Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)Hurlbert, William Henry
History
Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2): (2nd ed.) (1888)
Hurlbert, William Henry
Ireland -- Description and travel; Ireland -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901
At Moira, which stands very prettily above the Ulster Canal, a small
army of people returning from a day in the country to Belfast came upon
us and trebled the length of our train. We picked up more at Lisburn,
where stands the Cathedral Church of Jeremy Taylor, the "Shakespeare of
divines." Here my only companion in the compartment from Dublin left me,
a most kindly, intelligent Ulster man, who had very positive views as to
the political situation. He much commended the recent discourse in
Scotland of a Presbyterian minister, who spoke of the Papal Decree as
"pouring water on a drowned mouse," a remark which led me to elicit the
fact that he had never seen either Clare or Kerry; and he was very warm
in his admiration of Mr. Chamberlain. He told me, what I had heard from
many other men of Ulster, that the North had armed itself thoroughly
when the Home Rule business began with Mr. Gladstone. "I am a Unionist,"
he said, "but I think the Union is worth as much to England as it is to
Ireland, and if England means to break it up it is not the part of
Irishmen who think and feel as I do to let her choose her own time for
doing it, and stand still while she robs us of our property and turns us
out defenceless to be trampled under foot by the most worthless
vagabonds in our own island." He thinks the National League has had its
death-blow. "What I fear now," he said, "is that we are running straight
into a social war, and that will never be a war against the landlords in
Ireland; it'll be a war against the Protestants and all the decent
people there are among the Catholics."
He was very cordial when he found I was an American, and with that
offhand hospitality which seems to know no distinctions of race or
religion in Ireland urged me to come and make him a visit at a place he
has nearer the sea-coast. "I'll show you Downpatrick," he said, "where
the tombs of St. Patrick and St. Bridget and St. Columb are, the saints
sleeping quite at their ease, with a fine prosperous Presbyterian town
all about them. And I'll drive you to Tullymore, where you'll see the
most beautiful park, and the finest views from it all the way to the
Isle of Man, that are to be seen in all Ireland." He was very much
interested in the curious story of the sequestration of the remains of
Mr. Stewart of New York, who was born, he tells me, at Lisburn, where
the wildest fabrications on the subject seem to have got currency. That
this feat of body-snatching is supposed to have been performed by a
little syndicate of Italians, afterwards broken up by the firmness of
Lady Crawford in resisting the ghastly pressure to which the widow and
the executors of Mr. Stewart are believed to have succumbed, was quite a
new idea to him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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