entirely satisfied the late Mr. Dillon at the time of which Sir Charles Gavan Duffy speaks. It seems almost nothing to concede the extreme demands that were made by Sharman Crawford and his colleagues. Each of these demands was denounced as confiscation at the time. There is scarcely a landlord in either House of Parliament who does not now go about declaring his willingness to acknowledge the justice of any such claims as Sharman Crawford once made. The political condition of Ireland has certainly not grown more easy to deal with since the Young Ireland days. The feeling of discontent is much stronger and much deeper now than it was then. I should like some practical Englishman to tell me what he thinks is likely to come within the next ten years, if in the meantime a Government is not found strong and resolute enough to risk all on the chance of putting this Irish land question fairly in the way of a complete settlement.

Meanwhile Lord Sherbrooke's article contains one sentence for which a good many of us Irish politicians will thank its author. Having argued at some length as to the hopelessness of doing anything for Ireland, he winds up by saying, Ireland cannot possibly do us a greater favour than by following the course which leads most directly to her own wealth and happiness.' Exactly. That is precisely what those who think as I do have long been asking the English Government and the English people to permit Ireland to attempt. Let her follow the course which leads most directly to her own wealth and happiness. As there is no means of finding, even in the utterances of Lord Sherbrooke himself, a heaven-inspired oracle to proclaim in advance what that course should be, we only ask that Ireland, that is the Irish people, should be allowed to try for themselves in what direction it lies.

JUSTIN MCCARTHY.

THE IRISH POOR MAN'

THE heavens are clear and bright, the autumn sun is shining on wellsaved hay, fine haggarts of corn and oats, and many and large pits of potatoes, and yet the island is full of wars and rumours of wars. The wars have made themselves heard throughout the world; let us leave them and turn to the mutterings of a danger that is present though as yet unseen. The holders of land in Ireland may now be left to make their own terms; we may regard their claim as one certain to be granted to the farthest point to which justice can go-perhaps farther. In satisfying the present holders of land, a great act will be done, but not all. There is yet another class to be dealt with, and that the most dangerous-those who class themselves as the poor man,'-that is, those who possess neither home nor birthright in the land, the agricultural labourers, the village artisans, and the men who work in small towns at odd jobs of various labour.

What is the present position of an industrious and sober young man who stays in Ireland as a labourer? What is the utmost of his hopes, the utmost bound of his chances? Except in the comparatively rare instance of the demesne labourers of a good resident landlord, his chances may be stated as follows:-A house that no other European peasant would occupy, two shillings a day, or possibly two and sixpence in stirring times; but more probably one-andsixpence, or even less. If he is fortunate enough to have a bit of land from the farmer who employs him, he, as a rule, is compelled to pay twice its value or more. One pound the quarter acre is a common charge for land held by the farmer at two pound an acre. The labourer has to fence, manure, &c. the bit of land, and has no security either for it or for his house; for the latter, bad as it is, he pays from one pound to five pound a year. He is absolutely at the mercy of the farmer, and is only too frequently hounded to and from his work with curses like a dog. If he defies his employer, his house, his bit of land, his wages, all go at once; he is left as a waif to 'travel the road' with his helpless family, glad to find some miserable cabin wherein he can lay himself and them by the fireside and pay a shilling a week for a bed of straw and a roof.

Tradesmen, except village shoemakers, are somewhat better off

as regards wage, but their work is uncertain, and they too have no hope of a home; consequently they are trained to drink, and learn it as thoroughly as they do their business. Their wretchedness is more their own fault than the wretchedness of the labourers; but I believe the same cure might heal both sores, starvation and drink. Is that cure emigration?

It does not need showing that for the individual unskilled youth, male or female, emigration is the only answer possible in the present state of things in Ireland. But how about the Nation? There is such a thing as natural selection in the human race as well as amongst animals. What is the process of natural selection now going on in Ireland? Before speaking of it, however, I must refer to one of the remedies praised of political economists, and show that it cannot be counted on as a help in Ireland, namely the restriction of marriage. Irishmen, with all their faults, are affectionate, lovers of children, of home, and of women, chaste, and of a religion that counts marriage as a sacrament. For all these reasons marriage must be counted with. Also, for the labourer, who is abroad from early morning to nightfall, a wife is a necessity. Why marry young though? Because then his children are helpless at the time of life when he can best support them, and are in their turn able to help him when he begins to fail. It is better policy, to say nothing of natural inclinations, that a labourer should marry young than old. What can he lay by in his youth from his small earnings that could support a family of seven children when his arm is feeble and his head is grey. Marriage then is something we must reckon with.

A young man stays in Ireland, marries at three-and-twenty, has any number of children up to fourteen, without being commented on, except as the father of 'a long family.' For a few years his wages suffice; but soon children increase, a rainy season, or a cold season, or a slack season sets in; then credit is called to help, then the 'gombeenman,' the usurer; then all resources being exhausted, beggary begins. The wife and youngest children tramp round the country, or may be seen, as I have seen them, seeking in the dark evening and winter's snow for the tops of the seawrack as a supper. 'How do the people live?' I have often asked of themselves. How can they support life even in ordinary years?' They do not live, they starve,' is the answer I have got. How do they bring their children up? 'They bring them up in rags and beggary and starvation.' There is the answer, and it is a true cne. This is the reward of the man who stays in Ireland, and does his work according to his light. Now for the other side.

A lad of nineteen, strong, vigorous, unspoilt, full of intelligence, and with a certain amount of book-learning, asks himself what he shall do. His brother or his uncle in some of the colonies, or America, answers the question for him, and says, 'Come out to me.

Here you

will earn from three to seven or more dollars a day; here you will have meat and cream, and good clothing; here you will find friends and kinsfolk and acquaintance; here, if you wish to marry, there are plenty of "neighbouring girls" (i.e. girls from the same neighbourhood in the old country), who are earning their thirty or forty pounds a year, who dress better than the ladies do at home, and to whom you will be able to give every comfort in a nice house of your very own, and perhaps a piece of land. Here you will have a vote, and have the whole sphere of politics open to you, and here you will be free from England. This is the real free Ireland, come-' and he goes, and the nation loses him. Let us see who the nation retains. Take any letter from America written from the poor to the poor, what will find in it? As above to the industrious, to the young, the strong, and the good; what to the worthless, the drunkards, the idlers? 'Let no man come out to America that will not work. He will be better at home.' Here he will starve; here, if a man will not work, neither let him eat,' is the practical rule, and the people know it. The bad stay at home. How do they live then? If for the righteous there is scarcely a place found, where shall the ungodly and the sinners appear? Strange to say, Ireland is the place for them. Now I will describe their lives.

you

This man, that will not respect himself,' that cares not to live honestly, or cleanly, soberly, or chastely. He marries (in Ireland even the worst will probably marry) at the age of nineteen, having neither house nor means. He lodges probably with his father-in-law, his wife being a product of the 'beggary and starvation' described above. They toss a heap of straw in some corner of the cabin, and so they live, as regards their setting up in married life. He gets a job of work when jobs are going, and spends a good part in the publichouse, for he knows his wife has been working for him. How? shevery probably trained from infancy to the business-is tramping the roads with an infant on her back and another on each side, stopping at every house, rich and poor. The poor man gives his three of four potatoes, his handful of flour. He thinks it wrong to refuse. She passes on, perhaps as she goes by 'whipping' the apron of his wife or his child's shift off the drying hedge, and hiding them in her garments, to the rich man's house; there she gets a bit of silver, or a lump of bread, or a pot of dripping; then to the dairyfarmer's; here she pours into her can a cup of milk (milk not to be bought for the dying child by those who will not beg). Here she sits down with or after the labourers, and has her dinner, and perhaps her bit of bacon. So through the day, till she goes home rejoicing at night, her bag well filled with potatoes, which she sells again for money; her second bag with flour for a cake; her little can full of milk for her ragged, unkempt, unschooled children. The money from the sale of the potatoes turns into tea and whisky, and if times are

hard the whole family will tramp together to some more prosperous county, or sometimes travel in state with a donkey cart owned or borrowed. The inhabitants of North Kerry habitually invade Limerick every summer when the potatoes fail at home. The more worthless the people, the more such a manner of living will suit them. They can eat, drink, and live together-what do they want more? what do such as they care for cleanliness, or decency, or knowledge, or God-fearingness. There is no country in Europe offers so easy a means of life to the worthless scoundrel and his slattern wife as does Ireland; no country where an industrious honest man finds it more impossible to save himself and his children from sinking into the class where easy beggary will provide food honest labour can scarce

secure.

This is the state of the 'poor man '1 class as it is, is it to continue so? It neither should nor can continue. Make the farmer secure in all just rights, give him his most extravagant demands: you have as yet but skinned the wound; you have but cooled the lava on the mouth of a volcano; the explosion will come, and come quickly-not twenty years, not ten years hence, but in a few months-it may be in a few days, after you have laid aside your healing tools and your cooling apparatus, whatever it may be. And this revolution will be a revolution of the most dangerous elements; it will be the rising of a class that hates the class above it with an unspeakable hatred, for so the labourers hate the farmers. It will be a rising of a class that feels it is fighting for life; that regards murder as war; that looks upon the legal attainment of an end injurious to a poor neighbour as a crime to be washed out with blood, that cries 'Amen' to cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmark. A revolution, not a political revolution, but a social revolution of this nature, is what the Government will have to deal with, and that before many days are out-whether days of years, or of weeks, or of days I know not, but soon. But why? Why, having borne so long, so silently, should they not bear still longer? For many reasons.

First, because they fully realise that in the present settlement of the land question is their time-it is now or never with them. Their experience of the farming classes leads them to expect in them harsher masters than in the landlords. They see that the upshot of the more complete hold of the farmers on the land will be that not unfrequently the landlords will leave Ireland, and with the landlords will go the best wages, the best houses, and the most considerate employers. The labourers are not unwilling that the farmers should receive a better security than heretofore, but they dread them as masters. They have already been forced to feel in many places.

'I use this word as it is used by the people, and as a more inclusive word than labourer,' taking in as it does hucksters and those who make out life in many and various ways.