IRELAND— ITS SOCIAL STA TE. 129 



criminals go away, and so offend no more. Again 

 and again the police have come to me, as a magistrate, 

 asking for a warrant to arrest some offender, and 

 adding, " If he is not taken at once, he will surely be 

 off to America." Whenever the offence w^as such as 

 at all to justify it, my answer has been, " That is the 

 very reason I will not issue a warrant. You could do 

 nothing to him if you caught him that would be half 

 so good for the country as his running away to 

 America ; so let him go." For these reasons I value 

 emigration. 



3. In an agricultural paper there is an explosion 

 against me by a tenant-righter from Lurgan. This 

 writer knows nothing whatever of me or my doings, 

 except what he read in the newspapers ; yet every- 

 thing I said I had done, every motive I showed, is 

 misrepresented and sneered at. I only notice him 

 because he affords a convenient peg on which to hang 

 some things I wish to say. He has, like the rest of 

 his set, but one idea, and that is what is best described 

 as a belief in the Divine right of tenants. The Divine 

 right of kings was absolute wasdom compared with 

 this. It had at least a noble theory to rest on — that 

 a king embodied all virtues ; and it relied on prin- 

 ciples that raised men above selfishness and their own 

 personal gain. But this supposed right of tenants 

 has no theory or principle at all to rest on. It is a 

 mere scheming for private gain, by which the most 

 indolent and worthless tenants will gain most, often 



K 



