‘But the landlords, what do you think of them?’ ‘So far as I have seen them, they are a mixed lot, like all the rest of us—some good, some bad. I blame people who bid against each other in their madness to get a bit of land on which it is impossible for anyone to live. I blame the priests and the patriots and the landlords who for ages have winked at this, and allowed the people to sink into a state of degradation such as you see nowhere else. For miles and miles, as you know, Father O’Bourke, in many parts of Galway, you see fields covered with stones, and these fields are let off as farms. If the landlord resides on the estate the stones are cleared off, the soil is drained, and the tenant manages to make a living—not such as he could get in America, or Canada, or Australia, if he had pluck enough to leave the old country and emigrate, but a living of some kind. If he is under a bad landlord—a poor Irish squire, for instance—of course it is different. If the landlord does not reside upon the estate—unless he be a great English landlord, like the Duke of Devonshire—the tenant and the land have alike a bad time of it. But as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so the heavens are unpropitious to the small farmer. If he rises early and sits up late, and eats the bread of carefulness, all is in vain. In Liverpool there are five or six miles of docks filled with American corn and cheese and bacon. How can the small farmer, either in England, or Ireland, or Scotland, compete with that? “It is my belief,” said a Liverpool gentleman to me—who in the famine year went on a mission of mercy, and as a messenger of relief exposed himself to all the horrors of a Connemara winter—“that the small farmer could not get a living even if, instead of paying rent, rent were given him on condition of his taking the farm.” ‘I fear, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the priest, ‘you have looked at Ireland with prejudiced eyes.’ ‘Not a bit of it. No one has been more friendly to the Irish than the Liberal Party, of which I am a member, and yet we are called infamous, and bloodthirsty, and base, and brutal. You know yourself here in England you live in perfect peace and security; you are allowed to go in and out amongst the people to make converts if you are so disposed. In Ireland, if I attempted to do anything of the kind, I should stand a good chance of a broken head.’ ‘Well, sir, we are a warm-hearted, impulsive people, attached very strongly to the old religion—the religion of our forefathers.’ ‘There is no doubt of that, sir,’ continued Wentworth; ‘wherever you go in Ireland, in the midst of all its dirt, and starvation, and wretchedness, and poverty, you see one man well dressed and well fed.’ ‘And who may he be, sir?’ ‘The parish priest.’ ‘And why should he not be? Is not he the guide and shepherd of his flock? I suppose you will blame him next,’ said Father O’Bourke, reddening. ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘What for?’