The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-10-28 00:00:00

remarl

In endeavouring to describe the character of the Irish
people I have not insulted them by flattery. I have stated
the differences of character which exist in different dis-
tricts—differences so striking, that you must he wilfully
blind not to observe them. What mote opposite than the
character of the two towns of Belfast and Galway on the
east and west coasts of Ireland ? One busy, thriving,
wealthy, and improving, its manufacturing and shipping
flourishing and keeping pace with the best parts of the
empire; the other bearing all the evidence of a decayed
town; without manufactures, its shipping contemptible,
and it would be folly to call it either a very wealthy or a
very improving town, although some local improvements
have been forced upon it of late years. Yet compere the
natural advantages of the two towns, and the position of
Galway, with its bay facing America on one side, the wa-
ter power of a vast lake running through the town, and the
facilities of inland traffic and communication which that
lake close on the other side of the town affords, and it
stands before Belfast beyond all competition. The same
laws operate here as at Belfast. Money is as easily earned
at Galway as at Belfast. How comes it that Belfast puts
to use its natural advantages, thrives and prospers, whilst
Galway neglects those which belong to it, and is poor ?
How comes it that one town improves whilst the other
decays? The advance or the decay must in either case
be attributed to the people ; and when the character of
the respective populations is evidently widely different—
what the energetic and industrious character of one po-
pulation insures prosperity, and the apathetic indifference
of the other brings about decay, it was but one step fur-
ther in the inquiry, How is this ?'' to trace it to the ac-
knowledged difference of race, the respective characteris-
tics of each having long been well known.

7 -
Now we readily acknowledge the facts here stated,
that where the majority of a district in Ireland is of
the Celtic race, its characteristic feature is poverty,
and almost destitution ; where the Saxon prevails,
it is industry and comfort. But the " Commis-
sioner's " logic fails him when he says, that the fact
being admitted, the difference of race must be the
cause. There are such things as differences of early
example, of education, of treatment, and of religion,
to be taken into account ; and perhaps, if he had
applied the probe deeper, he would have found that
the difference between the Celtic people of Galway,
and the Saxon people of Belfast, is mainly attribu-
table to some or all of these circumstances. The
Celtic population of the former are Popish, priest-
ridden, and ignorant; the Saxon population of Bel-
fast are Protestant, self-depending, and educated.
Hence the ignorance and misery of the former, and
the industry and comfort of the latter.
Nor is the cure for the state of the Celtic popu-
lation, in the following extract, more properly de-
ducible from the difference of race than their com-
parative condition is :

The people must be taught, and led, and encouraged—
nay, forced on to do that which will benefit themselves.
A more tractable race, or a harder working race, where

you lead them, put them to work, and offer them an im-
mediate inducement to work, you cannot have. But if
you expect from them independent volition, where no one
has gone before, or enterprise of any kind, you will fail.
There is no town in the united kingdom where energy and
enterprise, attention to any trade whatever, would be
more certain to realize a fortune. Eleven years ago there
was scarcely a pig to be bought in the market at Gaiway,
and no bacon was cured here. An Englishman named
Greaves thought there was an opening, and commenced
buying pigs and curing them, in connexion with his shop
in New-street, Covent-garden, in London. He esta-
blished his son here, who, though quite a young man, has
created a trade, and now kills and cures 1,000 pigs a-week.
Any shop well managed, any hotel well managed, any bu-
siness whatever well managed, with the energy and atten-
tion which Englishmen commonly devote to the business,
would insure to any man a fortune in Galway. Yet the
majority of the inhabitants are Repealers, and great talkers
about misgovernment ; they abuse and vilify England and
English connexion. boast how mighty well they would
manage Irish affairs in a Parliament on College-green,
and neglect their own business to their heart's content.
Englishmen built them a town, which they have suffered
to decay ; Englishmen got rich, and purchased estates,
where they grow poor : but the English inhabitants at-
tended to their business, were enterprising and indus-
trious ; the present inhabitants of Galway prefer vain-
glorious talk about the phantom Repeal, and look on every
substantial and fair advantage within their grasp with
apathetic indifference.

Let the " Commissioner" make the attempt to
teach, to lead, to encourage, or to force tin these
poor people; and he will find that there is a retard-
ing influence at work, which will defy his efforts.
Let him attempt to lead them away from their
" vainglorious talk about the phantom Repeal," to
habits of sober industry and self-improvement ; and
he will soon discover that, not because they are
Celtic, but because they are the fettered slaves of a
tyrannical superstition, whose strongest hold upon
their minds is the fact of their existing misery and
ignorance, they will fall away from him, and relapse
into their present indolent apathy, improvidence,
and wretchedness.