The landlords of Ireland are the lords of Ireland. England makes them landlords first, and then, to put the brand of her marauding nobility on them, she makes them English lords. And they do lord it over the Irish people, and ride rough-shod over every natural and acquired right belonging to them. Whether born in England or Ireland, they must be English, and anti-Irish in spirit, in action and in religion. Some of my readers may say that some of the lords and the landlords in Ireland at the present day are Catholics. So they are, and so were a few of them in my day, and so were the whole of them in the days preceding the time of Henry VIII. But if they were, they were English and anti-Irish all the same, and the marauding Catholic Englishman, coming over to Ireland on his mission of murder and plunder during the three hundred years preceding Martin Luther’s time, murdered Irishmen as mercilessly and plundered them as ruthlessly as he has done during the last three hundred years that he is a Protestant. It is not religion, but booty, the Englishman is after in this world. Of course, religion is very useful to him. It furnishes him with a pretext to enter a country and to take soundings in it, With the Bible on his lips, But the devil in his deeds. And what is more than that, neither religion nor nationality ever stood in the way of his plundering and murdering the children of the English invader who landed in Ireland a century or so before he landed there. The Cromwellians plundered the Strongbownians, and the English transported and murdered the Protestant Mitchels and Fitzgeralds, who resisted their plunder, as readily as they did the Catholic O’Neills and O’Donnells. And, holy Jehoshaphat! how wholly and firmly did these freebooters plant themselves in Ireland. I stand on the top of that hill where my schoolhouse stood, and I see the lighthouse of the Fastnet Rock and Cape Clear, straight out before me in the open sea; I see the ships sailing between the Cove of Cork and America, every steamer passing showing a long trail of steam like the tail of a comet. And what else do I see before me and all around me? I see the imprint of the invader’s footsteps, the steps he has taken to fortify himself in possession of his plunder, and to guard himself from assault from the victims of that plunder--for many of these victims must be wandering around the locality still. I look to the north, and I see to the right the Castle of Cahirmore, the residence of the Hungerfords. I go up the Cahirmore road (as I often went going to the home of my grandfather), and at my left hand side, for half a mile, is a wall higher than a man’s height. I cannot see the grounds or anything on the grounds inside the wall, but I hear the beautiful peacocks crying out to one another.