brooding propensities of the Irish peasant, it is no wonder that lunacy claims many victims. To allege that because a lunatic has been in the habit of consuming a considerable quantity of poteen his lunacy is necessarily due to poteen, seems to me to be begging the question. If you could alleviate the poverty and inaction to which the Irish peasant is condemned from the day of his birth to the day of his death, you would have gone a long way toward eliminating lunacy from Ireland, and at the same time I believe you would find that you had not seriously reduced the consumption of whisky, the fact being that the consumption per head of the population is reasonable. In this, as in many other respects, Ireland has been grossly misrepresented, both by serious and humorous writers. The humorous writers, indeed, have been the graver offenders. Many of them seem incapable of conceiving the Irish character in any terms but those of hilarious and flagrant alcoholism. It is a profound mistake, and we shall be helped materially in our endeavors to comprehend and placate our unfortunate sister kingdom, if we dismiss forthwith from our minds the idea that she is utterly and perceptibly given over to inordinate drinking. CHAPTER V THE PATHRIOT Ireland has produced more patriots than any other country under the sun. The names of them are legion, and from Wolfe Tone down to Dr. Tanner they have all been men of reasonable parts. O’Connell, Emmet, Butt, and Parnell shine out perhaps as the greatest of them. The smaller fry do not require enumeration. But if I mistake not, while it is the fashion to flatter every Irishman who has done anything at all for Ireland with the general title of pathriot, it is only within comparatively recent times that the authentic pathriot has come into being. The fact that in England people are unkind enough to call him an agitator is of small consequence. The pathriot is singularly and peculiarly Irish. There is nothing like him in England, and there never will be anything like him; for he comes like water and like wind he goes. He begins anywhere—he may be a butcher, a publican, a schoolmaster or a farmer—he attains a seat in the House of Commons, and a certain prominence in the press, and he ends nowhere. Irish editors worship him for a season, then they wax critical of him, then they forget him altogether. Mr. Timothy Healy is a good type of the pathriot at his best. He has accomplished great things for Ireland, and achieved for himself a reputation in Parliament for a sort of savage brilliance. But there are not a dozen men in England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales to-day who care twopence where he is, or could tell you what becomes of him when Parliament is not sitting. He will end obscurely, inasmuch as it is the fate of Irish pathriots so to end. As the chief of the pathriots of the less glorious type, who however succeed in making the best of both countries, we may instance Mr. T. P. O’Connor. Mr.