6. It is possible that many of the rank and file of these parties will
not at first agree with the portraits painted of their opponents, and
that is because the special pleaders of the press, who in Ireland are,
as a rule, allowed little freedom to state private convictions, have
come to regard themselves as barristers paid to conduct a case, and have
acquired the habit of isolating particular events, the hasty speech or
violent action of individuals in localities, and of exhibiting these as
indicating the whole character of the party attacked. They misrepresent
Irishmen to each other. The Ulster advocates of the Union, for example,
are accustomed to hear from their advisers that the favorite employment
of Irish farmers in the three southern provinces is cattle driving, if
not worse. They are told that Protestants in these provinces live in
fear of their lives, whereas anybody who has knowledge of the true
conditions knows that, so far from being riotous and unbusinesslike,
the farmers in these provinces have developed a net-work of rural
associations, dairies, bacon factories, agricultural and poultry
societies, etc., doing their business efficiently, applying the
teachings of science in their factories, competing in quality of output
with the very best of the same class of society in Ulster and obtaining
as good prices in the same market. As a matter of fact this method of
organization now largely adopted by Ulster farmers was initiated in the
South. With regard to the charge of intolerance I do not believe it.
Here, as in all other countries, there are unfortunate souls obsessed by
dark powers, whose human malignity takes the form of religious hatreds,
but I believe, and the thousands of Irish Protestants in the Southern
Counties will affirm it as true that they have nothing to complain of in
this respect. I am sure that in this matter of religious tolerance these
provinces can stand favorable comparison with any country in the world
where there are varieties of religions, even with Great Britain. I would
plead with my Ulster compatriots not to gaze too long or too credulously
into that distorting mirror held up to them, nor be tempted to take
individual action as representative of the mass. How would they like
to have the depth or quality of spiritual life in their great city
represented by the scrawlings and revilings about the head of the
Catholic Church to be found occasionally on the blank walls of Belfast.
If the same method of distortion by selection of facts was carried out
there is not a single city or nation which could not be made to appear
baser than Sodom or Gomorrah and as deserving of their fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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