the Post Office was
tremendous. The master of a small sub-office told me that the
withdrawals over his counter had for some time amounted to L200 per
week, and that they were increasing to L70 per day. There was not
enough gold in Dublin to meet the demands, and cash was being
forwarded from London. The patriots who had no money deposited in the
Post Office made no secret of their indignation, stigmatising their
fellow-countrymen as recreants and traitors, but without perceptible
effect. The Dublin Savings Bank became the trusted depositary of the
money. This institution is managed by an association of Dublin
merchants, not for profit, but for the encouragement of thrift, and
the confidence reposed in them was doubtless due to the fact that the
directors, on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, had publicly
announced their intention, on the bill becoming law, to pay twenty
shillings in the pound and at once to close the bank. The patriot
depositors were not deterred by this announcement, nor by the
directors' letter to Mr. Gladstone, in which they declared that their
determination to wind up the affairs of the bank was due to the fact
that in the interest of their depositors they felt themselves unable
to accept the security of an Irish Legislature. Patriotism would
surely have resented this imputation. But Nationalism in its present
phase is nothing more than selfish cupidity and lust of gain. This is
made abundantly manifest by the freely-uttered sentiments of all
classes of the Nationalist party. The first answer I received to an
inquiry as to what advantages would be derived from a patriot
Parliament was elicited from an ancient Dubliner, whose extraordinary
credulity was equal to anything afterwards met with in the rural
districts:--"The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv
us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay sojers to grind us down, we'll
put into our own pockets, av you plaze." The complaint about the
British Government veto on Irish mining, which I fondly believed to be
sporadic, proved to be chronic, universal. Here again the notion of
easily acquired wealth was the impulse, and not the pure and
self-denying influence of patriotism. "The British Government won't
allow us to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get
the bill every man can take a shpade, an', begorra! can dig what he
wants. The Phaynix Park is all cram-full o' coal that the Castle folks
won't allow us to dig,