No. 19.—INDOLENCE AND IMPROVIDENCE.[ToC]
r. James Dunne, of Athenry, is an acute observer and a shrewd political controversialist. He said: "The people about here, the poor folks such as the small farmers and labourers, have really no opinion at all. They know nothing of Home Rule, one way or the other. If they say anything, it is to the effect that they will obtain some advantage in connection with the land. Beyond that they care nothing for the matter. Not one has any sentiment to be gratified. They only want to live, if possible, a bit more easily. If they can get the land for nothing or even more cheaply, then Home Rule is good. They can see no further than their noses, and they cannot be expected to follow a long chain of argument. They believe just what they are told. Yes, they go to the priest for advice under all circumstances. They ask him to name the man for whom they are to vote, or rather they would ask him if he waited long enough. They vote as they are told; and as the Catholic priest believes that the Catholic religion is the most important thing in the world, which from his point of view is quite proper and right, he naturally influences his people in the direction which is most likely to propagate the true faith, and give to it the predominance which he believes to be its rightful due.
"The people round here are harmless, and will continue so, unless the agitators get hold of them. They are ignorant, and easily led, and an influential speaker who knew their simplicity could make them do anything, no matter what. No, I couldn't say that they are industrious. They do not work hard. They just go along, go along, like. They have no enterprise at all, and you couldn't get them out of the ways of their fathers. They'd think it a positive sin.
"Look at the present fine weather. This is a very early season. No living man has seen such a spring-time in Ireland. Two months of fine warm weather, the ground in fine working condition, everything six weeks before last year. Not a man that started to dig a day earlier. No, the old time will be adhered to just as if it was cold and wet and freezing. You could not stir them with an electric battery. They moon, moon, moon along, in the old, old, old way, waiting for somebody to come and do something for them.
"If they had the land for nothing they would be no better off. They would just do that much less work. They live from hand to mouth. They have no ambition. The same thing that did for their fathers will do for them, the same dirtiness, the same inconvenience. If their father went three miles round a stone wall to get in at a gate they'll do it too. Never would they think of making another gate. They turn round angrily and say, 'Wasn't it good enough for my father, an' wasn't he a betther man than ayther me or you?' If you lived here, you would at first begin to show them things, but when you saw how much better they like their own way you'd stop it. You'd very soon get your heart broke. You couldn't stir them an inch in a thousand years. What will Home Rule do for them? Nobody knows but Gladstone and the Divil."
A bystander said: "Down at Galway there was a man wid a donkey goin' about sellin' fish, which was carried in two panniers. Whin he had only enough to fill one pannier, he put a load o' stones into the other pannier to balance the fish an' make the panniers stick on, an' ride aisier.
"Well, one day an Englishman that had been watchin' Barney for some time comes up to him an' he says, says he—
"'Whin ye have only fish for one pannier why do ye fill up the other wid stones off the beach?' says he.