Well, I would go into the matter again very carefully—­for I thought we might help these fishermen in some other way—­and write to him.  He leaves me; and, while outside the door he travels over the main points with my Private Secretary, the lights and shades in the picture which this strange personality has left on my mind throw me back behind the practical things of to-day.  In Parliament facing the Sassanach, in Ireland facing their police, he has for years—­the best years of his life—­displayed the same love of fighting for fighting’s sake.  In the riots he has provoked, and they are not a few, he is ever regardless of his own skin, and would be truly miserable if he inflicted any serious bodily harm on a human being—­even a landlord.  It is impossible not to like this very human anachronism, who, within the limitations imposed by the convenience of a citizenship to which he unwillingly belongs, does battle

    For Faith, and Fame, and Honour, and the ruined hearths of Clare.

The reader may take all this as fiction.  I am sure no one will annoy me by trying on any of the caps I have displayed on the counter of my shop.  What I do fear is that the picture of some of my duties which I have given may have made a wrong impression of the Department’s work upon the reader’s mind.  He may have come to the conclusion that, contrary to all the principles laid down, an attempt was being made to do for the people things which the new movement was to induce the people to do for themselves.  The Department may appear to be using its official position and Government funds to constitute itself a sort of Universal Providence, exercising an authority and a discretion over matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves.  However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts.  If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it ’a scheme of things entire,’ it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of Mr. Gerald Balfour and of those Irishmen whom he took into his confidence are being fulfilled in letter and in spirit.  It only remains for me to attempt an adequate description of the work of the Department created by that Chief Secretary, and, above all, of the way in which the people themselves are playing the part which his statesmanship assigned to them.

FOOTNOTES: 

[44] See Report of the Local Government Board, 1901-2.

[45] See Annual General Report of the Department 1900-1901, pp. 25-27.

[46] Cf. ante, pp. 46-49.

[47] No fiction about this, nor about the following letter to the Secretary:—­

’The Scratatory, Vitny Dept.

’Honord Sir,

’I want to let ye know the terible state we’re in now.  Al the pigs about here is dyin in showers.  Send down a Vit at oncet.’