'Kilcockan parish between Lismore and Youghal was in great part disposed of in the Landed Estates Court thirty years ago. It was bought, some of it by occupiers, some of it by shopkeepers and attorneys. Rents have been raised, and there is not much appearance of prosperity. Newtown, for several generations the fee-simple property of a family of the name of Nason, after the famine of 1846, was cut up and sold; the family residence is in ruin. At Lower Curryglass, a few miles east of Lismore, a good farm of five hundred acres, belonging to a family who have been obliged to leave it, bears sad evidence of neglect; the good old deserted manor-house, the farm buildings, and a dozen cottages in the village are falling to pieces. Contrary to what might be anticipated, some of the smaller proprietors in this district have been strenuous supporters of the Land League, although it is to be hoped that they repudiate the destruction of the cattle on the land of Mr. Grant, which were stabbed, and some of them drowned in the river. Mr. Grant had come under the ban of the League for evicting a dissipated bankrupt tenant, whose debts to the extent of two hundred pounds he had paid, and who would have been reinstated, if there had been the remotest prospect of reformed habits or of getting clear of his difficulties. Such acts appear to justify the statement, "that Irishmen don't know what they want, and won't be satisfied until they get it."' God knows we have waded knee deep in blood of men, and domestic animals since that was written, yet to-day are we any nearer the final solution of the Irish difficulties? In my opinion, certainly not. CHAPTER XVII THE STATE OF KERRY It has been stated that it is only within the last forty years that the bulk of the people of Ireland, long outside the pale of the ballot-box, have actively entered political life. This is quite true. The whole of the Home Rule troubles followed the presentation of practically universal suffrage to the half-educated and over-enthusiastic Irish, who are easily led away, apt to believe mob-orators, and, by inherited instinct, to go against the Government. What the effect of universal suffrage in India would be it is not my business to estimate. Still, the analogy of what the ballot-paper provided in Ireland, if applied to the teeming population of our Oriental Empire, suggests a pandemonium to which the horrors of the Mutiny are but a mere scream of agony. The ballot transformed Ireland; or rather, it permitted the worst passions of the most ignorant to be played upon by interested adventurers, when the political power of Ireland had passed for ever out of the hands of the restraining classes. Democracy spelt anarchy, and the word patriotism was degraded in a way that had no parallel since the French Revolution.