priests uphold the Plan of Campaign and Boycotting against the Pope in
Ireland, Mr. George supports President Cleveland, and in so doing
cleverly makes a flank movement towards his "exclusive taxation of
land," by promoting, under the cover of "Revenue Reform," an attack on
the indirect taxation from which the Federal Revenues are now mainly
derived. Meanwhile the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore, who is also a
political supporter of President Cleveland, has not yet been confronted
by the supreme authority at Rome with such a final sentence upon the
true nature of Mr. George's "exclusive taxation of land," as the
clear-sighted Archbishop of New York is said to be seeking to obtain
from the Holy Office. What the end will be I have little doubt. But for
the moment, it will be seen, the situation in America is only less
confused and troublesome than the situation in Ireland. It is confused
and troubled too, as I have tried in this prologue to show, by forces
identical in character with those which confuse and trouble the
situation in Ireland.

Of the social conditions amid and against which those forces are working
in America, I believe myself to have some knowledge.

To get an actual touch and living sense of the social conditions amid
and against which they are working in Ireland was my object, I repeat,
in making the visits, of which this book is a record. More than this I
could not hope, in the time at my disposal, to do. With very much less
than this, it appears to me, many persons, whose views of Irish affairs
I had been inclined, before making these visits, to regard with respect,
must have found it possible to rest content.