Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these
volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed
the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in
Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a
Preface to this Second Edition.

Upon one most important point--the progressive demoralisation of the
Irish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations,
which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution in
Ireland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August in
the Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, will
be found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in June
by a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that "the Nationalists are stripping
Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa."

Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes of
Waterford, the Bishop says, in the report which I have seen of his
sermon, "the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamed
if they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt I
witnessed, on that occasion." As a faithful shepherd of his people, he
is not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goes
on to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian people
to a level below that of the savages whom Cardinal Lavigerie is now
organising a great missionary crusade to rescue from their degradation.

He agrees with Archbishop Croke in attributing much of this
demoralisation to the excessive and increasing use of strong drink,
striking evidences of which came under my own observation at more than
one point of my Irish journeys. But I fear Archbishop Croke would