IRELAND AND ENGLAND.
ITo THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
you allow me to say a few words on the unhappy Irish question ? Myself an Irishman, and in Holy Orders of the Irish Church, I -am yet, what is most rare in such a case, 'an earnest Liberal. Let me begin, then, by saying how strange, how very strange, is the long-continued misapprehension by almost every Englishman of the real point at issue. You talk of agrarian outrages, of the great land question, of denomina- tional education, and what not. These all are, no doubt, elements (important, too, in their own way) in the question, but 'they do not touch the real, vital point. That point is, that the masses of the population are, to a man, disloyal at bottom. From indifference and antipathy, this feeling towards England exists in every possible phase, till it culminates in bitter hatred. 'That being so, you see at once why efforts at pacification fail. It is enough that they are English,—that they come from Eng- land. They are tainted.—they are doomed to certain failure. I do not defend or share this feeling, far from it. Yet, in view of all the circumstances of the case, it seems to me a feeling by no means unnatural or strange,—by no means one to be wondered at.
Now, Sir, this being the case, various doctors come over to treat the unhappy patient (not an Irishman, by the way, among them). They live at the Castle, or, it may be, now and then take a flying trip into the wilds of the country. But what do they know of the real ailment? Almost nothing whatever; and .so that happens which always happens when a doctor treats for one malady a patient suffering from quite a different one. Let me add to the picture I have tried to draw of the feeling toward England of the Irish masses this, that I believe a great deal of passive disloyalty exists amongst the classes supposed to be loyal. Nowhere is there any love for England, nor any liking, even, of a hearty kind. Reared in the very midst of so- -called loyal Irish Protestants, I can well recall that, as a child, I always thought and felt towards the English as towards a strange people. This feeling was unconscious ; it was in the sir I breathed.
I could go on, but fear you would deny me space. I have already drawn a dark picture, but have to add one dark touch more,—that it seems as if the feelings of the Irish towards _England bad but grown in bitterness these last few years.—I
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