'How should it be otherwise? What can he and I have in sympathy with one another? He has been brought up with all the Orangeman's hatred for a Papist.Now that he is in high office, he can abandon the display of the feeling,--perhaps the feeling itself as regards the country at large.He knows that it doesn't become a Lord Lieutenant to be Orange.But how can he put himself into a boat with me?'
'All that kind of thing vanishes when a man is in high office.'
'Yes, as a rule; because men go together into office with the same general predilections.Is it too hot to walk down?'
'I'll walk a little way,--till you make me hot by arguing.'
'I haven't an argument left in me,' said Phineas.'Of course everything over there seems easy enough now,--so easy that Lord Tyrone evidently imagines that the good times are coming back in which governors may govern and not be governed.'
'You are pretty quiet in Ireland now, I suppose;--no martial law, suspension of the habeas corpus, or anything of that kind, just at present?'
'No; thank goodness!' said Phineas.
'I'm not quite sure whether a general suspension of the habeas corpus would not upon the whole be the most comfortable state of things for Irishmen themselves.But whether good or bad, you've nothing of that kind of thing now.You've no great measure that you wish to pass?'
'But they've a great measure that they wish to pass.'
'They know better than that.They don't want to kill their golden goose.'
'The people, who are infinitely ignorant of all political work, do want it.There are counties which, if you were to poll the people, Home Rule would carry nearly every voter,--except the members themselves.'
'You wouldn't give it them?'
'Certainly not;--any more than I would allow a son to ruin himself because he asked me.But I would endeavour to teach them that they get nothing by Home Rule,--that their taxes would be heavier, the property less secure, their lives less safe, their general position more debased, and their chances of national success more remote than ever.'
'You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.
The Heptarchy didn't mould itself into a nation in a day.'
'Men were governed then, and could be an were moulded.I feel sure that even in Ireland there is a stratum of men, above the working peasants, who would understand, and make those below them understand, the position of the country, if they could only be got to give up the feeling about religion.Even now Home Rule is regarded by the multitude as a weapon to be used against Protestantism in behalf of the Pope.'
'I suppose the Pope is the great sinner?'
'They got over the Pope in France,--even in early days, before religion had become a farce in the country.They have done so in Italy.'
'Yes;--they have got over the Pope in Italy, certainly.'
'And yet,' said Phineas, 'the bulk of the people are staunch Catholics.Of course the same attempt to maintain a temporal influence, with the hope of recovering temporal power, is made in other countries.But while we see the attempt failing elsewhere, --so that we know the power of the Church is going to the wall, --yet in Ireland it is infinitely stronger now than it was fifty, or even twenty years ago.'
'Because we have been removing restraints on Papal aggression, while other nations have been imposing restraints.There are those at Rome who believe all England to be Romish at heart, because here in England a Roman Catholic can say what he will, and print what he will.'
'And yet,' said Phineas, 'all England does not return one Catholic to the House, while we have Jews in plenty.You have a Jew among your English judges, but at present not a single Roman Catholic.What do you suppose are the comparative numbers of the population here in England?'
'And you are going to cure all this;--while Tyrone thinks it ought to be left as it is? I rather agree with Tyrone.'
'No,; said Phineas, wearily; 'I doubt whether I shall ever cure anything, or even make any real attempt.My patriotism just goes far enough to make me unhappy, and Lord Tyrone thinks that while Dublin ladies dance at the Castle, and the list of agrarian murders is kept low, the country is admirably managed.I don't quite agree with him,--that's all.'