Patrick could
not understand O'Connell at all. It was certain that Dan remembered him;
and he could not have forgotten the encouragement he gave him to write
on behalf of his country; yet now he was cold, even repellent in his
manner; and he tried to pretend that he did not know who Patrick was.
What could this mean?
Again I trusted to Patrick's finding out for himself what it meant. To
be brief about a phase of human experience which has nothing new in it,
Patrick presently saw that the difficulty of governing Ireland by a
local legislature, and executive is this:--that no man is tolerated from
the moment he can do more than talk. Irish members under O'Connell's eye
were for the most part talkers only. Then and since, every Irishman
who accepts the office so vehemently demanded is suspected of a good
understanding with Englishmen, and soon becomes reviled as a traitor
and place-hunter. Between the mere talkers and the proscribed
office-holders, Ireland would get none of her business done, if the
Imperial Government did not undertake affairs, and see that Ireland was
taken care of by somebody or other. Patrick saw that this way of
putting Government in abeyance was a mild copy of what happened when a
Parliament sat in Dublin, perpetrating the most insolent tyranny and the
vilest jobs ever witnessed under any representative system.
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