To-night I dined with the Attorney-General, Mr. O’Brien.  Among the company were the Chief-Baron Palles, whose appointment dates back to Mr. Gladstone’s Administration of 1873, but who is now an outspoken opponent of Home Rule; Judge O’Brien, an extremely able man, with the face of an eagle; Mr. Carson, Q.C.; and other notabilities of the bench and bar.  My neighbours at table were a charming and agreeable bencher of the King’s Inn, Mr. Atkinson, Q.C., a leader of the Irish bar, and Mr. T.W.  Russell, M.P., who told me some amusing things of one of his colleagues, an ideal Orangeman, who writes blood-curdling romances in the vein of La Tosca, and goes in fear of the re-establishment of the Holy Office in Dublin and London.  In view of the clamours about the severity of the bench in Ireland, it was edifying to find an Irish Judge astonished by the drastic decisions of our Courts in regard to the anarchists who were hanged at Chicago, after a thorough and protracted review of the law in their cases.  He thought no Court in Great Britain or Ireland could have dealt with them thus stringently, it being understood that the charge of murder against them rested on their connection, solely as provocative instigators to violence, with the actual throwing of the bombs among the police.

Some good stories were told by the lawyers; one of a descendant of the Irish Kings, a lawyer more remarkable for his mental gifts than for his physical graces.

A peasant looking him carefully over at Cork whispered to a neighbour, “And is he really of the ould blood of the Irish kings now, indeed?”

“He is indeed!”

“Well, then, I don’t wonder the Saxons conquered the Island!”

Of the Home Rule movement one of the lawyers said to me, “The whole thing is a business operation mainly—­a business operation with the people who see in it the hope of appeasing their land hunger—­and a business operation for the agitators who live by it.  Its main strength, outside of the priests, who for one reason or another countenance or foment it, is in the small country solicitors.  The five hundred thousand odd Irish tenants are the most litigious creatures alive.  They are always after the local lawyer with half-a-crown to fight this, that, or the other question with some neighbour or kinsman, usually a kinsman.  So the solicitors know the whole country.”

“When the League has chosen a spot in which to work the ’Plan of Campaign,’ the local attorney whips up the tenants to join it.  The poorer tenants are the most easily pushed into the plan, having least to lose by it.  But the lawyer takes the well-to-do tenants in hand, and promises them that if they yield to the patriotic pressure of the League, and come to grief by so doing, the landlord will at all events have to pay the costs of the proceedings.  It is this promise which finally brings down most of them.  To enjoy the luxury of a litigation without paying for it tempts them almost as strongly