But let us come closer to
things. How do you clean a slate except by liquidating the debts of
which it keeps the record? The late Vicomte de Vogue wrote an admirable
novel, "Les Morts qui Parlent." The dead are always speaking; you cannot
stop their strong eloquence with a mouthful of clay. The "business man"
thinks no doubt that the Napoleonic War is no more than Hecuba to him,
or he to Hecuba. But he pays annual tribute to it, for he has to make
annual provision for the L600,000,000 which it added to the National
Debt. And just as Mr Pitt's foreign policy is in that respect a living
reality of our own time, so also, but in a much graver form, are the
past depredations and ineptitudes of Unionism living realities in the
present economy of Ireland.
The ruling fallacy of the English mind on these matters consists in the
assumption that the mere repeal of an old oppression restores a people
to the _status quo ante_. In the case of Ireland the old oppressions
have not been repealed except in two or three points, but even if they
had been wholly cancelled it would be absurd to expect immediate
recovery from their effects.
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