‘Immensely. After I have blown myself with a sharp burst on home politics, I always take a canter among the Druses and the Lebanites; and I am such an authority on the “Grand Idea,” that Rangabe refers to me as “the illustrious statesman whose writings relieve England from the stain of universal ignorance about Greece.”’
‘And do you know anything on the subject?’
‘About as much as the present Cabinet does of Ireland. I know all the clap-traps: the grand traditions that have sunk down into a present barbarism—of course, through ill government; the noble instincts depraved by gross usage; I know the inherent love of freedom we cherish, which makes men resent rents as well as laws, and teaches that taxes are as great a tyranny as the rights of property.’
‘And do the Greeks take this view of it?’
‘Of course they do; and it was in experimenting on them that your great Ministers learned how to deal with Ireland. There was but one step from Thebes to Tipperary. Corfu was “pacified”—that’s the phrase for it—by abolishing the landlords. The peasants were told they might spare a little if they liked to the ancient possessor of the soil; and so they took the ground, and they gave him the olive-trees. You may imagine how fertile these were, when the soil around them was utilised to the last fraction of productiveness.’
‘Is that a fair statement of the case?’
‘Can you ask the question? I’ll show it to you in print.’
‘Perhaps written by yourself?’
‘And why not? What convictions have not broken on my mind by reading my own writings? You smile at this; but how do you know your face is clean till you look in a glass?’
Walpole, however, had ceased to attend to the speaker, and was deeply engaged with the letter before him.