None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have written against that
policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than Mr. Goldwin
Smith. But no one has stated with more force the facts and
considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made
the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His _coup d'oeil_ remains the most
pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of Ireland
against the English methods of governing that country. Twenty years ago
he anticipated the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he
wrote:--
"I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish history the
explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so
amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their
own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness,
lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime."[37] He explains the
paradox thus: "But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the
Irish from their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past
industrial character and history,--'We were reckless, ignorant,
improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do;
we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was
denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken,
for we sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away for ever.'
No part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects
the drunkenness of the Irish people with their misery. Drunkenness is,
generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair
of the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow. The
sums of money which have lately been transmitted by Irish emigrants to
their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose
denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an
industrial point of view.... There seems no good reason for believing
that the Irish Kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as
people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations
in circumstances favourable to industry."[38] He shows that the Irish
have not been so placed. "Still more does justice require that allowance
should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the Irish
people. If they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of
property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation
of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or
even any inherent weakness. They have never had the advantage of the
training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise
from barbarism to civilization. The progress of the Irish people was
arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities,
following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly
resuming its course. The pressure of overwhelming misery has now been
reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of
education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning
to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved
character of the people. Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with
the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal,
especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to
imply depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers who
seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious, because the
accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a
wave of the legislator's wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe,
that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and
understandings of all who breathe it."[39]
Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:
"How many centuries of a widely different training have the English
people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[40]