Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

INTRODUCTION 1
The author himself has published in book form only
three volumes of a political interest, unless The Story
of Ireland be so counted, and these are : The Crisis
in Ireland (1882), Toryism and the Tory Democracy
(1886), and All Ireland (1898), of which the first and
last are hardly more than bulky pamphlets. Unlike
as were the circumstances which called them forth,
they are identical in purpose, if not in scope. Toryism
and the Tory Democracy is a brilliant indictment of
the financial and other injustices of the Union, in the
guise of a plea for Tory Democracy on the lines repre-
sented by I/ord Randolph Churchill, to whom the
book is dedicated. The noble lord is dead as certainly
as his policy, yet O'Grady's elaboration of the latter
has an enduring appeal. The explanation is simply
that he has dealt with tangible Irish problems, many
of which still await solution, and his standpoint, if
not exactly popular with Party politicians, is one
which is original, intelHgible and deserves consi-
deration. The famous address to the landlords of
Ireland, which has been included in the present selection,
contains the gist of O'Grady's politics. He
approached poHtical questions firmly convinced that
aristocracy was the only natural and tolerable form
of government. For all his crises of anarchy, he has
been anti-democratic in so far as he has refused
to believe in the wage-slave as the hope of the world
5