at home and did not travel or spend the season in London. Full of
extravagant reverence for birth and rank, it is always, in the
Irishman's mind, not _his_ fault, nor that of his compeers of the
working and middle classes, that trade and agriculture do not flourish
in the land; but the fault of some lord or squire who ought to come and
spend money there, or some king or queen who should hold court in Dublin
and waste as much treasure as possible upon state ceremonials. Nay,
every man for himself, almost, has at the bottom of his heart a belief
that _he_ ought to be, not a laborer or carter, shoemaker or tailor, but
the head of some ancient house,--some O' or Mac,--living not in his own
mud cabin, but in the handsome residence of some English gentleman whose
estate was wrongfully taken in "former times" from his--the laborer's or
shoemaker's--ancestors.

Fenians talk of an Irish Republic, and the brave and honest men who led
the rising of '98 undoubtedly heartily desired to establish one on the
American model. But to any one really acquainted with Irish character,
to dream of such institutions for ages to come seems utterly vain. All
the qualities which go to make a republican, in the true sense of the
term, are wanting in the Irish nature; and, on the other hand, there is
a superabundance of all the opposite qualities which go to make a loyal
subject of a king,--not _too_ despotic, but still a strong-handed,
visible, audible, tangible ruler of men. Devotion to an idea, to a
constitution, to a flag; respect for law _as_ law; sturdy independence
and self-reliance; regard for others' rights and jealousy of a man's
own,--all these true republican characteristics are most rarely to be
found in Irishmen. Nay, the most important of all--the reverence for
law--is almost, we might say, reversed in his nature. The true Irishman
detests law. He loves, indeed, mercy, retribution, many fine things
which law may or may not produce. But the simple fact that a certain
proceeding has been by proper authorities constituted a law or rule of
any kind, in public matters or private, is reason enough, in high or
low, to make it secretly distasteful. As Coleridge used to say, that,
"when anything was presented to him as a duty, he instantly felt himself
seized by a sense of inability to perform it," so, to the Celtic mind,
when anything comes in the guise of a law, there is an accompanying
seizure of moral paralysis. Even if the law or rule be