“'Tis as good as breaking stones on the road for four-pence a day, or carrying sea-weed five miles on your back to manure the potatoes,” said Billy, mournfully. “That's exactly the very thing that puzzles me,” said Harcourt, “why, in a country so remarkable for fertility, every one should be so miserably poor!” “And you never heard any explanation of it?” “Never; at least, never one that satisfied me.” “Nor ever will you,” said Billy, sententiously. “And why so?” “Because,” said he, drawing a long breath, as if preparing for a discourse,--“because there's no man capable of going into the whole subject; for it's not merely an economical question or a social one, but it is metaphysical, and religious, and political, and ethnological, and historical,--ay, and geographical too! You have to consider, first, who and what are the aborigines. A conquered people that never gave in they were conquered. Who are the rulers? A Saxon race that always felt that they were infarior to them they ruled over!” “By Jove, Doctor, I must stop you there; I never heard any acknowledgment of this inferiority you speak of.” “I'd like to get a goold medal for arguin' it out with you,” said Billy. “And, after all, I don't see how it would resolve the original doubt,” said Harcourt. “I want to know why the people are so poor, and I don't want to hear of the battle of Clontarf, or the Danes at Dundalk.” “There it is, you'd like to narrow down a great question of race, language, traditions, and laws to a little miserable dispute about labor and wages. O Manchester, Manchester! how ye're in the heart of every Englishman, rich or poor, gentle or simple! You say you never heard of any confession of inferiority. Of course you did n't; but quite the reverse,--a very confident sense of being far better than the poor Irish; and I'll tell you how, and why, just as you, yourself, after a discusshion with me, when you find yourself dead bate, and not a word to reply, you 'll go home to a good dinner and a bottle of wine, dry clothes and a bright fire; and no matter how hard my argument pushed you, you'll remember that _I'm_ in rags, in a dirty cabin, with potatoes to ate and water to drink, and you 'll say, at all events, 'I 'm better off than he is;' and there's your superiority, neither more or less,--there it is! And all the while, _I'm_ saying the same thing to _myself_,--'Sorrow matter for his fine broadcloth, and his white linen, and his very best roast beef that he's atin',--I 'm his master! In all that dignifies the spacies in them grand qualities that makes us poets, rhetoricians, and the like, in those elegant attributes that, as the poet says,-- “In all our pursuits Lifts us high above brutes,'” --in these, I say again, I 'm his master!'”