"Home Rule would never do Ireland any good. Quite the contrary. What can do a man good who tries to get his dinner by standing about and saying how hungry he is?
"As to the agitators, they will always agitate. When one source is dried up they'll invent another. They have their living to get, and agitation is their trade. And a paying trade it is. Are they disloyal to England? I believe them Fenians at heart—that is, Fenians in the matter of loyalty. They would use any power they might get to damage England, and if England gives them power she'll bitterly rue the day. Paddy may be lazy, but put your finger in his mouth and he'll bite. The English Separatists don't see this, but when I see the fox in the hen-roost I can guess what brought him there. If I put the cat in the dairy I should expect her to taste the cream. Trust the Irish Nationalist members! I'd as soon trust a pack of wolves with my lambs."
My friend is a scientific gardener, and descanted on the wonderful climate of Ireland, where plants that will not grow in England nourish luxuriously. I told him I had seen bamboo growing in the open air at Dundalk, and asked him if the Bonds of Brotherhood (Humbugis Morleyensis) or the Union of Hearts (Gladstonia gammonica gigantica) would come to perfection in Hibernia. He thought the soil and climate unsuitable, and was sure they would never take root. The gammonica had been tried, but it withered and died. It could not be "budded" for want of an Irish "stock."
A scrap-book, fifty years old, revealed a condition of things so strangely like that of the present day that I obtained permission to copy the following skit, which, but for the mention of the old convict colony, might have been written last week. It is headed "Extract from the forthcoming history of the Irish Parliament." The Home Rule project is therefore ancient enough:—
One blow and Ireland sprang from the head of her Saxon enslaver like a new Minerva!
Proudly and solemnly she then sat down to frame a Republic worthy of Plato and Pat. Her first
President had been a workhouse porter, who was also a night watchman. He was, therefore, eminently fitted for both civil and military administration. The speech of President Pat on opening Congress developes his policy and his well-digested plans of legislative reform. Here are a few quotations:—
The Key-stone of Government is the Blarney-stone.
Political progress may always be accelerated by a bludgeon.
Our institutions must be consolidated by soft-soap and whacks.