However, I shall do very well when I get to my lodge, and in the meantime I am contented to do ill.

I have hopes of these young paddies after all.
I think they will have a fight for it, or else their landlords will bully the Government into strong measures as they call them--and then will finally disgust whatever there is left of doubtful loyalty in the country into open unloyalty, and they will win without fighting.
There is the most genuine hatred of the Irish landlords everywhere that I can remember to have heard expressed of persons or things.

My landlady that is to be next week told me she believed it was God's doing.

If God wished the people should be stirred up to fight, then it was all right they should do it; and if He didn't will, why surely then there would be no fighting at all.

I am not sure it could have been expressed better.