The doctors can always
tell them the Latin for an empty stomach; and when the poor man is treated
for the time with some human respect (by the Coronet) it almost seems a
pity he is not alive to hear how legally he died.
Against this bitter shrewdness and bleak realism in the suffering classes
it is commonly supposed that the more leisured classes stand for certain
legitimate ideas which also have their place in life; such as history,
reverence, the love of the land. Well, it might be no bad thing to have
something, even if it were something narrow, that testified to the truths
of religion or patriotism. But such narrow things in the past have always
at least known their own history; the bigot knew his catechism; the
patriot knew his way home. The astonishing thing about the modern rich is
their real and sincere ignorance--especially of the things they like.
No!
Take the most topical case you can find in any drawing-room: Belfast.
Ulster is most assuredly a matter of history; and there is a sense in
which Orange resistance is a matter of religion. But go and ask any of
the five hundred fluttering ladies at a garden party (who find Carson so
splendid and Belfast so thrilling) what it is all about, when it began,
where it came from, what it really maintains? What was the history of
Ulster? What is the religion of Belfast? Do any of them know where
Ulstermen were in Grattan's time; do any of them know what was the
"Protestantism" that came from Scotland to that isle; could any of them
tell what part of the old Catholic system it really denied?
It was generally something that the fluttering ladies find in their own
Anglican churches every Sunday.
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