Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/736

730 === SOCIAL SCHISM IN IRELAND. ===

One of the most curious phenomena in modern British politics is the complete dissociation which we see between the masses of the Irish people and the substantial and educated classes, from among whom might be expected to come their guides and teachers. It must have puzzled many a student of Lever and other popular Irish novelists to find an absence not only of the clannish devotion and absolute self-effacement which have been shown to us as characterising the dependent classes, but of even the slightest reciprocation of feeling or of obligation. Where do we ever find in real life a Danny Mann, a Mickey Free, or a retainer like that poor Joe who spent his last breath in executing a view-halloo to gratify his chief s unfeeling fancy? According to the accounts which reach us, the substantial classes do not exercise the slightest influence over the lower orders – they have lost touch of them altogether. Not that the people do without leaders. There are none in the world to whom chiefs are more necessary – they are so fond of oratory and of combinations. But the leaders certainly do not come now from among the old feudal or blue-blooded houses. A ticket-of-leave man or a mongrel from America is accepted, where a Milesian of twenty quarterings would not find a listener.

Probably this severance between natural leaders and natural followers is attributable to faults on both sides. The lords of the soil cannot have descended to such a depth of helplessness and insignificance without some grievous neglect of opportunities (to use no stronger term) on their part. Perhaps it was a sense of this neglect, and not a mere enjoyment of their miserable case, which animated Mr Bright when he pointed with such relish to "landlords flying for their lives." Let the fault lie where it may, the severance is a fact much to be deplored. If the natural leaders could in any degree regain their ascendancy, something would be secured in the direction of civilisation and order. What is wanted is social amalgamation, not political change. This truth is not perceived by the Irish in general – at any rate, it is not attended to; there are so many agitators and other adventurers both in Ireland and in Britain who live and thrive by keeping Irish society distracted. Yet to the impartial observer it must be apparent that our political tinkering only makes matters worse; and that if good is ever to come, it must grow out of some social reunion. It may seem most absurd to speak of such a reunion while the rabid rancour of the lower classes against the higher is daily furnishing so many tales of violence and mutiny. Yet, if nobody will risk a word on the subject for fear of being laughed to scorn, one great means of amelioration will be lost sight of altogether – which is certainly not desirable, however unpromising the prospect of healing may at present look. Unless the Irish pictures drawn for us by masters in fiction be simply and wholly untrue, there is a deep fountain of clannish veneration in the Irish character which, if it could ever be made to flow in natural channels again, might tend to tranquillise that unhappy land.

This is a generation of missions, – missions every whither – to the heathen, to the fallen, to the ig-