Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH POLITICS AND POLITICAL HISTORY 225
are bought," he added, " by Dublin professional men."
You have hunted the fox till, like that old red hunter,
you have come to despise your birthright, and all that
treats of it, and cultivated crops, till the very clay of the
earth is more intelligent than yours. Your serious talk
is of bullocks, and, in short, " Quos Deus vult perdere
prius dementat." Your ancestors, who raised the noble
classic buildings of Dublin, loved a Latin quotation.
The less ignoble Siren of classicism and culture they were
not beyond admiring. Of you now I doubt if one in
twenty could translate that hackneyed newspaper phrase.
For so, by easy stages, aristocracies run or slide downhill.
The heroic ardour goes first, culture and intellectual
refinement come and depart. Loyalty to even your own
class in due time disappears, and personal worth, the
simple cardinal virtues of the private citizen, last of all.
These, indeed, still remain with you, and while they last
Pandora's box is not empty.
Of you, as a collective body of men, even those of you
who have still the grace to remain with us and stick to the
sinking ship, I entertain not the least hope. It is for
individuals here and there I write this book, knowing
that even a very few, such as one might count on the
fingers of one hand, if of the right mettle and the right
calibre, may be able even now to awake you from your
slumbers, and breathe, which I and men like me cannot,
some breath of life into your nostrils. Here and there,
such men, I believe, are in Ireland, men who look with
shame and dismay upon your astonishing stupidity, men
of finer mould, more subtle intelligence, of more