“The present condition?” echoed Dalton, starting up to a sitting posture, and grasping the curtain with a convulsive grip; “I can't tell you what it is to-day, this ninth of November, but I 'll tell what it was when I left it, eighteen years ago. The house was a ruin; the lawn a common; the timber cut down; the garden a waste; the tenants beggared; the landlord an exile. That 's a pleasant catalogue, is n't it?” “But there must come a remedy for all this,” remarked Grounsell, whose ideas were following out a very different channel. “Do you mean by a poor-law? Is it by taxing the half ruined to feed the lazy? or by rooting out all that once was a gentry, to fill their places by greedy speculators from Manchester and Leeds? Is that your remedy? It 's wishing it well I am! No; if you want to do good to the country, leave Ireland to be Ireland, and don't try to make Norfolk of her. Let her have her own Parliament, that knows the people and their wants. Teach her to have a pride in her own nationality, and not to be always looking at herself in shame beside her rich sister. Give her a word of kindness now and then, as you do the Scotch; but, above all, leave us to ourselves. We understand one another; you never did, nor never will. We quarrelled, and made friends again, and all went right with us; you came over with your Chancery Courts, and your police, and whenever we differed, you never stopped till we were beggared or hanged.” “You take a very original view of our efforts at civilization, I confess,” said Grounsell, smiling. “Civilization! Civilization! I hate the very sound of the word; it brings to my mind nothing but county jails, bridewells, turnpikes, and ministers' money. If it was n't for civilization, would there be a receiver over my estate of Mount Dalton? Would the poor tenants be racked for the rent that I always gave time for? Would there be a big poor-house, with its ugly front staring to the highway, as they tell me there is, and a police barrack to keep it company, opposite? I tell you again, sir, that your meddling has done nothing but mischief. Our little quarrels you converted into serious animosities; our estrangements into the feuds of two opposing races; our very poverty, that we had grown accustomed to, you taught us to regard as a 'national disgrace,' without ever instructing us how to relieve it; and there we are now on your hands, neither English in industry, nor Irish in submission, neither willing to work, nor content to be hungry!” The doctor saw by the agitated look and tone of the sick man that the subject was one of too much excitement for him, and hastened to change the topic by jocularly expressing a hope that he might prove more successful with him than England had been with his countrymen.