Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

l68 STANDISH O'GRADY
sun, though he stood astride the channel, and spoke in
thunder. A mass of sections and classes, each pursuing
its own interests, how by any possibility can the legislative
and administrative resultant be just. Swift laboured all
his life to teach an aristocracy the right course, and in
vain ; for the right course involved self-sacrifice, heavy
labour—a martyr-like suppression of self. Can we expect
that men whose lives are spent mainly in manual toil,
though we had another Swift to teach them, would enter
hard, rough paths, while their demagogues are conducting
them into smooth ones ? They will do as their betters
did—as their betters have taught them. The labour class,
like every other class that has preceded them in the tenure
of political power, will pursue its apparent material
interest. Just now its apparent material interest seems
to demand the root-and-branch destruction of a class,
and the seizure, in one way or another, of the soil of the
country. It is their apparent material interest to do so,
and no other consideration can even momentarily cross,
their minds. It is not in such a temper and under such
conditions that even the shadow of justice can be perceived.
Without justice, I suppose, no nation ever was, or ever
will be, strong and happy ; and the bare possibility that
Ireland will be justly ruled is taken away when the lowest
and most dependent class becomes sovereign. But this
class will produce premiers, statesmen, secretaries, etc.?
Yes, as the boiler sends up scum.
The political personages whom Ireland has recently
sent to the top don't seem to me a very beautiful class of
men. But I say deliberately that we will have worse.