at what is said about them and look at what is DONE about them,
we shall see that the Irish are not only practical, but quite
painfully successful. The poverty of their country, the minority
of their members are simply the conditions under which they were asked
to work; but no other group in the British Empire has done so much
with such conditions. The Nationalists were the only minority
that ever succeeded in twisting the whole British Parliament sharply
out of its path. The Irish peasants are the only poor men in these
islands who have forced their masters to disgorge. These people,
whom we call priest-ridden, are the only Britons who will not be
squire-ridden. And when I came to look at the actual Irish character,
the case was the same. Irishmen are best at the specially
HARD professions--the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the soldier.
In all these cases, therefore, I came back to the same conclusion:
the sceptic was quite right to go by the facts, only he had not
looked at the facts. The sceptic is too credulous; he believes
in newspapers or even in encyclopedias. Again the three questions
left me with three very antagonistic questions. The average sceptic
wanted to know how I explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel,
the connection of the creed with mediaeval darkness and the political
impracticability of the Celtic Christians. But I wanted to ask,
and to ask with an earnestness amounting to urgency, "What is this
incomparable energy which appears first in one walking the earth
like a living judgment and this energy which can die with a dying
civilization and yet force it to a resurrection from the dead;
this energy which last of all can inflame a bankrupt peasantry
with so fixed a faith in justice that they get what they ask,
while others go empty away; so that the most helpless island
of the Empire can actually help itself?"