It was an unfailing source of gratification to him that he had coined the historical utterance.

He quoted it with a grim chuckle on the few occasions when some guest, unfamiliar with his prejudice, would mention in his presence the hated word "Ireland." It appears that one particularly hard winter, when, for some unnecessary and wholly unwarrantable reason, the potato crop had failed, and the little Irish village was in a condition of desperate distress, it was found impossible to collect more than a tithe of Mr.
Kingsnorth's just dues.

No persuasion could make the obstinate tenants pay their rents.

Threats, law-proceedings, evictions--all were useless.
They simply would not pay.

His agent finally admitted himself beaten.
Mr.Kingsnorth must wait for better times.
Furious at his diminished income and hating, with a bitter hatred, the disloyal and cheating tenantry, he rose at a Guildhall banquet to reply to the toast of "The Colonies." He drew vivid pictures of the splendour of the British possessions: of India--that golden and loyal Empire; Australia with its hidden mines of wealth, whose soil had scarce been scratched, peopled by patriotic, zealous and toiling millions, honestly paying their way through life by the sweat of their God-and-Queen-fearing brows.