About this time Home Rule began seriously to be talked about. It was even hinted that Mr. Gladstone was about to bring in a measure on the subject. In some quarters it was hinted the Conservatives would outbid him in their eagerness to obtain Irish support. Men who belonged to no party could not bring themselves to regard any measure of Home Rule seriously, especially when they saw how by means of it Irish M.P.’s had gained a popularity and a position which otherwise they would never have hoped to attain. An Irish Nationalist had everything to lose by means of a peaceful solution of Irish difficulties—his claim on the funds collected largely in America, his place in Parliament, his position on the public platform. As long as he could teach his ignorant fellow-countrymen and sympathizing Americans that England was the sworn foe of Ireland and did all she could to crush her and keep her down, he had an easy time of it. To abuse England was to play an easy part, and no misrepresentation was too absurd to be put forth to arouse Irish hatred—on which the Catholic priests naturally looked with no unfriendly eyes. For England was a country rich and prosperous and Protestant, and they dared not tell the Irish people that if they copied England Ireland would be as prosperous as any part of Great Britain. Take the case of Mr. Forster, savagely execrated as ‘Buckshot’ Forster. Why was he held up to hatred under that name? Simply for the reason that buckshot not being so fatal as bullets, Mr. Forster had recommended it to the troops in case they should be obliged to resort to arms. The plain Englishman, aware how for fifty years Parliament had been trying to pacify Ireland and to remove wrong where it was admitted to exist, who heard Irishmen declare that they were at war with England, could not be expected strongly to support a movement in favour of Home Rule, especially after Mr. Gladstone’s appeal to him to give him a majority independent of the Irish vote. Many prejudices had to be overcome. As a rule, the Englishman has slight confidence in Irish oratory. An amusing illustration of its tendency to run into exaggeration is given by that sturdy Irish patriot Mr. John O’Neill Daunt, who in 1882 thus closes his diary for the year: ‘The year now ending has been blackened by most abominable crimes and murders. Parnell and his followers acquired vast popularity by denouncing the evictors, the extortioners, the rack-renters; had they stopped there they would have merited praise. But in attacking all landlords—good and bad landlords—they fatally widened that severance of classes which has always been the curse of Ireland.’