A SERIOUS VIEW OF- IRELAND

A Tour in Ireland. By Arthur Young. Selected and Edited To drive on a comical outside-car around the Lakes . of Killarney, to dangle indecorously from Blarney Castle, to feed upon the concocted anecdotes of "jarvey ". or boatman, have been the vicious circle in which most tourists to the Green Isle have, until recent years, moved, innocent of the gentle law of supply and demand. The Anglo-Irish literary tradition of rollicking, whimsical life, popularized by Lover, Lever and Croker, and still lingering in the laughable stories of George Birmingham, Somerville and Ross, has been to a serious extent an imaginative- legacy from, the hard-drinking, extravagant rakes and bloods of the eighteenth century, who set the fashion for their inferiors in social position. It is interesting to note, therefore, that Arthur Young, who travelled extensively in Ireland during the years 1776, 1777 and 1778, saw in the im- provident life of many landlords and the violently contrasted squalor of the agricultural class no humour, but the unhappy results of abnormal social and economic conditions. An un- successful farmer himself, but an excellent theorist, he attributed the presence of pig and poultry in the mud-cabins, not to an amusing or affectionate racial custom, but to hard necessity ; in fact, he defended thoroughly the comfortable oi•gintleman that pays the rint." " In Englaxid,"' is he says, " a man's cottage will be filled with superfluities before he possesses a cow. I think the comparison much in favour of the Irishman ; a hog is a much more valuable piece of goods than a set of tea-things." Tea-drinking, it may be observed, was always reserved by Young as the last term of contempt. Hospitably entertained in the houses of the Anglo-Irish

country gentlemen, he studied local conditions of tillage and labour. with 'memorable accuracy; though his observations on- the peasantry, who were then 'Irish-speaking, were of

necessity external, and he made no attempt to understand their hidden mind. There was no middle class in our sense of the

word, but a vast number of tithe proctors, land agents and parasites. Just to landlord and labourer, he condemns with unusual vigour that very class from which has sprung the

merry, rollicking Irishman of stage and popular fiction ; " the class of little country gentlemen ; tenants who drink their

claret by means of profit rents ; jobbers in farms ; bucks ; your fellows with round hats, edged with gold, who hunt in the day, get drunk in the evening, and fight the next morning. I shall not dwell on a subject so perfectly disagreeable, but remark that these are the men among whom drinking, wrangling, quarrelling, fighting (and) ravishing are found as in their native soil." So he dismisses the Rakes ofbfallow and of popular song. If his book is less amusing than the hasty impressions of latex visitors, such as Thackeray, it remains, at least for historians, the chief authority for Irish economic conditions during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and this convenient abbreviated edition by Miss Maxwell, a lecturer in Trinity College, Dublin, will be useful.

The abnormal condition of the Kingdom of Ireland in the eighteenth century can only be understood when it is realized that the country was owned and ruled by a minority differing in religion and interests from the vast majority of the popu- lation ; that between the mansion and the mud-cabin there were practically no degrees. The repressive laws were no longer enforced, but as Young says, aptly quoting Burke, " con- nivance is the relaxation of slavery, not the definition of liberty." After 1750, a certain prosperity, not shared in by the labouring classes, was noticeable ; tillage was fostered by the pre-Grattan Parliament, the northern linen industry flourished; Dublin in the winter was brilliant with social activities.

On fashionable and political affairs Young has little to remark. Regarding legislative union with Great Britain he held no definite views. He realized, however, the importance of prosperity in Ireland, with its great natural resources for food supply—in time of war especially—and advocated Free Trade and the abolition of the absentee and middleman. Agrarian crime and secret societies he regarded as the products of servitude rather than as racial characteristics.

Young was primarily interested in land and hated the old wasteful methods of farming, thoroughly enjoying, as Miss Maxwell remarks, the role of an apostle of the new scientific agriculture. He found Ireland in a singularly backward con- dition. In the remote West, ploughing " by the tail !' was still in practice. He traces this neglected state of farming to lack of skill and of capital and to the condition of the cottier. " The idleness seen among many when working for those who

oppress them is a very contrast to the vigour and activity with which the same people work when themselves alone reap the benefit of the labour.".

Owing to an unfortunate accident Young lost his private journal kept by him on his Irish tours, and his book is less

entertaining than the- famous Trarels.in. France. Gratitude for hospitality, no doubt, helped to stay his.shrewd pen, but a de- lightful example of what, perhaps, we may have lost..is to be foand in his Autobiography... Lord Longford. told him of a gepftleman in the neighbourhood whose hospitality was unbounded

" It never for a moment came into his head to make any pro- vision for feeding the people he brought into his house. While credit was to be had, his butler or housekeeper did this for him. If claret was secured, with a dead ox or sheep hanging in the slaughter house ready for steaks or cutlets, he thought all was well. One day the cook came into the breakfast parlour before all the company. ' Sir, there's no coals.' Then burn turf.'

Sir, there's no turf.' "Then cut down a tree.' This was a -forlorn hope, for in all 'probability he must' have gone three miles to find one, all:round the house being-long ago safely swept away. Candles were, equally deficient, for unfortunately he, was fond of dogs, all half-starved so that a gentleman walking to what- was called

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hjs bedehani liar, after making two or thres.tUrnings; met a hungry greyhound who, jumping up, took the candle out of the candlestick and devoured it in a trim, and left him in the dark."

- Lord Longford evidently anticipated the humorous Irish novelists of the next century.