IRISH WEAKNESS.
SELF-SEBEING is apt to be suicidal in its results, but in Ireland the suicide stands so close upon the original act that to any people with faculties less perversely trained it might serve as a scarecrow in deterring them from the vice. In spite of the misery which per- vades the land, the poorer and more ignorant classes throw them- selves into destruction with a recklessness the most marvellous. "An Impoverished Landlord" recounts to the Cork Constitution an instance of this volunteer destruction.
" Some months past, it becoming absolutely necessary that I should retrench my expenditure, I summoned my servants, six in number; explained to them my altered circumstances; and proposed a reduction in the wages of each one, in order that 1 might not be painfully obliged to dismiss some or any of them. They all rejected my proposal; and the three whom I therefore selected to remain in my service even refused to undertake the additional work which would have devolved upon them after the departure of the other three. There was but one alternative—to discharge all six, and hire three new servants. The dreadful re- sult is as follows. My quondam butler, unable to procure a comfortable situation BS servant, was glad to accept temporary employment as clerk in a public office. His services having been dispensed with about a fortnight past, he is reduced to so deplorable a state of misery, that he thankfully receives broken victuals from the table at which he might still have been feeding. My coachman fell among bad associates,. compromised himself, and finding it expedient to quit the country, died of fever on the passage to New York. My cook is living in Little. George Street, as general servant in a large family, her present wages being considerably less than the reduced Bum which I offered her. My wife's personal attendant has sunk into prostitution; my house-maid has died in the work-house; and my laun- dry-maid has been sent off with a workhouse party of emigrant girls to the Cape of Good Hope. Thus, two have died miserably, one is starving, one is a prosti- tute, one is expatriated, and the sixth, in a very humble service, too late bitterly repents having quitted mine."
Self-reliance is said to be the great want of the Irish, but that is not exactly the deficiency exhibited in this anecdote. On the contrary, it seems an exaggerated self-reliance such as would be caused by an exaggerated self-estimation, indicating a lack both of sense and good feeling. The candid proposal of the master might have been expected to awaken some feeling of affection or fidelity in the servants ; but they made no response,—as if they could not understand the motives which made him invite them to be a party to the proposed cooperation for tiding over the bad time. They had no consideration for him, and could not appreciate his con- sideration for them. They still more flagrantly mistook their on-n position: they did not appreciate the hlowsod fortune which con- tinued to them a subsistence while their fellow countrymen were starving- around ; but, in spite of daily observation, they imagined themselves of so much importance that they could command a provision at pleasure. Numberless other instances might be found. We believe that many persons in Ireland could confirm us when we say that people in actual employment,: who think to better their condition by emigrating, no sooner form the resolve to do so, and apply to the Emigration Commissioners for free passage, than they throw up the situations which they hold. For example, a man holding an office in the Police discovers that his income is not sufficient for the maintenance of his family, and thinks that he should do better in Australia. In England, a man so situated would seek information on the subject, and collect the necessary testimonials, and would then apply to the Commissioners ; but in the mean time he would continue his old work, considering that his application might fail, and that at all events "half a loaf is better than no bread." But the Irishman no sooner makes his application than he presumes its success, and on the strength of it throws up what he has. If he fails, or a reply is delayed, he pleads his desti- tution as a peremptory claim on the Commissioners. It is difficult to say which fault most predominates in this sort of conduct, which is general—laziness, helplessness, or self-conceit. Perhaps the last; and it is probably because it gets corrected after the Irishman is removed from the tainted atmosphere of his native land that he does so much better elsewhere. It appears to be, not an innate but a factitious self-conceit. The circumstances of his country have contributed to foster the most ludicrous self- estimation in the midst of the most abject helplessness. Living for ever on the verge of destitution, the Irish cottier has grown accustomed to a perpetual recurrence of small concessions, " for- givings," and helps from his landlord : he learns to consider that it is his right to be in some measure a charge upon his landlord —his born right to be so, without any return in gratitude. The whole population living for ever on the verge of a recurrent famine, its subsistence is the incessant subject ofi3official solicitude, of Parliamentary debate, and of inquiry by Commissioners : the Irishman learns to hold that he lives in the regard of his Govern- ment, whose duty it is to watch over his potatoes, his food, and his prospects, in detail. Royal Commissioners arefrequently coming over merely to ask him how he does. Ireland is divided by con- tending hierarchies, the most influential of which subsists by con- sulting his passions and tastes, and they are shared indeed by the priesthood: he, squalid, ragged, starving, is courted by the high and sacred ; poor Paddy, the wretched strawless briekmaker, the miserable sans-potato, stands like Hercules between Virtue and Vice, an object of rivalry to superhuman authorities : his award confirms the authority of the one divine power, and file ecclesi- astical sanction of his most extravagant claims is but a quitrent for his favour. Ireland has been the field for three groat con- tending political parties—the old Tories, the Whig Liberian, and the native Irish ; the last consisting mostly of adventurers.. who have built up an influence for themselves by appealing to the weaknesses and passions of the oppressed and abject race to which they belong by blood or connexion ; and this last party has re- sorted to a fulsomeness of flattery unknown to the election hust- ings or the platform of the public meeting in England : the shivering ragged sans-potato has learned to consider himself the arbiter of rival statesmanship, the only sovereign power by whose decree, with the help of " a farthing a week, a penny a month, a shilling a year," an O'Connell became the bug- bear of the empire and the dictator of its legislation. Was ever poor ignorant peasant so trained in error—to hold him- self the child of solicitude to the landlord of his country, the special object of official watch, the arbiter and witness of religious truth, the dictator of political power? And yet with these claims, these rights, these sacred privileges, he is destitute, ragged, and starving ; his landlord evicts him, his Government refers him to "a poor-law bastile," his priest cannot strike his enemies, and his representative cannot command the obedience of the wicked Parliament. The Irishman is at once flattered and spurned, pampered in his conceit and mortified in the flesh. Political agi- tation subsists by aggravating the weaknesses that are his true slavery. It is not grants of money alone that Ireland needs, but some honesty in her patriots, and in the social instructers of the people, lay and clerical.
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