"These followers of Mr. Gladstone who say, 'Let them have Home Rule to quiet the country, to relieve the House from the endless discussion of the Irish Question so that we can proceed with the disestablishment of the Church, the Local Option Bill, and the thousand-and-one other fads for which English Home Rulers have sold themselves'--the men who say this, and who also say 'If they kick over the traces we can instantly tighten the reins and reduce them to order,' surely these folks cannot be aware that the Gladstone-Morley Government is unable to give Strachan, of Tuam, the land which he has bought and paid for in the Land Courts. The British Government cannot collect the rents of Colonel O'Callaghan, of Bodyke; nor can it prevent the daily cases of moonlighting and outrage which are so carefully hushed up, and which hardly ever get into Irish newspapers. When the British Government cannot make a few farmers either pay their rent or leave the land, the said Government having control over the police and civil officers of the law, how is it going to collect the purchase money of the farms, in the form of rent, when it has not this control? "The new police will be in the hands of a Parliament, elected by these very farmers, who, so to speak, have tasted blood, have ceased to make efforts to pay rent, have been encouraged in their refusal to pay by the very men Mr. Gladstone proposes to entrust with the whole concern! Will these farmers suddenly turn round and say, 'We declined to pay when English rule would have forced payment, we shall be delighted to pay when nothing could make us do so?' I have been connected with Irish farmers and landowners for thirty years as a land specialist, and I tell you that the thing will work exactly as I have said. Put the Rebel party in power, and see what will happen to you. It is hard to believe that Englishmen will act so stupidly in a matter so vitally affecting their own interests. That is why educated people both in Ireland and England do not believe the bill will ever become law. They cannot conceive the final acceptance of anything so utterly preposterous. But call on me to-morrow, and I will go into the legal possibilities of the question." 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, and you might as well speak to them of the Darwinian theory, or the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, or the Homeric studies of the Grand Old Man, or the origin of the Sanskrit language. The only opinion I could glean was the leading idea of simple Irish agriculturists everywhere. A young fellow who appeared to be in a state of intellectual advancement so far beyond that of the other Barnans as to be almost out of sight, said:--