ticism that, unlike charity, it
generally begins and ends abroad; and those who cultivate the gentle art
are seldom given to morbid introspection. Our prodigious ignorance about
ourselves has not been blissful. Mistaking self-assertion for
self-knowledge, we have presented the pathetic spectacle of a people
casting the blame for their shortcomings on another people, yet bearing
the consequences themselves. The national habit of living in the past
seems to give us a present without achievement, a future without hope.
The conclusion was long ago forced upon me that whatever may have been
true of the past, the chief responsibility for the remoulding of our
national life rests now with ourselves, and that in the last analysis
the problem of Irish ineffectiveness at home is in the main a problem of
character--and of Irish character.

I am quite aware that such a diagnosis of our mind disease--from which
Ireland is, in my belief, slowly but surely recovering--will not pass
unchallenged, but I would ask any reader who dissents from this view to
take a glance at the picture of our national life as it might unfold
itself to an unprejudiced but sympathetic outsider who came to Ireland
not on a political tour but with a sincere desire to get at the truth of
the Irish Question, and to inquire into the conditions about which all
the controversy continues to rage.

This hypothetical traveller would discover that our resources are but
half developed, and yet hundreds of thousands of our workers have gone,
and are still going, to produce wealth where it is less urgently needed.
The remnant of the race who still cling to the old country are not only
numerically weak, but in many other ways they show the physical and
moral effects of the drain which emigration has made on the youth,
strength, and energy of the community. Our four and a quarter millions
of people, mainly agricultural, have, speaking generally, a very low
standard of comfort, which they like to attribute to some five or six
millions sterling paid as agricultural rent, and three millions of
alleged over-taxation. They face the situation bravely--and,
incidentally, swell the over-taxation--with the help of the thirteen or
fourteen millions worth of alcoholic stimulants which they annually
consume. The still larger consumption in Great Britain may seem to lend
at least a respectability to this apparent over-indulgence, but it looks
odd. The people are endowed with intellectu