Misther McCarthy, Esquire

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 34, 24 August 1905, Page 17

Misther McCarthy, Esquire

In his ' History of Our Own Times ' Justin McCarthy says : ' The dramatic instinct — if we may bo allowed to call it so — which enables a man to put himself for the moment into the condition and niou'd of men entirely unlike himself in feelings and conditions, is an indispensable element in real statesmanship , but it is the rarest of all gifts among politicians of the second order.' It is as indispensable to the writers of history as to statesmen, and is just as rarely found among them. Oair old No-Popery friend Michael McCarthy is one of those who furnish the most crying examples of the way in which history should not be written. To Carlyle, an one of hig 'In cry' days, the population of the world was mostly composed of fools. To the slipshod ' literary ' pet of the Orange lodges mankind (or at least the Irish portion of it) consists of Michael McCarthy (in an aureole) ; Ihe adherents of the Reformed creeds (who are mostly saints) ; and Catholics, who are fools, or knaves, or both. There arc only two colors in 'his palette— shimmering gold, with the sun of hca\en upon it, and pigments that are as black as Eretous. These latter have been hitherto reserved for ' Rome.'

The imaginative soi-disant ' Roman Catholic ' has, in a recent agglomerate of printed paper, divided the Protestant aureole with the Japanese and poured out upon the Russians the tarry tints cf Tophet which he usually keeps on tap for the exclusive benefit of 'Papist? ' and ' Popery.' The Japanese are wingless angels in petticoats and bifurcated continuations ; the Russians are demon-savages in human shape ; and

neither Nippon, wor .Muscovy appears to be inhabited by ipere 'human beings . ' For our own part,' says a reviewer in the ' Otago Daily Times ' or August 14, c we incline to the Ujlie-f that the historian, like the poet, is born, and not made, even by circumstances which may at times fashion a good imitation of the real article. That Mr. McCarthy will ever be mistaken for a born -historian we Ime not the slightest fear ; n.or do we feel very sanguine that any efforts on his part will bning him within measurable distance of that literary summit, lor he lacks the first essential quality of the historian, an unbiassed, analytical, and introspective cast of mind. History must be absolutely impartial and dispassionate, but Mr. McCarthy's Celtic temperament betrays itself in all that foe writes, amd his feclinigjs nm away with his judgment to such an extent that he becomes, instead of a faithful recorder of events, ..a special pleader for Japan, whioh, in his eyes, can do no wrong.' After having touched upon McCarthy's ' undisguised contempt for everything Russian,' the reviewer dismisses the book-maker with the contemptuous remark that, ' having made the pretensions of a writer of history, his prejudices are inexcusable.' Biit prejudice is the shadow that ever follows little minds.