The tenantry asked in vain for nearly three-quarters of the century for
some alleviation of the land system under which they groaned, and for an
equal length of time three-quarters of the population were forced to
endure the tyranny of being bound to support a Church to which they did
not belong. The cause of struggling nationality on the Continent of
Europe, in Italy, in Hungary, in Poland, in the Slav provinces, has in
each case gained sympathy in Great Britain, but the cause of Irish
nationality has received far other treatment. That charity should begin
at home may be a counsel of perfection, but in point of fact one rarely
sees it applied. Sympathy for the poor relation at one's door is a rare
thing indeed. Increasing prosperity makes nations, as it makes men, more
intolerant of growing adversity, and the poor man is apt to get more
kicks than half-pence from the rich kinsmen under the shadow of whose
palace he spends his life, and to whom his poverty, his relationship,
and his dependence are a standing reproach. When I hear surprise
expressed by Englishmen at the fact that England is not loved in Ireland
I wonder at the deep-seated ignorance of the mutual feelings which have
so long subsisted, one side of which one may find expressed in the
literature of England, from Shakespeare's references to the "rough,
uncivil kernes of Ireland" down to the contemptuous sneers of Charles
Kingsley, that most English of all writers in the language, each of whom
provides, as I think, a sure index to the feelings of his contemporaries
and serves to illustrate the inveterate sentiment of hostility,
flavoured with contempt, which, as Mr. Gladstone once said, has from
time immemorial formed the basis of English tradition, and in regard to
which the _locus classicus_ was the statement of his great opponent,
Lord Salisbury, that as to Home Rule the Irish were not fit for it, for,
he went on to say, "nations like the Hottentots, and even the Hindoos,
are incapable of self-government."