Then and Now.

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2321, 27 March 1914, Page 2

Then and Now.

"When Ireland Had Homo Rule" is the title of a topical special article winch appears in the current issue of the Pall Mall Magazine. The writer, H. T. Manners Howe, says the article has been constructed from the musty records of a Dublin family, said records being written before the Act of Union — back in the days when, for one thing, it took ten days to get from Liverpool to Dublin. The following lively account of life in DubJin before the Union is taken from the article: "Speaking of the times with • which he was familiar as a young man, our old chronicler observes that there was one pursuit in which the highest and lowest participated with the utmost relish, and that was fighting. In this all classes engaged with a* keenness which is now hardly credible. The lower classes, divided into factions, fought battles in the streets, and on the quays and bridges of Dublin, which lasted for days, and strewed the area of conflict with maimed 9-nd battered victims. Shocking barbarities were perpetrated. One of these factions, the Ormond Boys, principally composed of butchers, would use their knives to hough their opponents, or cut the tendon of the leg, rendering them lame for life. On the other hand, their inveterate enemies, the Liberty Boys, the tailors and weavers of the Coombe, were known on the occasion of a victory to hang their opponents by the jaws on their meathooks and leave them suspended on their stalls." With the British Army and Navy "on the premises' , —as it is being suggested they will surely be if the crisis arrives, as promised,, tomorrow—there will be ruction, 1 again in Ireland. Mr Howe, after painting a lurid picture of life in Ireland "before the Union," suggests that Union is Strength for Erin. Hβ concludes *by quoting his authority the old' chronicler: ' 'Himself an Irishman, referring to a time when all these violent characteristics of social life in Ireland were possible, he concludes by attributing to the Union, which he witnessed, the abandonment of these extravagances of Irish life. For since the Union the wiser and more sober modes of thinking ol our English neighbors have corrected many of our unstable and more excitable habits.' " The English as an example for the Irish is quite an original compliment —and the English would give the Irish Home Rule next week if it wasn't for the Unionists who are playing at Ulsteritis for party purposes.