It seems to me that the belief of uncultured Irishmen as to the immense benefits to be derived from Home Rule is exactly on a par with the belief of uncultured Irishwomen as to the immense benefits to be derived from the sprinkling of holy water. No reasonable man, who has carefully examined the subject, will for one moment assert that there is a pin to choose between the two. The votes of these poor folks, admitted by thousands to the electorate, have sent to Westminster the hireling orators whose persistent clamour has turned a slippery statesmen from the paths of patriotism and propriety, and whose subterranean machinations--aided and abetted by men versed in Jesuistic and Machiavellian strategy, and who believe that the end justifies the means--threaten to undermine the British Empire, and to involve the citizens of England in political and financial ruin. A pretty pass for a respectable individual like John Bull. England to be worked by the wire-pulling of a few under-bred, half-educated priests! whose tincture of learning John himself has paid for--poor Bull, who seems to pay for everything, and who would gladly have paid for gentility, too, if the Maynooth professors could have injected the commodity by means of a hypodermic syringe, or even by hydraulic pressure. No use in attempting impossibilities. As well endeavour to communicate good manners or gratitude to a Nationalist M.P. My legal friend was full of matter, but many of his points were too technical for the general reader. He said:--"Absurd to ask what an Irish Parliament _will_ do, because we know the tendencies of the present men. We must ask what it _can_ do, for it is certain that its members will from time to time be replaced by men of more 'advanced' opinions. Appetite grows by what it feeds on, and the Irish people want to pose as an independent nation. Englishmen and Scotchmen say Ireland would never be so foolish, and I am not surprised that they should say this. But when did Irishmen act on the lines of Englishmen or Scotchmen? They never did; they never will. The peoples are actuated by entirely different motives. Englishmen look at what is going to pay. They act on whatever basis promises the most substantial return. Irishmen are swayed by sentiment." Here I remembered a remark of Father McPhilpin, parish priest of Kilronane, Aran Isles. He said:--"The Irish people act more for fancy and less for money than any nation on earth. The poorest classes have less sentiment than the middle classes. They are too closely engaged in securing a livelihood. But the great difficulty of the English in managing the Irish lies in the fact that the English people work on strictly business principles, and that the Irish do not. The English people do not at all understand the Irish; and the reason is perfectly clear to me. They do not appreciate the extent to which mere sentiment will move the Irish race, mere sentiment, as opposed to what you would call business principles."