274 MY LIFE 



and when it rises it may seem easier to make a clean sweep 

 than carry a quarter measure. 



" Be assured that I look up to you with gratitude. 



"F. W. Newman." 



Soon after our society was started, Henry George, author 

 of that remarkable work, " Progress and Poverty," came to 

 England, and I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. 

 He spoke at several of our meetings and elsewhere in London, 

 as well as in various parts of England and Ireland. He was 

 a very impressive speaker, and always held his audience. 

 His delivery was slow and deliberate ; so much so as to 

 appear sometimes as if he had broken down, but he was 

 always cool and collected, and when the next sentence 

 came one saw that the pause was made either for the 

 purpose of choosing the right phrase or of producing 

 a greater effect. The following passages, in a letter written 

 from Dublin in November, 1881, soon after his arrival, show 

 how a well-educated and thoughtful American was impressed 

 by the English rule of Ireland : 



" I had not intended to speak in public before coming to 

 England; but I feel so much sympathy with the Irish people 

 in their resistance to the degrading tyranny now rampant 

 here, that it seems to me cowardly to refuse any little assist- 

 ance I might give, and I have told some gentlemen who have 

 been urging me that I will lecture this week for the benefit of 

 the Political Prisoners' Aid Society, of which Miss Helen 

 Taylor is President. 



'' I had the pleasure of meeting that lady here, and the 

 pleasure of listening to her address to the ladies of the Land 

 League — a speech that I wished could have rung through the 

 length and breadth of England. When will the great English 

 party to whom the future will be given raise its head? I long 

 for its advent. If this is Liberalism which I see here, what 

 Toryism may be I can with difficulty imagine. 



" I have had the pleasure, too, of meeting an Irish Catholic 

 bishop who is with us entirely — Bishop Nulty, of Meath — a 

 prelate who does not hesitate to declare that private property 



