"These people, who are too lazy to wash themselves, expect their condition to be improved by a Home Rule Parliament. Can anything be more unreasonable or more unlikely? And because there are more of them, their wishes are to be taken into account, and the opinions and wishes of men of whom each one is worth a hundred are to be disregarded. Where is the English sense of the eternal fitness of things?
"What the Irish really seek is some effective substitute for work. They have no idea of developing the resources which lie nearest to them. Carlyle says a country belongs to the people who can make the best use of it, and not the people who happen to be found there. Ireland for the Irish is a favourite cry. Why? Is not England for the Irish, America, Australia, New Zealand? My ancestors came here in the time of Henry the Second, and I am told that I have no business in the country. Wherever English and Scots settlers have been located, there the country is well worked and the people are thriving. If we can thrive, why can't they thrive? If we can get on without Home Rule, why can't they get on without Home Rule? If it were going to be a good thing for the country we'd all be on it like a shot. If it were good for them, it ought to be good for us. We have shown by our success that our judgment is sound. Their failure in everything they undertake, their dirt, their general habits and character, should cause their statements and opinions to be looked upon with very great suspicion. Does it stand to reason that merely by Home Rule, by the exercise of the privilege of making Irish laws by Irishmen in Dublin, that these people would gain all we have attained by hard and honest labour? That is what they expect up here.
"The Catholics are our servants, and in selecting them we seldom ask their religion. Our employés in most cases expect by the bill to take the place of their masters. That is their conception of Home Rule. They have been told from infancy that the British Government keeps them down because of their religion. They know that the British Government is Protestant, and they believe that in some occult way the superior position held by the Protestants in Ireland is due to favouritism. Under a Home Rule Parliament, that is, a Catholic Parliament, this condition of things will be reversed, and they will at once, and by their own innate force, as faithful believers, spring to the top of the tree, and exchange positions with their former masters and mistresses."
The general effect of my friend's discourse was well summed up by Mr. James Mack, of Galway, who said:—
"When I see that the Belfast men who would make fortunes out of river mud, and who would skin a flea for his hide and tallow, turn their backs on Home Rule, and declare they will have nothing to do with it, I feel sure it can be no good. Then my own experience and observation assure me that, instead of a settlement, it will only be the beginning of trouble for both countries. Firmness is wanted, and equal laws for all. At present everything is in favour of Ireland." United Ireland says:—"It would be better to go on for twenty years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission for a day."
Nobody who knows the Irish people ever expected anything else. Agitators who live by agitation will always agitate, and only a few namby-pamby Radicals ever thought otherwise. Those who would fain have sold their souls for the Newcastle Programme also stand to be taken in. This Home Rule Bill will not do. Another must be brought forward immediately. Where is this dreary business going to end? When will Mr. Gladstone consider that England has eaten dirt enough?
Newry, July 4th