Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

[132] Cranbrook and Mr. Heally. It is Unnatural that Ireland should be governed under the Crimes Act. But there is necessity, replies the Government. Well, then, if there is such an evil necessity, it is unnatural that the Irish newspapers should be free to write as they write and the Irish members to speak as they speak,--free to inflame and further to exasperate a seditious people's mind, and to promote the continuance of the evil necessity. A necessity for the Crimes Act is a necessity for absolute government. By our patchwork proceedings we set up, indeed, a make-believe of Ireland's being constitutionally governed. But it is not constitutionally governed; nobody supposes it to be constitutionally governed, except, perhaps, that born swallower of all clap-trap, the British Philistine. The Irish themselves, the all-important personages in this case, are not taken in; our make-believe does not produce in them the very least gratitude, the very least softening. At the same time, it adds an hundredfold to the difficulties of an absolute government.

The working of our institutions being thus awry, is the working of our thoughts upon them more smooth and natural? I imagine to myself an American, his own institutions and his habits of thought being such as we have seen, listening