oppression which, in the last fifty years, has driven half her population out of Ireland, and added a fresh source of decay to those which existed. Ireland to-day is only beginning to raise herself up and to re-make her soul. What has she been doing for a century and a half? She has "gone the pace," it might be said. She has used up all her strength merely in living, and had none left for the task of reformation and advance. Is it not true, as has been said, that success brings to light the qualities of a people, and misfortune their failings ? 2 This is why the faults of the Irish are so difficult to distinguish from their misfortunes.

The Irishman, it is said, is untruthful and perfidious, cruel and vindictive, reckless and ungovernable, and devoid of respect for justice or law. May this not be because until quite recently he has had no justice done him, no law but that which was used to his burt? This oppression would engender in him dissimulation, the spirit of vengeance and of anarchy, as poverty engenders vice. He is quarrelsome and jealous, always a prey to dissensions, always ready to betray! It was an Irishman, MacMurrough, who invited the English to Ireland. There is a proverb that if you put an Irishman on the spit you will always find another to turn it. But what vanquished nation has ever escaped the curse of civil war? Moreover, what has England left undone that she could do to divide and corrupt the Irish ? 3

Reckless and idle, without dignity or mastery of self, they lack energy in their practical life, and character in their moral life-this is the great reproach most commonly directed against them, as it is also the point in which the effect of their past is best manifested in them. Beyond doubt there must be some quality in this damp

2 See the New Ireland Review, July to December, 1901. Letters from Ireland, by H. B.

3" We were reckless, ignorant, improvident, drunken and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do; we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken, for we sought to forget our misery." (Sir R. Kane, Industrial Resources of Ireland).

and soft climate, this "sedative, soporific " air,4 which depresses and enervates the mind.

It helps to explain those easy-going manners and ways of taking life, that strength of endurance but not of enterprise, that occasional capacity for the most vigorous effort which is accompanied in the ordinary course of things by an extreme lack of perseverance, that lazy and indolent dilletantism which is found among the most cultivated men, that lack of nervous energy, in short, for which but a poor compensation is to be found in spasmodic, nervous outbursts, and which contrasts sharply with the less brilliant but more steady, energetic and regular temperament of the Anglo-Saxon.5 But none the less there is no doubt that oppression has singularly aggravated the evil; the Penal Laws proscribed effort by taking away the end and the reward of effort; and even to-day the English regime closes the path of progess to the Irish. Take the case of the peasant. He is idle and negligent; he is a bad farmer and would rather, where he can, have his land in pasture than in tillage, because pasture means less trouble-indeed in certain rich districts the art of tillage has been almost completely unlearned. But this is because during the centuries others have reaped what he had sown; it is because the fruit of his work has always been confiscated by the landlord. "Why sleepest thou, Moujick?"6 How that plaintive song of the Slavs might be applied to the Irish peasant! If the Irish moujick sleeps, it is because poverty has become natural to him and he has lost ambition for better things, If his cottage is dirty and badly kept, with the dung-hill before the door, the pig under the same roof as his master, and not a flower to rejoice the eye, it is because to-day, despite all the laws that have been passed, his improvements would often increase his rent.7 "I have no

4 My New Curate, p. 198.

5 Old chronicles say that persistence in work was formerly a racial characteristic among the Irish. (Cf. de Beaumont, op. cit. I., 353. 6 A. Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tsars et les Russes, I., 138. 7 See below, The Land Question.

doubt," wrote Sir G. C. Lewis," that a Protestant German peasantry, if properly oppressed and brutalised, would be made as bad as the Irish."8 The same applies, and for the same reason, to the country or city worker. There is a wrong spirit abroad which borders on dishonesty if it does not reach to it. People work hard when their master's eye is upon them, but when he has gone they sing, or go for a walk. As a result of lack of training as much as of lack of energy, they take a day to do what a good American workman would finish in an hour. "What a pity," writes an American, contrasting the habits of workers in the two countries,9 "that people should have to go to America to learn so elementary a lesson as that of work." From top to bottom of the scale, initiative, the practical spirit, the sense of order and accuracy, have been obliterated by lack of usage as well as by lack of education, and they are only beginning to be recovered. There is plenty of good-will but little will. Work is spasmodic, not systematic. Circumstances are not exacting, and people are content with little"That will do!" How many industries and businesses have failed through lack of method and of care! England "Irish " has become synonymous with “bad.” Good "managers are rare; negligence, carelessness, bungling are supreme in the domestic economy among the peasantry as among the upper classes. People are close in little, and extravagant in big things; "penny wise and pound foolish."

In

Morally speaking, then, while the Irishman is no longer a slave, he has still something of the slave in him, or at best of the freed bondsman. He is hardly able to rid himself of that sense of inferiority which his old masters have so strongly inculcated in him. To his former oppressor he often shows a remnant of servility, unless, indeed, by reaction he may affect a tone of aggravated rudeness like that old peasant of whom Mr. William

8 Quoted by Sir C. G. Duffy in Young Ireland.

9 New Ireland Review, 1901. (Letters from Ireland).

O'Brien speaks, who, hearing the insolence of land agents in the past recalled, replied, "Begob, we'll have them put their hands to their hats for us yet." 10 As concerns himself he has retained from his servitude a certain lack of dignity, of moral discipline, of self-mastery and selfrespect. "Hence," said Gustave de Beaumont 11 in 1835, "that deplorable negligence, that lack of neatness . . . that laisser aller, that carelessness of his person, that total absence of self-respect and personality, which are direct results of his former condition." A fine talker, but devoid of the critical sense, vaunting and verbose, he will often make himself ridiculous without being aware of it. Full of physical courage, he is often deficient in moral courage; he lacks confidence in himself, initiative, and energy, and has lost the habit of looking things in the face. He quails before responsibilities, and has forgotten how to will, for his soul is still a serf. "Don't cheer the Boers, but imitate them!" was the advice which Mr. William O'Brien could not resist tendering to his countrymen not long ago. This is all the product of the past, the work of servitude and poverty, prolonged by oppression, and—we shall return to the point later-by the Anglicisation of Ireland, and the inadequacy of the school system. It makes up an ensemble of faults rather than of vices, and of sins of omission rather than sins of commission. In few countries are morals purer, in few is character less developed. Other peoples, as it has been said, have the qualities necessary for this world, the qualities which are needed for the other. catalogue of Irish faults seems trivial as compared with the vices of other nations," a critic remarked a little while ago,12" their grave disadvantage lies in the fact that they are those which go to make bad citizens. The defects of the Irish are not deadly sins. But," he adds jocularly, "as the world is constituted, a few deadly

Irish have the "Though the

sins, masked by a little discreet hypocrisy, might prove less detrimental to the sinner's prospects here below."

III.-PUBLIC LIFE AND PUBLIC OPINION.

Of Irish public opinion the best that one can say is that, emerging as it is from childhood, it is as yet hardly emancipated, and shows in any event a great lack of education and experience. Left without any guidance or support beyond that of a very small number of independent men, it has all the naivete and thoughtlessness of youth, all its enthusiasms and illusions. It is careless and ignorant; so that on such grave questions as that of education it remains silent. It has, too, the intolerance of youth; it lacks the critical sense, and is impatient of all criticism. People do not discuss, but dispute, they exchange insults but do not argue, or examine their consciences. They are lost in regrets for the past, and are never done with the historical grievances of Ireland: every misfortune of the present day is imputed to England, as if it were an insult to patriotism to suppose that the Irish could have faults. The outlook is obscured by prejudices, passions, and childish trivialities, in the midst of which the good sense of the people can only struggle painfully along. The Government is at once denounced, and asked for alms. England is hated, and imitated. Everyone is ready with his diagnosis of the evil and his special panacea. It is the triumph of empty rhetoric and fine phrases. The cry goes up, "Long live the Boers!" but they are not imitated, whatever Mr. William O'Brien may say. People shout God save Ireland Ireland a Nation! and when they have shouted themselves hoarse their consciences are at rest and they return home. It is easy to understand how it is that the utilitarians and the realists turn to where life and success are real, that is, to the service of the Government; while the idealists