AMONG THE CLOUDS IN IRELAND

From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893

Page 33

AMONG THE CLOUDS IN IRELAND

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and a laughing family of potatoes answers to every stroke of the spade, it is safe to say that Mr. Balfour's agents could not scrape together among the peasantry of any Parliamentary division along the distressed Western seaboard, even so many as the ten signatures that would be necessary to fill a Tory candidate's nomination paper. Whether he bribes in the West or coerces in the South, to that complexion has Tory rule in Ireland come after five years of swaggering words and evil deeds.

The Coercionists' hope is no longer in plank-beds, nor in charitable doles through the police sergeant's hands, nor yet in fractured skulls through the force of his baton. It would be comical, if it were not to an Irishman most sad, that their last hope lies in Mr. Parnell. Mr. Parnell has many as honest-hearted Irish Nationalists as breathe among his adherents, but it is an incontrovertible fact that every landlord, agent, removable magistrate, emergency-man, or landgrabber in the country—every man who has openly or covertly distinguished himself by hostility to the Home Rule movement—has suddenly blossomed into an ardent Parnellite. In any first-class carriage you are sure to meet a squire who has discovered Mr. Parnell to be a man of genius. The officials smack their lips over his speeches, and devour the Parnellite journals with avidity. To hear them talk, you would suppose that the once 'loyal minority' were all along athirst for the pure gospel of Irish Nationality, only that milk-and-water patriots like John Dillon would fain force them to be content with the muddy waters of English Whiggery. When you see the landlord and the Removable feasting on the Freeman, and hear the Orangemen beating Mr. Parnell's praises on their drums, all that it means, of course, is that they believe him to be engaged in wrecking the Home Rule movement … continue reading »

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