At the end of this interview a messenger brings a telegram for 'himself' from a stockowner in a remote district.[[47]] 'My pigs,' runs one of the most businesslike communications I ever received, 'are all spotted. What shall I do?' I send it to the Veterinary Branch, which, with the Board of Agriculture in England, is engaged in a scheme for staying the ravages of swine fever, a scheme into which the late Mr. Hanbury threw himself with his characteristic energy. The problem is of immense importance, and the difficulty is not mainly quadrupedal. Unless the police 'spot' the spotted pigs, we too often hear nothing about them. I am sure it must be daily brought home to the English Board, as it is to the Irish Department, that an enormous addition might be made to the wealth of the country if our veterinary officers were intelligently and actively aided, in their difficult duties for the protection of our flocks and herds, by those most immediately concerned.
So far it has been an interesting morning bright with the activities out of which the future is to be made. The element of hope has predominated, but now comes a visitor who wishes to see me upon the one part of my duties and responsibilities which is distasteful to me—the exercise of patronage. He has been unloaded upon me by an influential person, upon whom he has more legitimate claims than upon the Department. He has prepared the way for a favourable reception by getting his friends to write to my friends, many of whom have already fulfilled a promise to interview me in his behalf. His mother and two maiden aunts have written letters which have drawn from my poor Private Secretary, who has to read them all, the dry quotation, 'there's such a thing as being so good as to be good for nothing.' The young hopeful quickly puts an end to my speculations as to the exact capacity in which he means to serve the Department by applying for an inspectorship. I ask him what he proposes to inspect, and the sum and substance of his reply is that he is not particular, but would not mind beginning at a moderate salary, say £200 a year. As for his qualifications, they are a sadly minus quantity, his blighted career having included failure for the army, and a clerkship in a bank, which only lasted a week when he proved to be deficient in the second and dangerous in the third of the three R's. His case reminds me of a story of my ranching days, which the exercise of patronage has so often recalled to my mind that I must out with it. Riding into camp one evening, I turned my horse loose and got some supper, which was a vilely cooked meal even for a cow camp. Recognising in the cook a cowboy I had formerly employed, I said to him, 'You were a way up cow hand, but as cook you are no account. Why did you give up riding and take to cooking? What are your qualifications as a cook any way?' 'Qualifications!' he replied, 'why, don't you know I've got varicose veins?' My caller's qualifications are of an equally negative description, though not of a physical kind. He is one of the young Micawbers, to whom the Department from its first inception has been the something which was to turn up. He had, of course, testimonials which in any other country would have commanded success by their terms and the position of the signatories, but which in Ireland only illustrate the charity with which we condone our moral cowardice under the name of good nature. I am glad when this interview closes.
One more type—a Nationalist Member of Parliament! He does not often darken the door of a Government office—they all have the same structural defect, no front stairs—he never has asked and never thought he would ask anything from the Government. But he is interested in some poor fishermen of County Clare who pursue their calling under cruel disadvantages for want of the protection from the Atlantic rollers which a small breakwater would afford. It is true that they were the worst constituents he had—- went against him in 'The Split,'—but if I saw how they lived, and so on. I knew all about the case. A breakwater to be of any use would cost a very large sum, and the local authority, though sympathetic, did not see their way to contribute their proportion, and without a local contribution, I explained, the Department could not, consistently with its principles, unless in most exceptional—Here he breaks in: 'Oh! that red tape. You're as bad as the rest—exceptional, indeed! Why, everything is exceptional in my constituency. I am a bit that way myself. But, seriously, the condition of these poor people would move even a Government official. Besides, you remember the night I made thirteen speeches on the Naval Estimates—the Government wanted a little matter of twenty millions—and you met me in the Lobby and told me you wished to go to bed, and asked me what I really wanted, and—I am always reasonable—I said I would pass the whole Naval Programme if I got the Government to give them a boat-slip at Ballyduck.—"Done!" you said, and we both went home.—I believe you knew that I had got constituency matters mixed up, that Ballyduck was inland, and that it was Ballycrow that I meant to say.—But you won't deny that you are under a moral obligation.'
Well, I would go into the matter again very carefully—for I thought we might help these fishermen in some other way—and write to him. He leaves me; and, while outside the door he travels over the main points with my Private Secretary, the lights and shades in the picture which this strange personality has left on my mind throw me back behind the practical things of to-day. In Parliament facing the Sassanach, in Ireland facing their police, he has for years—the best years of his life—displayed the same love of fighting for fighting's sake. In the riots he has provoked, and they are not a few, he is ever regardless of his own skin, and would be truly miserable if he inflicted any serious bodily harm on a human being—even a landlord. It is impossible not to like this very human anachronism, who, within the limitations imposed by the convenience of a citizenship to which he unwillingly belongs, does battle
For Faith, and Fame, and Honour, and the ruined hearths of Clare.
The reader may take all this as fiction. I am sure no one will annoy me by trying on any of the caps I have displayed on the counter of my shop. What I do fear is that the picture of some of my duties which I have given may have made a wrong impression of the Department's work upon the reader's mind. He may have come to the conclusion that, contrary to all the principles laid down, an attempt was being made to do for the people things which the new movement was to induce the people to do for themselves. The Department may appear to be using its official position and Government funds to constitute itself a sort of Universal Providence, exercising an authority and a discretion over matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves. However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of Mr. Gerald Balfour and of those Irishmen whom he took into his confidence are being fulfilled in letter and in spirit. It only remains for me to attempt an adequate description of the work of the Department created by that Chief Secretary, and, above all, of the way in which the people themselves are playing the part which his statesmanship assigned to them.
FOOTNOTES:
See Report of the Local Government Board, 1901-2.