I spent my time in the train reading several different accounts of an important Nationalist meeting held the day before in a village in County Clare, the name of which I have unfortunately forgotten. Three of the chief Nationalist orators were there, men quite equal to Babberly in their mastery of the art of public speaking. I read all their speeches; but that was not really necessary. None of them said anything which the other two did not say, and none of them left out anything which the other two had said.
They all began by declaring that under Home Rule all Irishmen should receive equal consideration and be treated with equal respect. They all looked forward to the day when they would be walking about the premises at present occupied by the Bank of Ireland in Dublin with their arms round Babberly's neck. The dearest wish of their hearts--so they all said, and the people of County Clare cheered heartily--was to unite with Lord Moyne, Babberly, Malcolmson and even the Dean in the work of regenerating holy Ireland. Any little differences of religious creed which might exist would be entirely forgotten as soon as the Home Rule Bill was safely passed. They then went on to say that the Belfast people, and the people of County Antrim and County Down generally, were enthusiastically in favour of Home Rule. The fact that they elected Unionist members of Parliament and held Unionist demonstrations was accounted for by the existence of a handful of rack-renting landlords, a few sweating capitalists and some clergymen whose churches were empty because the people were tired of hearing them curse the Pope.
Poor Moyne has sold every acre of his property and the Dean's only difficulty with the majority of his large congregation is that he does not curse the Pope often enough to please them. Cahoon, I am told, only sweats in the old-fashioned intransitive sense of the word. He is frequently bathed in perspiration himself. I never heard of his insisting on his workmen getting any hotter than was natural and necessary. But these criticisms are beside the mark. No one supposes that a political orator means to tell the truth when he is making a speech. Politics could not be carried on if he did. What the public expects and generally insists on is that the inevitable lies should have their loins girt about with a specious appearance of truthfulness. Every speaker must offer distinct and convincing proofs that his statements are strictly accurate reflections of fact. The best and simplest way of doing this is by means of bold challenge. The speaker offers to deposit a large sum of money with the local mayor to be paid over to a deserving charity, if any opponent of the speaker can, to the satisfaction of twelve honourable men, generally named, disprove some quite irrelevant truism, or can prove to the satisfaction of the same twelve men the falsity of some universally accepted platitude. This method is very popular with orators, and invariably carries conviction to their audiences.