For the other clause of the indictment--lack of enterprise--the Westporters are no worse and no better than their neighbours. The Corkers make nothing of their harbour, spending most of their time in talking politics and cursing England. Commercial men speak of the difficulty of doing business at Cork, which does not keep its appointments, is slippery, and requires much spirituous lubrication. Cork ruins more young commercial men than any city in Britain, and owing to the unreliability of its citizens, is more difficult to work. Galway has scores of ruined warehouses and factories, and has been discussing the advisability of building a Town Hall for forty years at least. Limerick has a noble river, with an elaborate system of quays, on which no business is done. The estuary of the Shannon, some ten miles wide, lies just below, opening on the Atlantic; and a little enterprise would make the city the Irish head-quarters for grain. The quays are peopled by loafers, barefooted gossiping women, and dirty, ragged children playing at marbles. Great buildings erected to hold the stores that never come, or to manufacture Irish productions which nobody makes, are falling into ruin. I saw the wild birds of the air flying through them, while the people were emigrating or complaining, and nothing seemed to flourish but religious services and fowl-stealing. It was during my sojourn in Limerick that somebody complained to the Town Council of poultry depredations, which complaint drew from that august body a counter-complaint to the effect that the same complainant had complained before, and that he always did it during a Retreat, that is, when the town was full of people engaged in special religious services--so that the heretic observer, and especially the representative of the _Gazette_, referred to by name, might couple the salvation of souls with the perdition of hens, to the great discredit of the faith. But this is a digression.