Originally imagined as a scheme to force the hand of the Government, the Ulster invasion has been so far successful. The great actual mischief has been already done. According to public opinion in Mayo, the Government had no more than the traditional three courses open to them--they could have let armed Ulster come in hundreds or thousands, an invading force, and civil war would have ensued; they could have allowed the small number of labourers really needed by Mr. Boycott to arrive by threes and fours, at the risk of not getting alive to Lough Mask at all; and they could do as they have done. The probable effect of the movement, if any, will be to bring Mr. Somerset-Maxwell to the fore at the next contest for the county of Cavan. It may be imagined that the picked men of Monaghan are not very pleased at playing second fiddle to an electioneering scheme. Concerning Cavan, the hope of a fight between the men of the two counties has by no means died away.
To do justice to the Ulster men, they displayed a great deal of earnestness at Lough Mask House this morning. In the midst of a hurricane a large number of them went bravely out to a potato field and worked with a conscience at getting out the national vegetables, which ran a risk of being completely spoiled by the rain. The potatoes, however, might, as Mr. Boycott opined, have been spoiled if they had remained in the ground, and might as well be ruined in one way as the other.
The remainder of the Orangemen, when I saw them, were busy in the barn with a so-called "Tiny" threshing-machine, threshing Mr. Boycott's oats with all the seriousness and solemn purpose befitting their task. Nothing could have been more dreary and wretched than the entire proceedings. Mr. Boycott himself had discarded his martial array of yesterday, and appeared in a herdsman's overcoat of venerable age, and, as he grasped a crook instead of a double-barrelled gun, looked every inch a patriarch. He exhibits no profuse gratitude towards the officious persons who have come to help him, thinking probably that he would have been nearly as well without them. Thanks to his obstructive assistants, he is almost overwhelmed with sympathisers gifted by nature with tremendous appetites. Keen-eyed officers detect the mutton-bones which tell of unauthorised ovicide, and "clutches" of geese and chickens vanish as if by magic. There will be a fearful bill for somebody to pay when the whole business is over, whenever that may be.