“Welcome to Ireland, Mr. Hawthorne. It’s about the best thing Strongbow ever did for me—the pleasure of seeing a friend of my dear young friend’s here. Collectively you Saxons hate us; individually you find us not quite the lawless savages the Pall Mall Gazette and Spectator would make us.”
“We want to know you better,” said the M.P.
“Ah! that’s the rub. You don’t know us, and never will know us; but we know you. Englishmen come over to Ireland, believing that a real knowledge of the country is not to be acquired from newspapers, but that a man must see Ireland for himself. They come; they go; and all they pick up is a little of our brogue. We never can hope for much more than what Lucan calls concordia discors.”
“I believe if Ireland were to take the same stand as Scotland—”
“Scotland me no Scotland,” laughed Father O’Dowd.
“Scotland is contented and thrifty.”
“And Ireland is poor and proud. I tell you, Mr. Hawthorne, that we have a big bill of indictment against you that I fear may never be settled in my day. Why should not Scotland be contented? Is she not fed on sugar-plums? Is there not a sandy-haired Scotchman in every position worth having, from the cabinet to the custom-house? Do you not develop all her industries, and pat her on the back like a spoiled child? Are not your royal family ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores, or, if I freely translate myself, more Scotch than the Scotch themselves? Why should she not be contented and prosperous when she gets everything she asks for?”
“But you ask too much, reverend sir.”
“It is scarcely asking too much to ask for one’s own.”
“Surely yours are at best but—ahem!—sentimental grievances, and the House makes every—ahem!—effort at conciliation.”