‘I should prefer equal laws,’ said I.

‘What inequality of law have you to find fault with?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ I replied, ’if a land leaguer shoots me in Ireland, he will be tried by a jury of land leaguers.  If I shoot one of them, I would require that I be tried by a jury of landlords, and if that be granted I’ll clear the road for myself of all suspicious characters, and ask for no more police protection than you require at Oxford.’

He subsided at that, and Froude laughed at him so heartily, that he had not another word to say on the subject all day.

Did you ever hear the rhyme about moonlighting?  It runs as follows:—­

  ’The difference betwixt moonlight and moonshine
   The people at last understand,
   For moonlight’s the law of the League
   And moonshine is the law of the land.’

That would have clinched my argument beyond all dispute, but the expressive poem was not written at that time.

Reverting to the topics of this chapter, it is needless to observe that there is a bond of connection between constabulary and dispensary doctors, for the latter are needed on many occasions to attend to the wounds of those just arrested.

The dispensary doctors do not form a satisfactory feature of Irish life, simply because the farmers elect individuals out of friendship.

A dispensary doctor had to be appointed at Farranfore, and I was most anxious to get the best man for the position.  So I proposed that the candidates’ papers should all be submitted to Sir Dominic Corragun, a Roman Catholic physician of high standing in Dublin.

I could not even get a seconder to my motion, which therefore fell stillborn, and I wrote to Lord Kenmare that if Gull or Jenner had been suggested, neither of them would have obtained three votes.

Virtually the appointment of the dispensary doctor is vested in the dispensary Committee, which is a local body, usually consisting of one or more guardians, and four or five specially elected ratepayers.  In the same way are chosen all the local sanitary authorities, who are of course under the District Council.

You remember that Punch called the sanitary inspector the insanitary spectre, but the beneficent climate of Ireland fortunately averts all the evils his authority would not be able to arrest if it came to really checking filth.

I remember the occasion of the election of another dispensary doctor, when I was curtly told that only a moonlighter could hope to be appointed.

My reply was:—­

’I suppose it is easier for him to poison people when he is drunk than to shoot landlords when in an inebriated condition.’

I do know that a dispensary doctor not thirty miles from Killarney was thrown out of his trap, because he drove the horse through his own front door, when he was under the intoxicated impression he was entering his stable yard.