Now, there is one feature of Ireland which I am not quite sure is very generally known or appreciated on the other side of St. George’s Channel, and this is the fierce spirit of indignation called up in a county habitually quiet, when the newspapers bring it to public notice as the scene of some lawless violence. For once there is union amongst Irishmen. Every class, from the estated proprietor to the humblest peasant, is loud in asserting that the story is an infamous falsehood. Magistrates, priests, agents, middlemen, tax-gatherers, and tax-payers rush into print to abuse the ‘blackguard’--he is always the blackguard--who invented the lie; and men upwards of ninety are quoted to show that so long as they could remember, there never was a man injured, nor a rick burned, nor a heifer hamstrung in the six baronies round! Old newspapers are adduced to show how often the going judge of assize has complimented the grand-jury on the catalogue of crime; in a word, the whole population is ready to make oath that the county is little short of a terrestrial paradise, and that it is a district teeming with gentle landlords, pious priests, and industrious peasants, without a plague-spot on the face of the county, except it be the police-barrack, and the company of lazy vagabonds with crossbelts and carbines that lounge before it. When, therefore, the press of Dublin at first, and afterwards of the empire at large, related the night attack for arms at Kilgobbin Castle, the first impulse of the county at large was to rise up in the face of the nation and deny the slander! Magistrates consulted together whether the high-sheriff should not convene a meeting of the county. Priests took counsel with the bishop, whether notice should not be taken of the calumny from the altar. The small shopkeepers of the small towns, assuming that their trade would be impaired by these rumours of disturbance--just as Parisians used to declaim against barricades in the streets--are violent in denouncing the malignant falsehoods upon a quiet and harmless community; so that, in fact, every rank and condition vied with its neighbour in declaring that the whole story was a base tissue of lies, and which could only impose upon those who knew nothing of the county, nor of the peaceful, happy, and brother-like creatures who inhabited it.