IRELAND, THEN AND NOW 203 



that the self-contempt can sometimes be so nakedly 

 expressed as to afflict the hearer. We have heard an 

 old Irishman characterise lying as "a dirty, low habit 

 of the Irish " ; a prosperous Irish farmer has declared 

 that his greatest ambition in life was to be " mis- 

 taken " for an English gentleman — a double-edged 

 mistake that the mere expression of such a wish puts 

 beyond the bounds of possibility. This is not the 

 race whose spirit will find expression in the Republic 

 of Sinn Fein aspirations. A story is told of the 

 Rising in Dublin in Easter week, 1916. An English 

 visitor, deploring its results, spoke of it as a Rebellion. 

 " Ah, that wasn't a rebellion at all 1 " said the Irish- 

 man — " that was no more than a row. Sure ye 

 couldn't call that a rebellion. There was no gentry 

 in it ! " 



Ireland exacts an object of adoration, even an 

 abstraction; a Throne, though the king were un- 

 worthy; a Church, though the representative of 

 Heaven cannot be revered. There was a priest in 

 a remote country parish who was disliked by his 

 flock, and, which is rarer, despised. A poor woman 

 discussed him with a neighbour of the other faith. 

 " Sir," she said, "it isn't the man I respects, but the 

 office." 



Miss Edgeworth, in her memoirs, quotes her father, 

 wiio was a reformer and an enthusiast, as " contend- 

 ing " that there is " a fund of goodness in the Irish 

 as well as in the English nature," an opinion which 

 might now seem a truism, but was then regarded as a 

 token of philanthropic eccentricity. " The misfor- 

 tunes of Ireland," says Mr. Edgeworth, " were owing 

 not to the heart, but to the head ; the defect was not 

 from nature, but from want of culture." Sir Jonah 

 Harrington, on the other hand, like many of his class, 

 accepted the Irish character with an amused pessim- 



