IRISH CHARACTER

Waikato Times, Volume II, Issue 91, 28 November 1872, Page 3

IRISH CHARACTER

(Noktiierx Stak and Ulster Obseever.) Few people have suffered more than the Irish from the hands both of friends and foes, in the attempts made to discuss and delineate Irish character. The pictures we have on this side and on that are so different that wo have often some trouble in recognising them as intended for the same individual, and least of all as intended for ourselves. English writers have not hesitated sometimes to depict the Irishman as a dangerous and unruly animal, whom no law could restrain within the ordinary bounds of civil behaviour, and whose chief delight was in the creation of disturbance and in the use of the blackthorn. When he was not described as a savage he was sure to be described as a bulloon, so that we have a large class of people who can think of an Irishman only as a creature who speaks in puns, and whose only seriousness is when he fails in making a joke. In the articles which occas'onally appear on this subject in the London I papers we have often this view put forward in the most innocent and patronizing manner imaginable by those who wish to compliment or befriend us. Ireland is described as a pleasant country whero Englishmen may amuse themselves much more cheaply than on the Continent or at home, and where the appetite may be stimulated at dinner by the wit of tlio attendant without the expense or trouble of reading Joe Miller. Every person born in Ireland is supposed to have come into the world with a nose extravagantly retrousse, and an irresistible inclination to grin. Nothing is supposed to take such hold of him as to seriously eugage his thoughts, or make him regard the future, if he thinks of it

1 at all, with anything but the most agreeable or the most careless feelings. 13y such people the Irishman is looked upon as rather a pleasant fellew, that ono may find useful when out of sorts, or when he wishes to spend a jolly evening in an easy, undignified kind of way. They believe, notwithstanding the many hard things occasionally said about him, that hois really, after all, entitled to a place in creation, —Ho has got a mission, and may make himself very useful at times. Englishmen, they say, have got a deal of gloominess and indigestion mixed up with the immense solidity of their character, and want to be amused. With such critics the Irishman is regarded as always an exhibition. When they meet him, they think that he should immediately brighten up his wit and begin the performance of amusing them like any other showman. If they are pleased to laugh, they think he is sufficiently pleased. If he docs not succeed in making himself ridiculous, they think ho is greatly below the mark, and has offered thern a slight, which may be worse for himself and his country hereafter. Irishmen there may be who answer to this description, but we have never met them in real life. The Irishman of the stage is an English creation. The swagger, the bluster, the airs of exaggeration, the perpetual grin with which he is made to regard and to speak of everything, however serious | or insignificant, are the caricature of those who know nothing

of the real depths of tlie Irish character. However gifted with vivacity and humour, the Irishman has really a nature in which the shadows of life may fall darkest and deepest. He is far froiu being the perpetual jester he is represented. Ifia national history, which always more or less affects the individual, has intensified the colours of a nature of which the colours were alwavs sufficiently intense. Above all, it has made more marked the manifestations of light and shade. Tlio saying that the deeper the sorrow the more exubei a it the mirth is often illustrated in him. Often unhappy, and living in a land where misfortune has become naturalised, the Irishman has had to exercise his humour for the comfort of others as well as his own. The mirth in which he cought to forget the misery of existence, and which, the fertility of his intellect supjjlied abundantly, had its corresponding reaction, and was a delusive compensation for the cheerfulness which can only belong to those whoso history, raised above the worst evils of fortune, has enabled them to make happiness a habit.

Besides being put forward in the character of a wit or a buffoon, the Irishman often appears in a character more dangerous and equally untrue. With some writers the Irishman is only a modified specimen of the worst species of barbarian, with some portion of the cunning of civilisation superadded. In this character he has generally been represented in the columns of that class of journals of which the Times is chief. JJo'ng always forward in proposing measures of repression for Ireland, they cau always, under the shadows of such representations, find an easy argument for the course they advocate. Pictures have been drawn of the Irish

character in the Times and Saturday Review, which, if true, would justify the Government in shooting down every member of the Irish race as you would a wolf or a hyfcna. It does not seem to strike such interpreters of English opinion how very uncomplimentary such repesentations are to the glory of the country which claims for over six hundred years to have had the monopoly of the work of Government and civilisation in Ireland.

Instead of being either a buffoon or a savage, the human nature of Irishmen is, in the main, like the human nature of most other people. He loves a jest, we allow, but he is far from being the laughter-stricken Joe he is represented by some, or the pensive individual to "musing prone," that he is not represented, but sometimes is. He is the creature of a history of inisgovernment, of lawlessness, and of law that seemed designed to debase his nature, and to degrade the dignity of law, but he is not a savage, and the wickcdncss of legislation has not destroyed his inborn respect for justice. More than two hundred years ago, §ir John Davies, the Attorney-General of James I, gave Wb testimony in favour of the Irish character in words that stamped it neither as lawless nor deficient in the best qualities of the citizenship for which we are so often declared unworthy. In spite of the oracular utterances of the English press in condemnation of the people of Ireland, the experience of histo.y has never belied that opinion. A French traveller in Ireland, more than eighty years ago,expressed his surprise at finding so much of the real civility of civilisation among a people who, lie had been taught to believe in England, were almost in a state of barbarism, and added, very innocently, that his English friends had made a mistake in their representations.