on and off of which is said to be a
difficult operation, transacted only in festivals and the high tides
of the calendar. The Saxon-man, if he cannot work on these terms,
finds no work. The uncivilised Irishman, not by his strength, but by
the opposite of strength, drives the Saxon native out, takes
possession in his room. There abides he, in his squalor and unreason,
in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of
degradation and disorder. Whoever struggles, swimming with
difficulty, may now find an example how the human being can exist not
swimming, but sunk. That the condition of the lower multitude of
English labourers approximates more and more to that of the Irish,
competing with them in all the markets: that whatsoever labour, to
which mere strength with little skill will suffice, is to be done,
will be done not at the English price, but at an approximation to the
Irish price; at a price superior as yet to the Irish, that is,
superior to scarcity of potatoes for thirty weeks yearly; superior,
yet hourly, with the arrival of every new steamboat, sinking nearer to
an equality with that."

If we except his exaggerated and one-sided condemnation of the Irish
national character, Carlyle is perfectly right. These Irishmen who
migrate for fourpence to England, on the deck of a steamship on which
they are often packed like cattle, insinuate themselves everywhere. The
worst dwellings are good enough for them; their clothing causes them
little trouble, so long as it holds together by a single thread; shoes
they know not; their food consists of potatoes and potatoes only;
whatever they earn beyond these needs they spend upon drink. What does
such a race want with high wages? The worst quarters of all the large
towns are inhabited by Irishmen. Whenever a district is distinguished
for especial filth and especial ruinousness, the explorer may safely
count upon meeting chiefly those Celtic faces which one recognises at the
first glance as different from the Saxon physiognomy of the native, and
the singing, aspirate brogue which the true Irishman never loses. I have
occasionally heard the Irish-Celtic language spoken in the most thickly
populated parts of Manchester. The majority of the families who live in
cellars are almost everywhere of Irish origin. In short, the Irish have,
as Dr. Kay says, discovered the minimum of the necessities of life, and