the sense in which that word is usually applied, they are apathetic,
thriftless, and almost non-industrial, and that they especially require
the exercise of strengthening influences on their moral fibre. I have
dealt with their shortcomings at much greater length than with those of
Protestants, because they have much more bearing on the subject matter
of this book. North and South have each virtues which the other lacks;
each has much to learn from the other; but the home of the strictly
civic virtues and efficiencies is in Protestant Ireland. The work of the
future in Ireland will be to break down in social intercourse the
barriers of creed as well as those of race, politics, and class, and
thus to promote the fruitful contact of North and South, and the
concentration of both on the welfare of their common country. In the
case of those of us, of whatever religious belief, who look to a future
for our country commensurate with the promise of her undeveloped
resources both of intellect and soil, it is of the essence of our hope
that the qualities which are in great measure accountable for the actual
economic and educational backwardness of so many of our
fellow-countrymen, and for the intolerance of too many who are not
backward in either respect, are not purely racial or sectarian, but are
the transitory growth of days and deeds which we must all try to forget
if our work for Ireland is to endure.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] The reproach which is brought upon Irish Christianity mainly by the
extravagances of a section of my co-religionists, to which I have been
obliged to refer, came home to me not long ago in a very forcible way. I
happened to remark to a friend that it was a disgrace to Christianity
that Mussulman soldiery were employed at the Holy Sepulchre to keep the
peace between the Latin and Greek Christians. He reminded me that the
prosperous and progressive municipality of Belfast, with a population
eminently industrious, and predominantly Protestant, has to be policed
by an Imperial force in order to restrain two sections of Irish
Christians from assaulting each other in the name of religion.

[17] '_Pro salute animae meae_' was, I am reminded, the consideration
usually expressed in the old charters of manumission.

[18] One of the unfortunate effects of this passion for building costly
churches is the importation of quantities of foreign art-work in the
shape of woodcarvings, stained glass, mosaics, and metal work