26 My Little Farm 



merit, be no longer entitled to have his failure 

 financed from the pockets of his British neighbours. 

 Unless he could in those twelve years be lifted to 

 the status of personal property in mind as well as 

 land, the " free constitution " must at the end of 

 that period, confront a stoppage of the " foreign " 

 funds, an incapacity to replace them at home, and 

 a recurrence of organised calamity expressed in a 

 howl of revolution from the green hills of Ireland. 

 I do not believe that the necessary mental trans- 

 formation could be achieved in twelve years by 

 any provision in view. The industrial redemption 

 of agrarian Ireland requires nothing less than the 

 death of a whole generation and the education of 

 a new one under totally different auspices. There 

 can be no other country in the world where the 

 gospel of uselessness is so expensively triumphant 

 in the degradation of industrial character. 



This contrast, " Then and Now," is not mere 

 writing. It is work, pressing for expression ; 

 energy, translated into life ; life, advancing itself 

 in action ; and the painful discipline of sacrifice 

 to a pleasant purpose ; in a country where few or 

 none are prepared to take the pains essential to the 

 pleasure, and where the strengthening thrill of 

 conquered crisis is practically unknown. I need 

 add not a line to the limits of my personal ex- 

 perience. Argument is unnecessary. There is 

 blood on the track that I have trodden these 

 fourteen years attesting pain at every point ; and 

 a thousand little farms like mine, however 

 profitable, could not possibly compensate the 

 sacrifices of living such a life, the more painful 



