CHAPTER XLIII.

A CURE FOR IRELAND.

In connection with the above, I will here print for the first time a paper written long ago on the now rife subject of a cure for Irish misery; at all events partially.  Ireland has been with me a theme for many kinds of literature; from that usual sort of authorship, letters in the Times, to journalising on occasion, balladising in or out of season, and now and then a political squib or graver article.  I have known that hapless land well in old days from Giant’s Causeway to Cape Clear; have been a guest in several noted homes, as with geological Enniskillen and astronomical Crampton; know the natives well, and how they have been taught by priests and demagogues to hate the Sassenach, and, like most well-meaning men, who, after every kind effort, find themselves utterly misunderstood, am (as a merely private and quite unprejudiced politician) entirely at a loss to know how to please that impracticable people, or to mend their miserable condition.  However, that in my authorial fashion I have tried, let the following paper prove; written and published nearly thirty years ago.

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“Nations think and feel and act much as individuals do; for, after all, the largest crowd of men is, only an aggregate of units.  If contempt provokes a man to anger, and avowed neglect forces him into indolence and hopelessness, we shall see the same result in masses as we do in single persons; and the causes which may have generated hatred and despair will everywhere and everywhen find cures in their contraries, honour being accorded in the place of contempt, and kindly care instead of cold indifference.  Thus, the far too common phrase, ’No Irish need apply,’ has doubtless wrought infinite ill-feeling; and the Levite’s chilling rule of ‘passing by on the other side’ evermore arouses indignation nationally no less than individually.

“Now, it cannot be denied in an ethnological sense that the Celtic nature is peculiarly sensitive; any more than it can be denied historically that its good feelings have been too often systematically crushed, and its generous impulses seared.  If the Teutonic mind illustrates in sterner traits the manhood of human intelligence, the Celt shows its gayer youthfulness, if not indeed the lighter phases of its reckless childhood:  and it has been a second nature for the Saxon to hold mastery over the Celt, as a weaker race is everywhere subject to a strong one.  Moreover, opposition in religious creed has had its evil influences, scarcely yet extinct, however caustically such a cure may in vain have been hitherto attempted.