"At the meeting of the Vice-Guardians of the Athy Union yesterday, a letter was read from Mr. G. Finlay, Auditor, in which he stated that the two sureties of Collector Kealy, of the Luggacurren district, had been evicted from their holdings by Lord Lansdowne, and were not now in possession of any lands there. They were allowed outdoor relief to the extent of £1 a week each on the ground of destitution. The Auditor continued: 'The Collector tells me that they both possess other lands, and have money in bank. The Collector is satisfied that they are as good, if not better, securities for the amount of his bond now than at the time they became sureties for him. The Clerk of the Union concurs in this opinion.' "It was ordered to bring the matter under the notice of the Board." [25] _Explanatory Note attached to First Edition._--After this chapter had actually gone to press, I received a letter from the friend who had put me into communication with the labourers referred to in it, begging me to strike out all direct indications of their whereabouts, on the ground that these might lead to grave annoyance and trouble for these poor men from the local tyrants. I do not know that I ought to regret the annoyance thus caused to my publisher and to me, as no words of mine could emphasise so clearly the nature and the scope of the odious, illegal, or anti-legal "coercion" established in certain parts of Ireland as the asterisks which mark my compliance with my friend's request. What can be said for the freedom of a country in which a man of character and position honestly believes it to be "dangerous" for poor men to say the things recorded in the text of this chapter about their own feelings, wishes, opinions, and interests? [26] It may be well to say here that whatever prominence Mr. O'Donovan Rossa has had among the Irish in America has been largely, if not chiefly, due to the curious persistency of Sir William Harcourt, when a Minister, in making him the ideal Irish-American leader. In and out of Parliament, Sir William Harcourt continually spoke of Mr. Rossa as of a kind of Irish Jupiter Tonans, wielding all the terrors of dynamite from beyond the Atlantic. This was a source of equal amusement to the Irish-American organisers in America and satisfaction to Mr. Rossa himself. I remember that when a question arose of excluding Mr. Rossa from an important Irish-American convention at Philadelphia, as not being the delegate of any recognised Irish-American body, Mr. Sullivan told me that he should recommend the admission of Mr. Rossa to the floor without a right to deliberative action, expressly because his presence, when reported, would be a cause of terror to Sir William Harcourt. [27] See Appendix, Note M. [28] Note N. [29] Note O. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888), by William Henry Hurlbert