y which ability and education and industry will
always have over incapacity and ignorance and laziness. Now, I know
something about the linen trade, and also something about the growth
and preparation of flax.

"Linen has made the North, and flax is grown in the North. But it
would grow much better in the South. If they would grow it we would be
very glad to buy it. But they won't. And why not? Because it needs
care and skill, and a lot of watching and management. The beggars are
too lazy to grow anything that wants tending from day to day. It would
pay them splendidly, and the advantages of flax growing and dressing
have over and over again been drummed into them without effect. The
climate and soil of Southern Ireland are far more suitable for flax
growing than the North, and as about three-quarters of all the flax
woven in Belfast is grown on the Continent, it is clear that the
market is waiting for the stuff. The Belfast merchants have done all
that in them lay to bring about flax cultivation in the South. They
have sent out lecturers and instructors, they have planted patches and
grown the stuff, and shown the pecuniary results, and with what
effect? Absolutely none. The people won't do anything their
grandfathers didn't do. They won't be bothered with flax, which wants
no end of attention. Why, if they grew flax, they'd have to work
almost every day! And nobody who knows Irishmen, real Keltic Irishmen,
ever expects them to do that, or anything like it. I've been in India,
and I deliberately say that I prefer the Hindoo to the Southern
Irishman for industry and reliability.

"These people, who are too lazy to wash themselves, expect their
condition to be improved by a Home Rule Parliament. Can anything be
more unreasonable or more unlikely? And because there are more of
them, their wishes are to be taken into account, and the opinions and
wishes of men of whom each one is worth a hundred are to be
disregarded. Where is the English sense of the eternal fitness of
things?

"What the Irish really seek is some effective substitute for work.
They have no idea of developing the resources which lie nearest to
them. Carlyle says a country belongs to the people who can make the
best use of it, and not the people who happen to be found there.
Ireland for the Irish is a favourite cry. Why? Is not England for the
Irish, America, Australia, New Zealand? My ancestors came here in the
time of Henry the Second, and I am told t