Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home RuleBuckley, Robert John
History
Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home Rule
Buckley, Robert John
Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Irish question
A run on the Post Office Savings Bank threatens to clear out every
penny of Irish money, and why? Because it has dawned on the small
hoarders, the thrifty and industrious members of the lower classes,
that the Post Office is to be transferred to the Irish Legislature. A
friend tells me that yesterday his Catholic cook begged for an
interview. She had money in the Post Office Savings Bank, and
thereanent required advice, asking if it would be safe till to-morrow!
Following up this hint, pregnant with meaning, though delivered in
jest, I found that the feeling of insecurity is spreading like wild
fire, to the intense indignation of those patriots who have no
savings, and who are alive to the fact that under the provisions of
the proposed Act the four millions supposed to be lying in the Post
Office Savings Bank would constitute the entire working capital, as
distinguished from current income, of the College Green Legislature.
The master of a small sub-office told me that the withdrawals at his
little place amounted to L200 per week, rising latterly to L70 per
day, and that it was necessary to get money from London to meet the
demands. Concurrently with this I learn that the Dublin Savings Bank,
an institution managed by merchants of the city, for the encouragement
of thrift, is receiving the money so withdrawn, and this confidence is
explained by the well-known fact that the directors have publicly
declared that on the passing of the Home Rule Bill they will pay 20s.
in the pound and close the bank, in addition to which significant
ultimatum they have, in writing, declared to Mr. Gladstone, that this
course of action is due to the fact that they repudiate the security
of the proposed Irish Legislature. To put the thing in a nutshell it
may be said that not a single Irishman in or out of the country is
willing to trust the Irish Legislature with a single penny of his own
money.
A curious feature of the Nationalist character is the profound
contempt expressed for Nationalist M.P.'s. Englishmen are accustomed
to speak of their own members, representing their own opinions, with
respect. Not so in Dublin. A rabid Nationalist said to me, "I am an
Irishman to the backbone. I am a Home Ruler out-and-out. But do you
think I'd trust my property with either of the two Tims? Do you think
such men as Tim Harrington and Tim Healy are fit to be trusted with
the spending of 2-1/2 millions of money per annum? They have their
job, and they work well at their job, and the Irish people have backed
them up out of pure divilment. 'Tis mighty fine to take a rise out of
John Bull, to harass him, to worry him, to badger him out of his seven
sinses. The half of the voters never were serious, or voted as they
were told by men who expatiated on the wrongs which have been dinned
into them from infancy. But to trust these orators with their money!
Bedad, we're not all out such omadhauns (idiots) as that! Paddy is not
altogether such a fool as he looks."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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