then, Misthren Ryan, is it yerself I see standin' over under the window? Yer welcome to mass agin, ma'am, an' so is the little stranger that ye has in yer cloak; an' that was a dacent christenin' ye gave him, an' didn't forget yer priests nayther, signs by he'll have all sorts of prosperity.' And so he went rattling through a discursive 'sermon' on all sorts of domestic and personal as well as political topics.

"Troth an' it would puzzle a conjuror to tell out o' that sermon who 'twould be plazin' to his riverence we'd vote for,' said thick-headed Barney, rubbing his brows. But somehow it don't seem as if he meant the Captin; sorra bit o' me but wishes they never came for elections, to be botherin' a poor man's little han'full of brains this way.' The latter sentiment he had gathered from the lips of his better half, and dutifully repeated without owning the authorship; and Mrs. Barney, like all true wives, was well pleased to minister an idea in secret to her liege lord, and merge her own wisdom in his.

"Well, you got mighty meek-spirited since you got married,' observed a bachelor companion with whom he walked, 'you that used to have the best shillelah at every fair and hurlin' match, an' thought the greater ruction the bigger fun.' 'Wait till yer married yerself, Shamus, an' ye'll find it's not pleasant

to be sittin' by the fire wid yer head in two halves, an' yer eyes like blackberries.'

"As to my Pat,' said another wife, 'he's most out of his mind already, listening to speechin' from mornin' to night; and he roars out in his sleep, rousin' up all the childer like a clap of thunder, an' flourishin' his arms as if they was windmills. An' sure we wouldn't care if he was to get any good by it; but he won't; only comin' home to me wid' his bones in smithereens, maybe."

The women were recognizing, in their own homely way, the great fact that an overweening attention to political agitation was a domestic and social bane in Ireland.

CHAPTER XV.

IRISH AGRICULTURE.

Soil and Resources-Agricultural Statistics-Tillage and PastureHindrances to Progress.

RELAND is, to a greater extent than England

or Scotland, an agricultural country, manufactures or trade forming a far less proportion in the employment or resources of the people.

There was a return obtained last session of the total number of electors, parliamentary and municipal, in England and Wales, in Scotland, and in Ireland. To the political use made of these statistics, as by Mr. Butt in a series of letters in the Times on redistribution of Irish constituencies, I do not here refer, but the figures are interesting as showing the comparative distribution of population and wealth in town and country. The total number of voters on the parliamentary register for cities and boroughs in England and Wales is 1,250,019; in Scotland, 171,912; in Ireland, only 49,025. The total number

of county voters in England and Wales is 801,109; in Scotland, 78,919; in Ireland, 175,439.

It is quite possible that in some cases the boundaries of borough and county may have been arranged with political cleverness, as was done in the English Reform bills. But taking these figures on the whole, it is evident that Ireland is emphatically an agricultural country, and that the proprietors and cultivators of the soil are the true representatives of public opinion. Dublin has a population of about 245,000, Belfast 175,000, Cork under 80,000, Limerick 40,000, Londonderry 25,000, Waterford 23,000. These six towns are absolutely all that have a population above 20,000. The towns with population above 10,000 are only three more: Drogheda with 14,400, Galway with 13,000, Kilkenny with 12,600. Out of nearly 50,000 electors, nominally entitled to be borough voters, more than half are in Dublin and Belfast, and about 35,000 are in the towns of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and Waterford. All the remaining borough constituencies of Ireland have little more than 13,000 electors among them, about the size of the constituency of one average English borough of the second class, as Norwich, for instance, or Oldham. Several of the Irish boroughs have less than 300 electors. All this shows the paucity and poverty of the population of boroughs as compared with the rural population.

Agriculture is therefore the most important element in the material wealth and prosperity of the nation.

The extreme richness of the meadow and pasture land of Ireland has long been celebrated. A century ago Arthur Young said that the grazing counties were "some of the finest pastures in the world." Speaking specially of parts of Limerick and Tipperary he said, "it is the richest soil I ever saw." Sixty years ago Mr. Wakefield, in his "Statistical Account of Ireland" (1812) says, "Some places (throughout Meath in particular) exhibit the richest loam I ever saw turned up by a plough. Where such soil occurs its fertility is so conspicuous that it appears as if nature had determined to counteract the bad effects produced by the clumsy system of its cultivation." And the late Mr. M'Culloch, in his "Statistics of the British Empire," confirms these statements: "The luxuriance of the pastures, and the heavy crops of oats that are everywhere raised, even with the most wretched cultivation, attest its extraordinary fertility."

"Rich soil, poor agriculture," is the sum of these statements. But they refer to bygone times, perhaps. There are certainly great improvements on many properties, and in some places as good farming as in England. But taking the country at large, here is the report of a recent visitor well competent to give testimony. Mr. Peter Maclagan, M.P. for Linlith