Farming with a Pen 15 



which I have described ? It is practically useless 

 discussing industry with the Irishman while the 

 expenditure for its development is misappro- 

 priated wholesale for his moral bondage. Until 

 he may have property in mind, he can have neither 

 property nor efficiency in anything. Where a 

 man is held to merit murder because he has a 

 conscience, hope implies moral revolution. 



Give a man the whole earth, with his mind the 

 instrument of another, and he remains essentially 

 a slave. This is how we come to find agriculture 

 in Connaught chiefly hindered by the popular 

 practice of theft as a social virtue. The thieving 

 nabit, bad enough before, got its charter from 

 boycotting, under the moral sanction of 

 " patriotism " ; but it remains to work against 

 everybody who has anything to stea), and it is 

 found more convenient to compromise with the 

 practice than to revoke the charter. How can 

 industry flourish in such conditions ? Let others 

 beat about the bush, and pocket Government 

 salaries for accommodating the elaborate fraud 

 I have not time for trifling while a nation is dying. 

 The Irish nation has either to establish private 

 property in mind or perish. Irish nationality 

 must choose between a home made conscience and 

 an imported coffin. I suppose I need hardly tell 

 the reader that this is not my first sermon on the 

 present text, and it is but fair to acknowledge 

 that several bishops have had the moral courage 

 to follow my lead in declining to approve organised 

 barbarism for patriotic virtue. 



