Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/34

 this, my boy, 'tis not so much the question of kings or governments which concerns us here in Ireland as the question of the land from which the people get their daily bread. In '98 we spouted Gallic sentiments and sang the 'Marseillaise' and the 'Shan Van Voght' over our grog; but all that was folly. What we ought to have borrowed from France was their sagacious idea of bundling the landlords out of doors and putting the tenants in their shoes. When you are enrolling your United Irishmen a dozen or a score years hence, promise every man who will fight loyally for the cause twenty acres of land, rent free for ever, as soon as Ireland is liberated. The Orangemen, poor creatures, kept together to protect the landlords' rents, may not listen to you. The drum and fife by day, and the jolly carouse at the lodge at night, will be too much for you; but the Presbyterians whose fathers were United Irishmen, would prefer twenty acres of free land to the whole clanjaffray of kings, Parliaments, and bum-bailiffs. You see the agent, Dacre Hamilton, cantering into town on a big horse every morning, and you hear of his master, Lord Rossmore, now and then, as the providence on which all our lives depend; but did you ever reflect, my boy, that the corn would ripen just as well, and the flax blossom, and 'Cork reds' eat as sweetly with chicken and bacon, if there was no agent and no landlord?" As patriarch of his little congregation John Sloan was accustomed to utter sonorous maxims of morality on occasion; but he was considerate of the Catholic lad, and I can recall only one dogma which he was accustomed to assure me included the whole corpus of Christian doctrine—"Do all the good you can, my boy, and do no harm."

The most persuasive political teaching is often that which is altogether unpremeditated. During my father's lifetime the Catholic leaders in the county, several of whom were his kinsmen, met habitually at his table; and after his death my guardian, when he visited Monaghan, gathered them round the same board. Such social reunions at that time were always the occasion for speech-making, and I was allowed to creep into some silent corner and listen to the oratory. The passionate talk of men striving for religious liberty moved me strangely, and whatever I did not com-