"And look at the navvies' wages," said Father Columb.
"Besides the navvies only go if they like it," said the parish priest.
"And these men need not go unless they like it," said Mr. Somers. "Only with this proviso, that if they cannot manage for themselves they must fall into our way of managing for them."
"What I say, is this," said Mr. O'Leary. "Let 'em manage for 'emselves. God bless my sowl! Why we shall be skinned alive if we have to pay all this money back to Government. If Government chooses to squander thousands in this way, Government should bear the brunt. That's what I say." Eventually, Government, that is the whole nation, did bear the brunt. But it would not have been very wise to promise this at the time.
"But we need hardly debate all that at the present moment," said Mr. Somers. "That matter of the roads has already been decided for us, and we can't alter it if we would."
"Then we may as well shut up shop," said Mr. O'Leary.
"It's all very aisy to talk in that way," said Father Columb; "but the Government, as you call it, can't make men work. It can't force eight millions of the finest pisantry on God's earth—," and Father Columb was, by degrees, pushing away the seat from under him, when he was cruelly and ruthlessly stopped by his own parish priest.
"I beg your pardon for a moment, Creagh," said he; "but perhaps we are getting a little out of the track. What Mr. Somers says is very true. If these men won't work on the road—and I don't think they will—the responsibility is not on us. That matter has been decided for us."
"Men will sooner work anywhere than starve," said Mr. Townsend.
"Some men will," said Father Columb, with a great deal of meaning in his tone. What he intended to convey was this—that Protestants, no doubt, would do so, under the dominion of the flesh; but that Roman Catholics, being under the dominion of the Spirit, would perish first.