fight ensued; and the peasants were not dispersed until the 14th Foot fired upon them, killing four and wounding many. It is only just to the officer in charge of the 14th Foot-Lieutenant Griersonto say that he refused again and again to fire until overborne by his superiors.

At Rathkeeran soon afterwards there was another "battle." The peasants were led by a young girl, Catherine Foley. They came into collision with the police; the police fired, then Catherine Foley put herself at the head of her people and shouted, "Now at them, boys, before they have time to load again," and the peasants flung themselves upon their foes. There was a fierce and deadly fight, the police charging with the bayonet and the peasants meeting the assault with pitchfork, stick and slane. The fight was still

raging when the 70th Regiment arrived upon the field and fired into the peasants, killing twelve and wounding many. Among the slain was Catherine Foley, shot full in the face.

Other encounters continued to take place until at length came the fight at Rathcormac in 1834. At Rathcormac a widow-a Catholic, of course-owed 40s. tithe, and the parson came to collect the money, escorted by the 29th Regiment and the 4th Royal Irish Dragoons. Once more the peasants made a gallant stand. "I never," said one of the English officers present, "" saw such determined bravery as was shown by the people on that day." While it was a question of hand to hand fighting, the peasants held their ground; but, being without firearms, they had to yield to powder and

ball. The soldiers fired upon them, with the result that there were over fifty casualties, killed or wounded.

That in brief-for I have not told the half of it is the story-the infamous story-of the Tithe War. "The moment," says Sydney Smith," the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, to common prudence, and to common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, and fatuity of idiots."

It is sometimes said: "If Catholics were oppressed in Ireland, Catholics were oppressed in England, too." Yes, but the cases are very different. "In England," said O'Connell," the Catholics are a sect, in Ireland they are a nation."

Mr. Bright has dealt with the point, too.

But," he says, some others say that

there is no ground of complaint because the laws and institutions of Ireland are, in the main, the same as the laws and institutions of England and Scotland. They say, for example, that, if there be an Established Church in Ireland, there is one in England and one in Scotland, and that Nonconformists are very numerous both in England and Scotland; but they seem to forget this, that the Church in England, or the Church in Scotland, is not in any sense a foreign Church." In these sentences Mr. Bright has gone to the root of the whole matter. We all know that Protestants have been persecuted in Catholic countries and that Catholics have been persecuted in Protestant countries. But the Irish case stands outside all other cases in this remarkable way. In all other cases you

have had a comparatively insignificant minority oppressed by an overwhelming majority-I do not justify the fact, I simply state it—but Ireland is, I believe, the only country in Europe where you have had an overwhelming majoritythe whole nation, as O'Connell said— oppressed by an insignificant minority. And why do we find this unparalleled state of things? Simply because behind the minority in Ireland is the immense power of a foreign Empire. That is the bottom fact all the time in the Irish case, -the rule of the "foreigner." "I do not believe," says Mr. Chamberlain so late as the year 1885, "that the great majority of Englishmen have the slightest conception of the system under which this free nation attempts to rule the sister country. It is a system which is founded