be worked by our
servants, by people who will look to us as their paymasters, and we
are to have no control!" The preposterous absurdity of the notion
tickled the entire company. "But if England does not please us, can we
not cut the cable? Can we not order our own paid servants to cease
transmitting messages, or to transmit only such as have survived the
inspection of the accredited officials of the Irish people?" It was
thought that this was reasonable and a possible, nay a probable
conjuncture, and might be used as a weapon to damage English trade.
"Let them go round or lay another cable," said one patriot.

This sort of discussion, more or less reasonable, is everywhere heard,
and should be of some value in indicating the use Irishmen expect to
make of the Act. Not a single friendly syllable, not a word of
amicable fellowship with England, not a scintilla of gratitude for
favours past or to come, nothing but undisguised animosity, and a
fixed resolution to make every clause of the Act a battlefield. I
speak that I do know and testify that I have seen. My personal
relations with the Irish people have been and continue to be of the
most gratifying kind. In the homes of the highest, in the great
manufactories, even in the lowest slums I have seen much that is
attractive in the Irish character--much that excites warm interest,
and is calculated to attach you to the people. I have conversed with
scores of Home Rulers of all shades, and to the query as to whether
ultimate separation is hoped for, I have received an invariable
affirmative. True it is that the answer varied in terms from the blunt
"Yes" of the uncompromising man to the more or less veiled assent of
the more cautious, but the result was in substance ever the same. Talk
about the Union of Hearts, the pacification of Ireland, the brotherly
love that is to ensue, and the Unionists turn away with undissembled
impatience, the Home Rulers with a chuckle and a sneer. As well tell
reasonable Irishmen that the world is flat, or that a straight line
between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round
the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of
science and their senses. The English Gladstonians who babble about
brotherly love and conciliation should move about Dublin in disguise.
Disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for
Paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species
of visitor, wh