew an Eng...

And still the people are not happy. Most of them are rather below the Irish average. Their isolated position in the extreme west, and their want of means of communication, may p...

"Then came severe inconveniences. Friends had secretly conveyed provisions to the Darcys, and, at considerable risk to themselves, had afforded some slight countenance and assis...

The best authority in Achil said:--"The hat is always going round for the islanders, who are much better off than the poor of great English cities. They have the reputation of b...

"Ascendency is their game. Would they be tolerant? Why ask such a question? When was Roman Catholicism tolerant, and where? Is not the whole system of Popery based on intoleranc...

A Protestant handicraftsman said:--"If we had a Catholic Parliament in Dublin we should not be able to put our head out of doors. Those who in England say otherwise are very ign...

Number three had powerfully-developed opinions. He said--"Home Rule on Conservative lines is my ticket. We'll get it on no other. I console myself with that idea. Otherwise it w...

A Presbyterian farmer said:--"On this estate the whole of the tenants are Presbyterians. The agent told me that early in June the whole of the rents up to May were paid, and tha...

At last the sportive young engine whose playfulness and prankishness were mentioned in my last, came whinnying up, harnessed to an empty truck in which was a bench with a green...

The caretakers are not accessible. Stringent orders forbid the giving of information to any person whatever. This is unfortunate, as a look at their diaries would prove amusing....

I had written so far, when glancing through the window, I saw a familiar form, a rosy, healthy, florid gentleman parading on the lawn which fronts the Railway Hotel, puffing a c...

Another small moonlighting incident, now appearing for the first time on this or any other stage. Some tenants years ago were evicted on the Langford estates. Negotiations were...

The country between Newry and Armagh is very beautiful from a pastoral point of view. After the savage deserts of the West it "Comes o'er my soul like the sweet south That breat...

There was nothing for it but to turn my unwilling back on this veritable gold mine. But although Mr. MacAdam could not or would not speak, others were not so reticent, and once...

"Poor Connaught, as they call the province, is a great hoarder. And when Irishmen invest they invest outside Ireland. Seventy-eight thousand pounds in the Post Office savings ba...

The people listened silently, with grave, earnest faces. They mean business. During my first visit to Belfast I interviewed the leading citizens, the clergy, nobility, and gentr...

"The timprance man had a wondherful glass that made iverything a thousand million times as big. What's this he called it? Ye're right, 'twas a my-cross-scrope; ye hit it to a po...

It was at Athenry that I first obtained a precise legal definition of the term Congested District, to the effect that wherever the land valuation amounts to less than 30s. per h...

"The honourable gentleman comes here as the apostle of a creed which is a creed of force, which is a creed of oppression, which is a creed of the destruction of all liberty, and...

There are twenty thousand Orangemen in the city, and the Protestants outnumber the Papists by three to one. Yet the placard was treated with absolute respect, and although I ent...

New Tipperary adjoins the old, to which it is on the whole superior. All the descriptions I have seen of the Land League buildings are untrue and unfair. Most of them were writt...

Here I am, after two hours' journey by the Midland and Great Western Railway, which leads to most of the good things in Ireland, and is uncommonly well managed, and with much en...

So I gathered posies of bog-bean bloom and walked round the big boulders with which this sterile region is thickly strewn. The natives know nothing of Home or any other Rule, an...

Concurrently with the compulsory withdrawal of the Union Jack displayed by my friend Mrs. Gibson, of Northern Hotel, Londonderry, another occurrence, this time in the South, wil...

This is a blessed change from dirt and poverty to tidiness and comfort. After the West of Ireland the North looks like another world. After the bareheaded, barelegged, and baref...

Baronets and other gentlemen of distinction headed the Unionist clubs, walking through the streets in such manner as was never known before. Magistrates and Presbyterian ministe...

This beautiful watering place cannot be compared with the celebrated holiday resorts of England, Wales, Scotland, or France without doing it injustice. It is unique in its chara...

"When an illiterate declares for whom he will vote, we sometimes have from twenty to thirty outsiders in the polling-booth. In England the Court is cleared, and even the policem...

They accept with exceeding great joy the provision which will enable them to deprive of their property, rights, and privileges all existing Corporations whether incorporated und...

A moderate Unionist said:--"To speak of tolerance in the same breath with Irish Roman Catholicism is simply nonsense. You will not find any believers in this theory among the Pr...

Underneath the incredulity of the lower classes--and be it observed that their incredulity is obviously based on an instinctive feeling that the claims and arguments of their ow...

The students went outside, and with their friends formed in military columns--the outside files well armed with knobby sticks as a deterrent to possible Parnellite enterprise. A...

"Then the borrower goes to his frind an' complains, an' thin the frind acts all out the way Gladstone'll act when the bill's refused at the Lords, or may be at the Commons. 'Hel...

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 t...

There are three more verses of this immortal strain. The _Shan van vocht_ was the great song of the '98 rebellion, and possibly the G.O.M.'s happy adaptability to the music may...

A passing shower drove me to the shelter of a neighbouring farmhouse, where lived a farmer, his wife, and their son and daughter. The place was poor but tolerable, the wife bein...

Ten minutes after this conversation under my window Michael adroitly introduced the subject of postal profits in Ireland. I told him there was an ascertained loss of £50,000 a y...

As the great object of public interest in the city of Limerick is the Treaty Stone, a huge block of granite, raised on a pedestal on the Clare side of Thomond Bridge, to commemo...

These considerations are closely observed by the people of Strabane, the best of whom are steady loyalists. The town is bright, brisk, thriving, and Scotch. Or rather the Scotti...

A white-haired gentleman descends from a wagonette and promenades for a while. Then he sits down beside me. The conversation turns on Home Rule. My friend is impatient, has been...

"In Ireland the figures were one in every five, and of the remainder two at least were barely able to perform so simple an operation as making a cross against the right name. Ar...

In a former letter I pointed out how cleverly the Nationalists dissect the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to Ireland, how they prove that its provisio...

The Parnellites are hard up, and their organ asks America for cash. The dauntless nine want six thousand pounds for pocket-money and hotel expenses. The cause of Ireland demands...

The great mass of the Irish electorate know nothing of all this. Tap them wherever you will, north, south, east, or west, and you find one dominant thought--that of pecuniary ga...

After some search I found a fine young Parnellite, who roundly denounced the clergy of his own faith as enemies of their country. He said:--"I _was_ a Home Ruler, but although I...

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 C...

A political tradesman recommended to me as a perfect encyclopædia of argument on the Home Rule question, said:--"The great difficulty is to get the English people to understand...

As to their exceptional claims. The attitude of omniscience and omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the Catholic hierarchy. Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin, has declared th...

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...

There is no railway between Donegal and Ballyshannon, fifteen miles away. The largest town in the county is not connected with the principal port. But you can steam from Ballysh...

The feeling of the other party is still stronger, and has been so often and openly expressed as to stand in no need of proof. Mr. Dillon has threatened to "manage Ulster;" and o...

+-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | The original book for this e-text is full of inconsistent | | hyphenation, punctuatio...

The most remarkable feature of Dundalk life is the fact that the people are doing something. Not much, perhaps, but still something. The port is handy for Liverpool and Glasgow,...

And Irish land hunger is largely responsible for Irish rents. Friends and neighbours--aye, even relatives near as brothers and sisters, compete against each other, and eagerly f...

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