“To do them justice, the Irish Members gave such an exhibition of blackguardism as has no parallel on earth, though it earned but the mildest rebuke from their obsequious ally, Mr. Gladstone.
“Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime.”
It is only fair to Mr. Hussey to say that he himself has received as good as he gives. For example, an Irish demagogue once treated him to the following:
“Sam Hussey is a vulture with a broken beak, and he laid his voracious talons on the conscience of the voters. (Boos.) The ugly scowl of Sam Hussey came down upon them. He wanted to try the influence of his dark nature on the poor people. (Groans.) Where was the legitimate influence of such a man? Was it in the white terror he diffused? Was it not the espionage, the network of spies with which he surrounded his lands? He denied that a man who managed property had for that reason a shadow of a shade of influence to justify him in asking a tenant for his vote. What had they to thank him for?”
A voice: “Rack rents.”
“They knew the man from his boyhood, from his gossoonhood. He knew him when he began with a collop of sheep as his property in the world. (Laughter.) Long before he got God’s mark on him. It was not the man’s fault but his misfortune that he got no education. (Laughter.) He had in that parish schoolmasters who could teach him grammar for the next ten years. The man was in fact a Uriah Heep among Kerry landlords.” (Cheers.)
Here surely is blarney with a vengeance. Among a people which was otherwise than glib of expression such writing and such oratory would be difficult to evolve. When presumably cultivated men, for Mr. Hussey’s assailant in this instance was a priest, allow themselves to indulge in such childish objurgation, what wonder is it that the commonalty should be found to have lost their sense of what is proper to decent speech and reasonable argument. The demagogues of Ireland have indubitably gone a great way toward ruining the native taste and innate good breeding of the Irish people. Like the ha’penny papers of England they have made their fortunes and their power by the degradation of the masses. It is possible that the poverty of the country left them absolutely without other weapons wherewith to fight the haughty national enemy, England; it is certain that without these demagogues, and without their raging and blistering words, and the foul and brutal actions which frequently followed them, landlordism in Ireland would never have been scotched. As it is, the landlord has been put in his place and the chances of the natural heirs of the soil have been greatly enhanced. No drastic revolution of this kind can be brought about without loss even to the winning side. And in my opinion not the least of the losses of the winning side in this matter has been the transformation of blarney into flatness and commination. Under the heel of the tyrant the Irish people retained their faculty for mirth and mirthful speech; the exhortations of the demagogue and the agitator have brought them freedom, opportunity and a distinct abatement of spirits. As the world goes, one is now compelled to reckon Ireland in the same category that one reckons those innocuous islets named Man and Wight. There is more devil in the Isle of Dogs than all Ireland is for the moment in a position to show. It is not Ireland’s fault, and it is not England’s fault; it is the horrible fault of the nature of things. Whatever has happened in the past has happened because nothing better nor worse could in the nature of things have happened. What will happen in the future remains to be seen. It may be peace and the rehabilitation of a kindly, lively, and interesting people; it may be peace and the dullest sorts of apathy and decay. In any case it will be peace. The Times, which, after the Saturday Review, is admittedly the least consistent journal published on this footstool, has frequently been reproved over the mouth for remarking years ago that “In a short time, a Catholic Celt will be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as a red Indian on the shores of Manhattan.” This in effect was prophecy, though it is a hundred to one that the Times did not know it. If the resilient and recuperative powers of the Irish people have not been destroyed there is hope for the Irish people in Ireland. If those powers have been destroyed there is no hope for the Irish people in Ireland. Blarney even of the vituperative order will go entirely out, and the low Scotch will come entirely in. I will do the low Scotch the credit of saying, that if they had their way, and no Irish Catholics to contend with, they could make Ireland a highly successful business proposition inside a quarter of a century. Whether they will ever get the chance is on the knees of the gods. For my own part, and this is not blarney, I hope sincerely that they never will.