On our return to Liverpool, we stayed for a few hours at Queenstown, taking in coal, and the passengers landed that they might stretch their legs and look about them. I also went ashore at the dear old place which I had known well in other days, when the people were not too grand to call it Cove, and were contented to run down from Cork in river steamers, before the Passage railway was built. I spent a pleasant summer there once in those times: God be with the good old days! And now I went ashore at Queenstown, happy to feel that Ishould be again in a British isle, and happy also to know that I was once more in Ireland. And when the people came around me as they did, I seemed to know every face and to be familiar with every voice. It has been my fate to have so close an intimacy with Ireland, that when I meet an Irishman abroad I always recognize in him more of a kinsman than I do in your Englishman. I never ask an Englishman from what county he comes, or what was his town. To Irishmen I usually put such questions, and I am generally familiar with the old haunts which they name. I was happy therefore to feel myself again in Ireland, and to walk round, from Queenstown to the river at Passage, by the old way that had once been familiar to my feet.
Or rather I should have been happy if I had not found myself instantly disgraced by the importunities of my friends. A legion of women surrounded me, imploring alms, begging my honor to bestow my charity on them for the love of the Virgin, using the most holy names in their adjurations for half-pence, clinging to me with that half-joking, half-lachrymose air of importunity which an Irish beggar has assumed as peculiarly her own. There were men, too, who begged as well as women. And the women were sturdy and fat, and, not knowing me as well as I knew them, seemed resolved that their importunities should be successful. After all, I had an old world liking for them in their rags. They were endeared to me by certain memories and associations which I cannot define. But then what would those Americans think of them--of them and of the country which produced them? That was the reflection which troubled me. Alegion of women in rags clamorous for bread, protesting to heaven that they are starving, importunate with voices and with hands, surrounding the stranger when he puts his foot on the soil, so that he cannot escape, does not afford to the cynical American who then first visits us--and they all are cynical when they visit us--a bad opportunity for his sarcasm. He can at any rate boast that he sees nothing of that at home. I myself am fond of Irish beggars. It is an acquired taste, which comes upon one as does that for smoked whisky or Limerick tobacco. But I certainly did wish that there were not so many of them at Queenstown.
I tell all this here not to the disgrace of Ireland--not for the triumph of America. The Irishman or American who thinks rightly on the subject will know that the state of each country has arisen from its opportunities. Beggary does not prevail in new countries, and but few old countries have managed to exist without it. As to Ireland, we may rejoice to say that there is less of it now than there was twenty years since. Things are mending there. But though such excuses may be truly made--although an Englishman, when he sees this squalor and poverty on the quays at Queenstown, consoles himself with reflecting that the evil has been unavoidable, but will perhaps soon be avoided--nevertheless he cannot but remember that there is no such squalor and no such poverty in the land from which he has returned. I claim no credit for the new country. I impute no blame to the old country. But there is the fact. The Irishman when he expatriates himself to one of those American States loses much of that affectionate, confiding, master-worshiping nature which makes him so good a fellow when at home. But he becomes more of a man. He assumes a dignity which he never has known before. He learns to regard his labor as his own property. That which he earns he takes without thanks, but he desires to take no more than he earns. To me personally, he has, perhaps, become less pleasant than he was;--but to himself! It seems to me that such a man must feel himself half a god, if he has the power of comparing what he is with what he was.
It is right that all this should be acknowledged by us. When we speak of America and of her institutions, we should remember that she has given to our increasing population rights and privileges which we could not give--which as an old country we probably can never give. That self-asserting, obtrusive independence which so often wounds us is, if viewed aright, but an outward sign of those good things which a new country has produced for its people. Men and women do not beg in the States; they do not offend you with tattered rags; they do not complain to heaven of starvation; they do not crouch to the ground for half-pence. If poor, they are not abject in their poverty. They read and write. They walk like human beings made in God's form. They know that they are men and women, owing it to themselves and to the world that they should earn their bread by their labor, but feeling that when earned it is their own.
If this be so, if it be acknowledged that it is so, should not such knowledge in itself be sufficient testimony of the success of the country and of her institutions?
END OF VOL. II.
End
