"
One great trouble among the people is, they cannot read much, and they
feel intensely; reading matter is too dear, and they are too poor to
educate themselves by reading. What they read is passed from hand to
hand; it is all one-sided, and "who peppers the highest is surest to
please."
The ignorance of one class, consequent upon their poverty, the
insensibility of another class, are the two most dangerous elements that
I notice. It is easy to see how public sympathy runs, in the most
educated classes. There is great sympathy, publicly expressed, for
Captain Boycott and his potatoes; for Miss Bence-Jones, driven to the
degrading necessity of milking the cows; but I have watched the papers
in vain for one word of sympathy with that pale mother of a family, with
her new-born infant in her arms, set upon the roadside the day I was at
Carndonagh. Policemen have been known to shed tears executing the law;
bailiffs have been known to refuse to do their duty, because the
mother's milk was too strong in them; but the public prints express no
word of sympathy.
In the papers where sympathy with the people is conspicuous by its
absence, there will be paragraph after paragraph about prevention of
cruelty to animals.
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