[Illustration: 202]
This is the age of political economists and their nostrums. Every
newspaper teems with projects for the amelioration of our working
classes, and the land is full of farming societies, temperance unions,
and a hundred other Peter Purcellisms, to improve its social condition;
the charge to make us
“Great, glorious, and free,”
remaining with that estimable and irreproachable individual who tumbles
in Lower Abbey-street.
The Frenchman's horse would, it is said, have inevitably finished his
education, and accomplished the faculty of existing without food, had he
only survived another twenty-four hours. Now, the condition of Ireland
is not very dissimilar, and I only hope that we may have sufficient
tenacity of life to outlive the numerous schemes for our prosperity and
advancement.
Nothing, indeed, can be more singular than the manner of every endeavour
to benefit his country. We are poor--every man of us is only struggling;
therefore, we are recommended to build expensive poorhouses, and fill
them with some of ourselves. We have scarcely wherewithal to meet the
ordinary demands of life, and straightway are told to subscribe to
various new societies--repeal funds--agricultural clubs--O'Connell
tributes--and Mathew testimonials. This, to any short-sighted person,
might appear a very novel mode of filling our own pockets. There are
one-idea'd people in the world, who can only take up the impression
which, at first blush, any subject suggests; they, I say, might fancy
that a continued system of donation, unattended by anything like
receipt, is not exactly the surest element of individual prosperity. I
hope to be able to controvert this plausible, but shallow theory, and to
show--and what a happy thing it is for us--to show that, not only is
our poverty the source of our greatest prosperity, but that if by any
accident we should become rich, we must inevitably be ruined; and to
begin--
Absenteeism is agreed on all hands to be the bane of Ireland. No
one, whatever be his party prejudices, will venture to deny this. The
high-principled and well-informed country gentleman professes this
opinion in common with the illiterate and rabid follower of O'Connell;
I need not, therefore, insist further on a proposition so universally
acknowledged. To proceed--of all people, none are so naturally absentees
as the Irish; in fact, it would seem that one great feature of our
patriotism consists in the desire to display, in other lands, the
ardent attachment we bear our own. How can we tell Frenchmen, Italians,
Germans, Russians, Swedes, and Swiss, how devoted we are to the country
of our birth, if we do not go abroad to do so? How can we shed tears as
exiles, unless we become so? How can we rail about the wrongs of Ireland
and English tyranny, if we do not go among people, who, being perfectly
ignorant of both, may chance to believe us? These are the patriotic
arguments for absenteeism; then come others, which may be classed under
the head of “expediency reasons,” such as debts, duns, outlawries, &c.
Thirdly, the temptations of the Continent, which, to a certain class
of our countrymen, are of the very strongest description--Corn Exchange
politics, vulgar associates, an air of bully, and a voice of brogue,
will not form such obstacles to success in Paris, as in Dublin. A man
can scarcely introduce an Irish provincialism into his French, and
he would be a clever fellow who could accomplish a bull under a
twelvemonth. These, then, form the social reasons; and from a short
revision of all three, it will be seen that they include a very large
proportion of the land--Mr. O'Connell talks of them as seven millions.
It being now proved, I hope, to my reader's satisfaction, that the bent
of an Irishman is to go abroad, let us briefly inquire, what is it that
ever prevents him so doing? The answer is an easy one. When Paddy was
told by his priest that whenever he went into a public-house to drink,
his guardian angel stood weeping at the door, his ready reply was,
“that if he had a tester he'd have been in too;” so it is exactly with
absenteeism; it is only poverty that checks it.
[Illustration: 205]
The man with five pounds in his pocket starts to spend it in England;
make it _ten_, and he goes to Paris; _fifteen_, and he's up the Rhine;
_twenty_, and Constantinople is not far enough for him! Whereas, if
the sum of his wealth had been a matter of shillings, he'd have been
satisfied with a trip to Kingstown, a chop at Jude's, a place in the
pit, and a penny to the repeal fund; all of which would redound to his
patriotism, and the “prosperity of Ireland.”
The same line of argument applies to every feature of expense. If we
patronise “Irish manufacture,” it is because we cannot afford English.
If we like Dublin society, it is upon the same principle; and, in fact,
the cheap pleasures of home, form the sheet-anchor of our patriotism,
and we are only “guardian angels,” because “we have n't a tester.”
Away then with any flimsy endeavours to introduce English capital
or Scotch industry. Let us persevere in our present habits of mutual
dislike, attack, and recrimination; let us interfere with the projects
of English civilisation, and forward, by every means in our power,
the enlightened doctrines of popery, and the patriotic pastime of
parson-shooting, for even in sporting we dispense with a “game license;”
let no influx of wealth offer to us the seduction of quitting home, and
never let us feel with our national poet that “Ireland is a beautiful
country to live out of.”
[Illustration: 206]