He must feel as if,
proposing to his imagination Pear de Melba, he had in truth swallowed
sand. Let me end with a more comfortable word. We have seen that Irish
history is what the dramatists call an internal tragedy, the secular
disclosure and slow working-out of certain flaws in the English
character. I am not to be understood as ascribing horns to England and a
halo to Ireland. We Irish are not only imperfect but even modest; for
every beam that we detect in another eye we are willing to confess a
mote in our own. The English on the other hand have been not monsters or
demons, but men unstrung.
"In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be, passions spin the plot;
We are betrayed by what is false within."
Least of all am I to be understood as ascribing to modern Englishmen any
sort of planned, aforethought malice in regard to Ireland. It is what
Bacon might have called a mere idol of the platform to suppose that they
are filled with a burning desire to oppress Ireland. The dream of their
lives is to ignore her, to eliminate from their calculations this
variable constant which sheds bewilderment upon every problem.
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