Fort Worth Daily Gazette

"We are hardly taken into the account,"
says a distinguished Irishman, writing to
me from Cork, "but we Loyalists have
yet to be heard, and we shall be heard
and felt when the time comes. In the
north we have made the country prosper-
ous, and we could achieve its salvation
everywhere if this agitation could be
stopped. We are willing and anxious to
do everything that is constitutionally pos-
sible for the poor, for the industries, for
the agriculture of the country, and we
would go great lengths to content the agi-
tators; but we are not willing to be ef-
faced; we object to have our property
divided up among the agitators, and we
know that Home Rule is not the thing
they must expect it so far as it strength-
ens their hands for a general plunder. The
country is in a shocking state; the old ter-
ror is coming back; we have to pay thou-
sands a year, we and you English taxpayers,
for the cost of police and soldiers to pro-
tect Loyalists in lonely districts, and the
recent parliamentary success has worked
many a poor ignorant fellow up to a fren-
zy of revolution. The worst of it is when
the pinch comes these ignorant poor get
punished and the instigators of revolt go
scot free. The condition of Ireland is
strikingly illustrated in a letter from Mr.
I. Townsend Trench of the Kildare Street
club, Dublin. "At this moment," he
says, "it takes twenty-two policemen in
relays to watch Lord Kenmare's mansion
at Killarney: each policeman, by the time
all is told, costs nearly £100 a year, so the
government (that is the taxpayers of
Great Britain and Ireland) are at this mo-
ment paying £2000 a year for the protection
of Lord Kenmare's mansion. And there are
many other mansions in Kerry on a
smaller scale under police protection,
many farmers too, many herds, many
caretakers, all of them with policemen
sitting up all night watching that they are
not blown up with dynamite or mur-
dered. It must not for a moment be sup-
posed that every Irish tenant is like the
demons that murdered Curtin or beat
Rahilly to death. I can testify that the
majority are warm-hearted, kind and
grateful people. But in every community
there are evil characters in whom the
frenzy of revolution is easily aroused
by professional or sincere agitators,
and we all know that the frenzy
of revolution, if not firmly dealt
with, is exceedingly
infectious."
In this county of Kerry alone the govern-
ment is spending £10,000 a year in pro-
tecting landlords, farmers, laborers,
houses and cattle. The cost of this busi-
ness all over the country can not be less
than £200,000 a year, not to mention the
extra expense of military precautions
and to say nothing of the outlay needed
to watch over public buildings in London.
Of course this tension must come to an
end. I have personal friends on both
sides, Loyalists and Home Rulers, En-
glish and Irish, and to my mind the chief
danger of the situation lies in the fact
that the opinion of no two men on any
side seems to be alike; "it is all a mud-
dle," and one of those muddles, I fear,
which have violent endings.