'THE WEARING OF THE GREEN.' CHAPTER XVII. THE SUMMERS' HOUSEHOLD. If the country enjoys a momentary quiet, it is pleaded as an argument in favour of the good effect of wholesome rigours. If, on the contrary, the country grows more discontented, and if riots and disorders multiply, new arguments are furnished for giving a vigorous support to the authority of the Government, on account of the rebellious disposition of the people.-EDMUND BURKE (Letter on the State of Ireland, written to the Rev. Dr. Hussey). IRISH people on their first visit to England are aggressively self-defensive. They imagine that their English friends remember and despise their nationality every minute of the day; whereas their English friends-unless the matter is obtruded upon their notice—concern themselves about it hardly more than about VOL. II. B 15 the breed of the beef on their table-be it Scotch, Irish, or English. If, indeed, the Irish make themselves in any way offensive, their English friends are at once reminded of their nationality; if, on the contrary, the Irish prove singularly able or singularly agreeable, their English friends not only forgive, but so far forget the offence of their birth, as even to regard them as English. Hence it comes that the Irish contribute nothing to the greatness, and commit most of the crime, of this country. Like treason (appropriate comparison!) an Irishman never comes to good: Treason doth never prosper; what's the reason? Unless, then, an Irishman makes himself in some way offensive, his English friends do not trouble themselves about his nationality. In truth, his English friends have very little thought to spare from themselves at all. While the vain and supersensitive Irishman discerns a sneer in each look and a slight in each word, his English friend-who can no more get out of himself than off his own shadow—is not thinking of him at all one way or the other. And because he is not thinking of him at all, or of anyone but himself, an Englishman will sometimes say the most offensive things unintentionally and unconsciously. He is sometimes doubly narrow-narrow in imagination and narrow in sympathy-so that he could not if he would, and would not if he could, put himself in another's place. Now Mr. Summers, senior, was an unusually narrow specimen of an Englishman. Not only was Terence's 'Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,' a world too wide for him, but he could feel no concern in or for any man or matter that didn't bear some relation to himself personally. His own affairs were of planetary importance; the affairs of others were of importance in proportion to their bearing upon his own. If you informed him, on your doctor's authority, that your hacking cough was a symptom of a galloping consumption, his first thought would be that he had no hacking cough; his next, that consumption was supposed to be, in some extreme cases, infectious; and his third, that you would feel an absorbing interest in a cough he had last winter for a week or two, to which he would at once divert the conversation. It might, then, be supposed that Mr. Summers would take no more interest in Ireland and the Irish than in the revelations of the microscope; yet he did, and a deep interest too Proximus ardet Ucalegon Confiscation was infectious, and Mr. Summers had two tenants who paid him 80l. and 30l. a year respectively, which might any day, by the Irish precedent, be reduced by one half. Therefore, he held upon the Irish question 6 views strong to vehemence, derived like all his political views from articles in the newspapers. Curiously enough, however, his present views on this question were derived from the Pall Mall Gazette,' of all papers in the world. That journal had printed prominently a sarcastic letter, headed, 'Solution of the Irish Difficulty,' suggesting (à propos of the Irish would-be volunteers who crossed to Flintshire to be drilled) that Irish Protestants should be draughted for drill to England at the expense of the Government and restored, armed, to their own country in successive batches, till all of that creed between the ages of eighteen and thirty had passed through the mill. Then Ireland was to be cut loose from England until, in the inevitable civil war which would ensue, the pure Celts and Catholics unarmed and undrilled would be nearly exterminated and the Protestant victors so weakened as to be again governable by England. This letter having been copied into one of Mr. Summers' favourite |