Chapter I: Preface

These pages were first published in the shape of letters addressed from Ireland to _Le Temps_, during the summer months of 1886 and 1887.

A few extracts from those letters having found their way to the columns of the leading British papers, they became the occasion of somewhat premature, and, it seemed to the author, somewhat unfair conclusions, as to their general purport and bearing.

A fiery correspondent of a London evening paper, in particular, who boldly signed “J. J. M.” for his name, went so far as to denounce the author as “an ally of the _Times_, in the congenial task of vilifying the Irish people by grotesque and ridiculous caricatures,” which charge was then summarily met as follows:—

_To the Editor of the PALL MALL GAZETTE._

SIR,—

Let me hope, for the sake of “J. J. M.’s” mental condition,
that he never set eyes upon my Irish sketches in _Le Temps_,
about which he volunteers an opinion. If, however, he has
actually seen my prose in the flesh, and he still clings to his
hobby that I am hostile to the Irish cause or unsympathetic
with the Irish race, why then I can only urge upon his friends
the advisability of a strait waistcoat, a brace of mad doctors,
and an early berth in a lunatic asylum. I never heard in my
life of a sadder case of raving delusion.

Yours obediently,

PHILIPPE DARYL.

PARIS, _September 18, 1887_.

Thus ended the controversy. There was no reply.

Allowance should be made, of course, for the natural sensitiveness of Irishmen on everything that relates to their noble and unhappy country. But, what! Do they entertain, for one moment, the idea that everything is right and normal in it? In that case there can be no cause of complaint for them, and things ought to remain as they are. All right-minded people will understand, on the contrary, that the redress of Irish wrongs can only come out of a sincere and assiduous exposure of the real state of affairs, which is not healthy but pathological, and, as such, manifests itself by peculiar symptoms.

However it may be, a natural though perhaps morbid desire of submitting the case to the English-reading public was the consequence of those exceedingly brief and abortive polemics.

The Author was already engaged in the not over-congenial task of putting his own French into English, or what he hoped might do duty as such, when Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, the London publishers of his _Public Life in England_, kindly proposed to introduce _Ireland’s Disease_ to British society. The offer was heartily accepted, and so it came to pass that the English version is to appear in book form on the same day as the French one.

The special conditions of the case made it, of course, a duty to the author to strictly retain in his text every line that he had written down in the first instance, however little palatable it might prove to some English readers and fatal to his own literary or other prospects in England. That should be his excuse for sticking desperately to words which, like Tauchnitz editions, were not originally intended for circulation in Great Britain.

PH. D.

PARIS, _Nov. 10th, 1887_.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER I.

FIRST SENSATIONS 5

CHAPTER II.

DUBLIN LIFE 17

CHAPTER III.

THE POOR OF DUBLIN 31

CHAPTER IV.

THE EMERALD ISLE 46

CHAPTER V.

THE RACE 60

CHAPTER VI.

HISTORICAL GRIEVANCES 76

CHAPTER VII.

KILLARNEY 96

CHAPTER VIII.

THROUGH KERRY ON HORSEBACK 109

CHAPTER IX.

A KERRY FARMER’S BUDGET 139

CHAPTER X.

RURAL PHYSIOLOGY 157

CHAPTER XI.

EMIGRATION 177

CHAPTER XII.

THE LEAGUE 197

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CLERGY 215

CHAPTER XIV.

FORT SAUNDERS 234

CHAPTER XV.

THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN 256

CHAPTER XVI.

SCOTTISH IRELAND 271

CHAPTER XVII.

LEX LICINIA 296

I.—The Gladstone Scheme 309

II.—An Outsider’s Suggestion 313

APPENDIX 331

IRELAND’S DISEASE.