duals do; for, after all,
the largest crowd of men is, only an aggregate of units. If contempt
provokes a man to anger, and avowed neglect forces him into indolence
and hopelessness, we shall see the same result in masses as we do in
single persons; and the causes which may have generated hatred and
despair will everywhere and everywhen find cures in their contraries,
honour being accorded in the place of contempt, and kindly care instead
of cold indifference. Thus, the far too common phrase, 'No Irish need
apply,' has doubtless wrought infinite ill-feeling; and the Levite's
chilling rule of 'passing by on the other side' evermore arouses
indignation nationally no less than individually.

"Now, it cannot be denied in an ethnological sense that the Celtic
nature is peculiarly sensitive; any more than it can be denied
historically that its good feelings have been too often systematically
crushed, and its generous impulses seared. If the Teutonic mind
illustrates in sterner traits the manhood of human intelligence, the
Celt shows its gayer youthfulness, if not indeed the lighter phases of
its reckless childhood: and it has been a second nature for the Saxon to
hold mastery over the Celt, as a weaker race is everywhere subject to a
strong one. Moreover, opposition in religious creed has had its evil
influences, scarcely yet extinct, however caustically such a cure may in
vain have been hitherto attempted.

"We must take nations as we find them: the Keltoi and the Sakai, always
at contrariety, do not seem to have altered in character from the
earliest prehistoric reports of old Herodotus even to our own times,
more than three thousand years. Racial peculiarities are known to
survive the actual transplantation to new lands; see in especial the
Irish of America; as the Roman poet has it, 'Those who cross the sea
may change their sky, but not their mind.' Therefore it is that a
far-seeing and philosophical statesmanship should ever deal
specifically--and as if individually--with national character; for
example, if we would convert the typical Irish mind from (must we say
it?) hatred of England to the love of her, we must commence as we would
in domestic life, by somehow managing to please our too sensitive
sister, by showing her our sympathies, and by treating her with honour
instead of contemptuous indifference; thus investing her with 'the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.'"

It is a quarter of a century since