It may be said, escape lies open to it in self-elevation, in moral rectitude, and industrious exertion; but it is too late for it to see and understand that. We might as well say to the broken leg, walk now, you walked once; or to the encaged madman, calm yourself and be free, you were calm and free once.
We need no better proof of the non-cogitativeness of Ireland than the facile manner in which it throws itself beneath the Juggernautic car of every demagogue, and sacrifices itself to his avaricious cruelty. We need no better proof of the truth of our theory, than that the Nose of the same nation is deficient in Cogitativeness, and is for the most part thin and sharp. It has not, however, lost the Romano-Greek profile, usual among the Caucasian races.
This is true in the main; but unhappily more recent information compels us to modify it, and add another proof of Nasology from degradation of physical structure simultaneously with mental degradation. “There are certain districts in Leitrim, Sligo, and Mayo” (as pointed out by an intelligent writer in the Dublin University Magazine, No. 48), chiefly inhabited by descendants of the native Irish driven by the British from Armagh and the south of Down, about two centuries ago. These people, whose ancestors were well-grown, able-bodied, and comely, are now reduced to an average stature of five feet two inches, are pot-bellied, bow-legged, and abortively featured, and are especially remarkable for “open projecting mouths, with prominent teeth, and exposed gums, (i. e. prognathous-jawed—the Negro type), their advancing cheekbones, and depressed noses, bearing barbarism on their very front.” In other words, within so short a period, they seem to have acquired a prognathous type of skull, like the savages of Australia, “thus giving such an example of deterioration from known causes, as almost compensates by its value to future ages, for the sufferings and debasement which past generations have endured in perfecting its appalling lesson.”[[46]]
The study of the British Legislature should be “How to get” Ireland a Cogitative Nose; not by any surgical process, such as that of the
“Learned Taliacotius, who from
The brawny part of porter’s bum,
Cut supplemental Noses.”—Hudibras.
for phlebotomizing is the worst mode of legislation—but by cultivating in her people a Cogitative mind; well assured that whether or not the attempt succeed in developing their probosces, it will be well repaid by other and more important improvements in their condition. How this is to be effected would afford matter for an interesting essay; but it would be out of place here, though we have our nostrums on the subject like every other political doctor, and cannot resist saying that it will never be done by “Constitutional” Legislation, which is only fitted for the Teutonic races. The Irish, like the cognate race, the French, must be governed by an enlightened despotism; they must be gently pushed on by their leaders to their own good, while the Teutonic races may be safely left to push on their leaders—treading, not always too gently, on their heels, by way of hint to get on. It is a most fatal error in legislation to disregard the psychonomic differences in races, and under a philanthropic pretence of the natural equality of man, to endeavour to govern all by the same laws and institutions.
It was the sad misfortune of Ireland to be conquered after the downfall of the feudal system, and to be at once inducted—with sanguinary and therefore ineffective restrictions on their use—into free forms of government. The feudal system, in its original integrity—without its on-grafted abuses, as fines, heriots, &c. &c.—is almost the only system on which a naturally high-class but barbarous race can be held down, while they are being elevated in the scale of humanity; and if for three or four generations Ireland could be subjected to pure and beneficent feudality—whereby every man would be linked to a superior, and be compelled to exert himself to retain his feud—together with the Alfredic tithing-man system—to prevent or detect and punish crime—it might be gradually placed on such an equality with England, as to enable it to be safely governed on the same constitutional principles. Perhaps, however, it is rather to be wished that this had been done in past times, than to attempt it now: it might be dangerous to the liberties of England to retrograde; for it must be admitted that a return to feudality is retrogression, and the state of external peace to which it would bring Ireland might afford an argument to future English Legislatures, to tie down the turbulent liberties of England with the same bonds—which God forbid! better live in a storm than rot in a calm.
It is the unhappy fate of Ireland that its evils are past remedy. Her woes are the executioners of God’s judgments against England for the latter’s crimes towards her. Ireland suffers that she may be a sharp thorn in the side—perhaps a dagger in the heart—of England. No nation sins without retribution from the quarter against which the crime has been committed, and much more evil must England suffer from Ireland ere an equivalent punishment has been inflicted. Nevertheless Ireland is not wretched only because England must suffer; she is wretched for her own crimes, and her wretchedness is over-ruled to be the punishment of her oppressor likewise.