“Thrue for you; that's himself.”
“And his family is well liked down here?”
“I'll be bound they are. There's few like them to the fore.”
Rather worried by the persistent assent he gave me, and seeing that I had no chance of deriving anything like an independent opinion from my courteous companion, I determined to try another line. After smoking a cigar and giving one to my friend, who seemed to relish it vastly, I said, as if incidentally, “Where I got that cigar, Paddy, the people are better off than here.”
“And where's that, sir?”
“In America, in the State of Virginia.”
“That's as thrue as the Bible. It's elegant times they have there.”
“And one reason is,” said I, “every man can do what he likes with his own. You have a bit of land here, and you dare n't plant tobacco; or if you sow oats or barley, you must n't malt it. The law says, 'You may do this, and you sha'n't do that;' and is that freedom, I ask, or is it slavery?”
“Slavery,—devil a less,” said he, with a cut of his whip that made the horse plunge into the air.
“And do you know why that's done? Do you know the secret of it all?”