text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/203

 essential respects from the corresponding regions of the and  (see those articles).

Towns and Communications.—The seat of the administration is Embabaan (Mbabane), a town on a northern tributary of the Usutu 4300 ft. above the sea, 40 m. south of Barberton and 180 m. east of Johannesburg. It replaced (1904) the former capital of Bremersdorp situated in the middle veld 23 m. south-east of Embabaan, and destroyed by Boer forces during the war of 1899–1902. Pigg’s Peak and Forbes Reef are mining settlements in northern Swaziland. Hlatikulu, the chief place in southern Swaziland, is built on a plateau about 3000 ft., above the sea. Zombodi, the principal native kraal, lies about IS m. east of Embabaan.

A railway from Lourenço Marques, 47 m. long, runs through Portuguese territory to the Swaziland border at Umbelozi Poort. This line is the eastern link in the direct railway connexion designed between Johannesburg and Delagoa Bay. From Johannesburg the line runs eastward past Springs and had reached Breyten (143 m.) in 1907. A number of good roads have been constructed. There is telegraphic connexion with the Transvaal.

Industries and Trade.—The soil is generally fertile. On the high veld, where green herbage is found all the year round, large numbers of sheep and cattle are pastured. This region serves as a winter grazing ground for sheep from the Transvaal. The middle veld is suitable for grain crops as well as bananas, sugar, coffee, tea and other semi-tropical produce. Millet, maize, pumpkins and groundnuts are extensively cultivated. On the low veld cotton is grown. Some species of the cotton plant are indigenous.

Besides agriculture the only considerable industries are gold, tin and coal mining. The goldfields, situated in the north-western part of the country, are a continuation of the De Kaap (Barberton) fields. The auriferous region is stated to be about 25 sq. m. in extent. Up to the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899 the value of the gold exported from Swaziland was about £350,000. Gold mining re-started on a small scale in 1904. The output for 1906–1908 was valued at £40,000. Alluvial tin mining is carried on successfully in the neighbourhood of Embabaan, cassiterite to the value of £46,000 being exported in 1905–1907. The output for 1908–1909 was valued at £36,000. Anthracite coal of a good quality is found over a large area of the low veld. Copper is also found. All mining is carried on under concessions. Imports are chiefly food-stuffs and cotton goods; they were valued in 1906 at £38,000 and in 1909 at £47,000. Up to 1906 no statistics of the trade of the country were kept. Trade is with the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay. The abolition of monopolies in 1904 (see below History) gave an impetus to trade. Up to that date some £4,000,000 of foreign capital had been sunk in the country with very little return. A large number of Swazis find employment in the Rand gold mines.

Administration, &c.—Swaziland forms a crown colony under the government of the High Commissioner for South Africa. It is administered by a resident commissioner. Legislation is by ordinance. Roman-Dutch common law prevails except when modified by statute, the laws of the Transvaal being in force as far as applicable to the country. Native laws and customs are generally respected and the chiefs exercise civil jurisdiction over their tribesmen, subject to appeal to the resident commissioner’s court. There is a special court to deal with serious civil and criminal cases in which Europeans are concerned. Order is maintained by a special police force. Education is mainly dependent on the efforts of missionary societies, but the administration has a few schools.

Revenue is derived chiefly from a poll-tax on natives of £1 per annum, concession rents, royalties and customs. For the period 1904–1909 the revenue—apart from loans—was about £40,000 a year, the normal expenditure being approximately the same amount. Since 1904 considerable sums (e.g. £49,000 in 1909) have been spent by the administration on the expropriation of monopolies. Swaziland is a member of the South African Customs Union (see ).

History.—Ama-Swazi tribes are believed to have occupied the country now known as Swaziland from the period of the invasion of South East Africa by the Bantu peoples. They were formerly called Ba-Rapuza or Barabuza after a chief under whom in the 18th century they acquired homogeneity. In the early part of the 19th century they fell under the dominion of the newly constituted Zulu nation. In 1843, the year in which the British annexed Natal and with it a part of the country hitherto ruled by the Zulus, the Barabuza, under a chief named Swazi, took advantage of the comparative weakness of the Zulu power, achieved independence and founded the present state. According to Kaffir custom they adopted the name of their deliverer. The Boers of the Transvaal were then beginning to occupy the regions adjacent to Swaziland and in 1855 the Swazis in order to get a strip of territory between themselves and the Zulus, whose power they still dreaded, ceded to the Boers the narrow strip of land north of the Pongola river now known as the Piet Retief district. The Zulus under Cetywayo claimed the ceded district as theirs and the Swazis as their subjects and for over ten years no white farmers were able to settle in the district. With the Boers the Swazis remained on friendly terms and this friendship was extended to the British on the occupation of the Transvaal in 1877. In 1879 they joined the British in the attack on the Bapedi chief Sikukuni, whom they looked upon as an ally of the Zulus.

They captured from Sikukuni certain “rain medicine,” the possession of which has since greatly increased the prestige of the paramount chief of the Swazis among the Kaffirs of South Africa. On the retrocession of the Transvaal in 1881 the independence of the Swazis was recognized by the Boers and the Pretoria convention of that year defined the boundaries of the country. By the London convention of 1884 the Transvaal again recognized the independence of Swaziland. Immediately afterwards, however, the Boers began a series of efforts to obtain control of the country. In 1886 the governor of Natal received a paper from Umbandine (Mbandini), the paramount chief of the Swazis, stating that Piet Joubert had called on him and requested him to sign a paper saying that “he and all the Swazis agreed to go over and recognize the authority of the Boer government, and have nothing more to do with the English.” On his refusal the Boers replied to him, “Why do you refuse to sign the paper? You know we defeated the English at Majuba.” The Boers further added that if the Swazis were relying on the British, they were leaning on a broken reed, and would find themselves left in the lurch. Umbandine followed up this communication with a request for British protection, but without result. Later on, in 1887, both Boers and gold prospectors of all nationalities were overrunning his country, and Umbandine asked for a British resident. This request was also refused. The Boers now determined to adopt towards Swaziland the policy which had proved so successful in Zululand. A colony of Boers settled within the Swazi territories and proclaimed “The Little Free State.” Umbandine was then at length induced to ask the Transvaal for annexation. The Transvaal applied in 1889 to Great Britain for permission to accede to this request, but the British government replied that the only intervention to which they would consent must be a dual one. Consequently a joint commission was appointed to visit Swaziland and report on the condition of things there. Sir Francis de Winton, the British commissioner, who was accompanied by Generals Joubert and Smit on behalf of the Transvaal, reported that Umbandine had already granted concessions, such as “postal, telegraphic, banking, customs,” &c., to the Transvaal, and concessions of land mining and grazing rights to various adventurers. Umbandine had in short granted concessions of every conceivable character, including exemption from taxation. A charter of self-government had also been granted (1888) to the whites in the country. In the circumstances de Winton considered a British protectorate inadvisable and impracticable. A dual control was arranged in 1890, but the convention then signed proved abortive owing to the objection of the Transvaal to join the South African Customs Union. In 1893 a further conference on the Swazi question took place between Sir Henry Loch, high commissioner for South Africa, and President Kruger, the result of which was that the administration of Swaziland, with certain reservations as to the rights of the natives, was made over to the South African Republic. In the following year six Swazi envoys visited England for the purpose of asking Queen Victoria to take Swaziland under her protection. In view, however, of the arrangement come to, this petition had to be refused. In 1894 a convention was signed between Great Britain and the Transvaal, and the Boers, in spite of the Swazi opposition, assumed administration of the country. The Boers’ object in intriguing to acquire Swaziland was not merely that of obtaining that country. They desired also to annex the coast lands to its east and thus obtain—at Kosi Bay—a seaport of their own. This object they might have attained if they had agreed to de Winton’s proposals, but Great Britain in view of the increasingly hostile attitude

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/203


text:
Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/533

Rh

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/534

422


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/536


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/537


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/204

Rh assumed by the Transvaal government now intervened and by annexing in 1895 Amatongaland, the region in question, blocked the Boers’ further progress towards the sea (see : History).

Swaziland suffered during the struggle between the Transvaal and Great Britain as to its destiny. Umbandine died in 1889 and had various successors. Ubanu, installed by the Boers as paramount chief in 1894, was a sanguinary despot and was compelled to flee in 1898. The principal personage in the country after Umbandine’s death was, however, his widow Naba Tsibeni, known to Europeans as the queen regent. She more than once appealed to the British to cause the Boers to respect the terms of the conventions, and before the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer war in 1899 she took the side of the British. On the annexation of the Transvaal in 1901 the queen regent asked that Swaziland might be annexed also. On the cessation of hostilities a British special commissioner was sent into the country—then in a condition bordering on anarchy—and a provisional administration established. In June 1903 an order in council formally conferred the government of the country on the governor of the Transvaal (then Lord Milner). Lord Milner visited Swaziland in July 1904 and denounced “the abominable network of concessions” in which the country was entangled. On the 3rd of October following the governor issued a proclamation providing further for the administration, and for the expropriation of the concessions other than those relating to land and minerals. In September 1906 Lord Selborne, who had succeeded Lord Milner, conferred with the queen regent and her councillors on questions specially affecting the natives. A lad named Sobhuza, born about 1898, was selected as paramount chief, Naba Tsibeni, his grandmother, being confirmed as regent during his minority. In December 1906 the control of Swaziland was severed from the governorship of the Transvaal and transferred to the High Commissioner for South Africa, and in March 1907 a resident commissioner was appointed. When the Union of South Africa was established in 1910, Swaziland, with other native territories, remained under direct Imperial control.

(A. P. H.; F. R. C.)  SWEARING (O. Eng. swerian, to swear, originally to speak aloud, cf. andswerian, to answer, Ger. schwören, Dan. svaerge, &c., all from root swer-, to make a sound, cf. “swarm,” properly the buzzing of bees, Lat. susurrus), the affirmation or uttering of a solemn declaration with an appeal to the Deity, some holy personage or sacred object as confirmation, hence the act of declaring the truth of a statement upon oath (see and ). The common use of the word is for the uttering of profane oaths or curses. In English law, while (q.v.) was at common law an indictable offence, cursing or swearing was left to the ecclesiastical courts. The Profane Oaths Act 1745 inflicted a sliding scale of fines for the use of profane oaths according to the rank of the offender, 1s. for a common labourer, soldier or seaman, 2s. for everyone below the rank of gentleman and 5s. for those of or above that rank; procedure under this act is regulated by the Summary Jurisdiction Acts. By s. 8 of the Town Police Clauses Act 1847 the use of profane or obscene language is an offence punishable on summary conviction by a fine not exceeding 40s. or imprisonment not exceeding 14 days. The offence must be committed in a street and the act is confined to urban sanitary districts or to such rural districts to which s. 276 of the Public Health Act 1875 has extended it. By s. 12 of the Metropolitan Police Court Acts 1839 a similar offence is punishable in the metropolitan police area, and various districts have put in force by-laws for punishing swearing, cursing, or causing annoyance in public places. The restriction as to the place where the offence must be committed to be liable to punishment has led to the enforcement on occasions of the Profane Oaths Act, which applies to the whole of England and Wales and is not limited to cursing in the streets. It should not, however, apply to obscene language.  SWEATING-SICKNESS. A remarkable form of disease, not known in England before, attracted attention at the very beginning of the reign of Henry VII. It was known indeed a few days after the landing of Henry at Milford Haven on the 7th of August 1485, as there is clear evidence of its being spoken of before the battle of Bosworth on the 22nd of August. Soon after the arrival of Henry in London on the 28th of August it broke out in the capital, and caused great mortality. This alarming malady soon became known as the sweating-sickness. It was regarded as being quite distinct from the plague, the pestilential fever or other epidemics previously known, not only by the special symptom which gave it its name, but also by its extremely rapid and fatal course.

From 1485 nothing more was heard of it till 1507, when the second outbreak occurred, which was much less fatal than the first. In 1517 was a third and much more severe epidemic. In Oxford and Cambridge it was very fatal, as well as in other towns, where in some cases half the population are said to have perished. There is evidence of the disease having spread to Calais and Antwerp, but with these exceptions it was confined to England.

In 1528 the disease recurred for the fourth time, and with great severity. It first showed itself in London at the end of May, and speedily spread over the whole of England, though not into Scotland or Ireland. In London the mortality was very great; the court was broken up, and Henry VIII. left London, frequently changing his residence. The most remarkable fact about this epidemic is that it spread over the Continent, suddenly appearing at Hamburg, and spreading so rapidly that in a few weeks more than a thousand persons died. Thus was the terrible sweating-sickness started on a destructive course, during which it caused fearful mortality throughout eastern Europe. France, Italy and the southern countries were spared. It spread much in the same way as cholera, passing, in one direction, from north to south, arriving at Switzerland in December, in another northwards to Denmark, Sweden and Norway, also eastwards to Lithuania, Poland and Russia, and westwards to Flanders and Holland, unless indeed the epidemic, which declared itself simultaneously at Antwerp and Amsterdam on the morning of the 27th of September, came from England direct. In each place which it affected it prevailed for a short time only—generally not more than a fortnight. By the end of the year it had entirely disappeared, except in eastern Switzerland, where it lingered into the next year and the terrible “English sweat” has never appeared again, at least in the same form, on the Continent.

England was, however, destined to suffer from one more outbreak of the disease, which occurred in 1551, and with regard to this we have the great advantage of an account by an eyewitness, John Kaye or Caius, the eminent physician.

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/204


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/53


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/54


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/62


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/61


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swat

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swat


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/67


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swatow

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swatow


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/68


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/75


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swaziland

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swaziland


text: Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/76


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swearing

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swearing


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Fouqué, Ferdinand André


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/243

Rh Another species, A. muricala, is the sour-sop, a small evergreen tree bearing a larger dark-green fruit, 6 to 8 in. long and 1 to 5 lb in weight, oblong or bluntly conical in shape, with a rough spiny skin and containing a soft white juicy subacid pulp with a flavour of turpentine. It is a popular fruit in the West Indies, where it is native, and is grown with special excellence in Porto Rico. A drink is made from the juice. A. reticulata is the (q.v.) and A. paluslris the alligator apple.  SWELLENDAM, a town of South Africa, Cape province, in the valley of the Breede River, 192 m. by rail E. by S. of Cape Town. Pop. (1904), 2406, of whom 1139 were white. Swellendam is one of the older Dutch settlements in the Cape, dating from 1745, and was named after Hendrik Swellengrebel (then governor of the Cape) and his wife, whose maiden name was Damme. Early in 1795 the burghers of the town and district rose in revolt against the Dutch East India Company, proclaimed a “free republic,” and elected a so-styled national assembly. At the same time the burghers of Graaff Reinet also rebelled against the Cape authorities, who were powerless to suppress the insurrectionary movement. One of the claims of the “free republic” was “the absolute and unconditional slavery of all Hottentots and Bushmen.” In September of that year Cape Town surrendered to the British and the “National” party at Swellendam quietly accepted British rule. The town is a trading centre of some importance, and in the surrounding district are large sheep and ostrich farms. The neighbourhood is noted for its abundance of everlasting flowers.  SWETCHINE, MADAME (1782–1857), Russian mystic, whose maiden name was Soymanof, was born in Moscow, and under the influence of Joseph de Maistre became a member of the Roman Catholic Church in 1815. In the following year she settled in Paris where, until her death, she maintained a famous salon remarkable no less for its high courtesy and intellectual brilliance than for its religious atmosphere. Though not physically beautiful she had a personality of rare spiritual charm, nurtured in the private chapel of her house. Her husband, General Swetchine, was 25 years her senior. Her Life and Works (of which the best known are “Old Age” and “Resignation”) were published by M. de Falloux (2 vols., 1860) and her Letters by the same editor (2 vols., 1861).

 SWEYN I., ( –1014), son of Harold Bluetooth, the christianizer of Denmark, by his peasant mistress Aesa, according to the Jomsvikinga Saga, though more probably his mother was Queen Gunild, Harold’s consort. The lad was a born champion and buccaneer. His first military expedition, in alliance with the celebrated Jomsborg Viking, Palnatoke, was against his own father, who perished during the struggle (c. 986). Six years later he conducted a large fleet of warships to England, which did infinite damage, but failed to capture London. During his absence, Denmark was temporarily occupied by the Swedish king, Eric Sersel, on whose death (c. 994) Sweyn recovered his patrimony. About the same time he repudiated his first wife Gunild, daughter of duke Mieszko of Poland, and married King Eric’s widow, Sigrid. This lady was a fanatical pagan of a disquieting strength of character. Two viceroys, earlier wooers, were burned to death by her orders for their impertinence, and she refused the hand of Olaf Trygvessön, king of Norway, rather than submit to baptism, whereupon the indignant monarch struck her on the mouth with his gauntlet and told her she was a worse pagan than any dog. Shortly afterwards she married Sweyn, and easily persuaded her warlike husband to unite with Olaf, king of Sweden, against Olaf Trygvessön, who fell in the famous sea-fight off Svolde (1000) on the west coast of Rügen, after a heroic resistance immortalized by the sagas, whereupon the confederates divided his kingdom between them. After his first English expedition Sweyn was content to blackmail England instead of ravaging it, till the ruthless massacre of the Danes on St Brice’s day, the 3rd of November 1002, by Ethelred the Unready (Sweyn’s sister was among the victims) brought the Danish king to Exeter (1003). During each of the following eleven years, the Danes, materially assisted by the universal and shameless disloyalty of the Saxon ealdormen, systematically ravaged England, and from 991 to 1014 the wretched land is said to have paid its invaders in ransoms alone £158,000. Sweyn died suddeniy at Gainsborough on the 13th of February 1014. The data relating to his whole history are scanty and obscure, and his memory has suffered materially from the fact that the chief chroniclers of his deeds and misdeeds were ecclesiastics. It was certainly unfortunate that he began life by attacking his own father. It is undeniable that his favourite wife was the most stiff-necked pagan of her day. His most remarkable exploit, Svolde, was certainly won at the expense of Christianity, resulting, as it did, in the death of the saintly Olaf. Small wonder, then, if Adam of Bremen, and the monkish annalists who follow him, describe Sweyn as a grim and bloody semi-pagan, perpetually warring against Christian states. But there is another side to the picture. Viking though he was, Sweyn was certainly a Christian viking. We know that he built churches; that he invited English bishops to settle in Denmark (notably Godibald, who did good work in Scania); that on his death-bed he earnestly commended the Christian cause to his son Canute. He was cruel to his enemies no doubt, but he never forgot a benefit. Thus he rewarded the patriotism of the Danish ladies who sacrificed all their jewels to pay the heavy ransom exacted from him by his captors, the Jomsborg pirates, by enacting a law whereby women were henceforth to inherit landed property in the same way as their male relatives. Of his valour as a captain and his capacity as an administrator there can be no question. His comrades adored him for his liberality, and the frequent visits of Icelandic skalder to his court testify to a love of poetry on his part, indeed one of his own strophes has come down to us. As to his personal appearance we only know that he had a long cleft beard, whence his nickname of Tiugeskaeg or Fork-Beard.

 SWIFT, JONATHAN (1667–1745), dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin, British satirist, was born at No. 7 Hoey’s Court, Dublin, on the 30th of November 1667, a few months after the death of his father, Jonathan Swift (1640–1667), who married about 1664 Abigaile Erick, of an old Leicestershire family. He was taken over to England as an infant and nursed at Whitehaven, whence he returned to Ireland in his fourth year. His grandfather, Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich near Ross, appears to have been a doughty member of the church militant, who lost his possessions by taking the losing side in the Civil War and died in 1658 before the restoration could bring him redress. He married Elizabeth, niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, the poet’s grandfather. Hence the familiarity of the poet's well-known “cooling-card” to the budding genius of his kinsman Jonathan: “Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.” The young Jonathan was educated mainly at the charges of his uncle Godwin, a Tipperary official, who was thought to dole out his help in a somewhat grudging manner. In fact the apparently prosperous relative was the victim of unfortunate speculations, and chose rather to be reproached with avarice than with imprudence. The youth was resentful of what he regarded as curmudgeonly treatment, a bitterness became ingrained and began to corrode his whole nature; and although he came in time to grasp the real state of the case he never mentioned his uncle with kindness or regard. At six he went to Kilkenny School, where Congreve was a schoolfellow; at fourteen he entered pensioner at Trinity College, Dublin, where he seems to have neglected his opportunities. He was referred in natural, philosophy, including mathematics, and obtained his degree only by a special but by no means infrequent act of indulgence. The patronage of his uncle galled him: he was dull and unhappy. We find in Swift few signs of precocious genius. As with Goldsmith, and so many other men who have become artists of the pen, college proved a stepmother to him.

In 1688 the rich uncle, whose supposed riches had dwindled

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/243


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swellendam

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swellendam


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Swetchine, Madame


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sweyn I.

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sweyn I.


text:
Of Public Intellectuals, Universities, and a Democratic Crisis

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests,

It is an honour to be here at the.

I feel at home as an Irishman in an institution, indeed in a city, with so many Irish connections. I feel at home in a country which is Ireland's nearest neighbour and increasingly our close friend. And I feel at home as an academic speaking to representatives of different cultures and to a younger generation who are challenged in so many ways by the current changes taking place in international economics, in politics, and indeed in the public world.

It is just nine months since, the first visit by a British monarch to an. Her Majesty's visit, her perfectly judged words, her gesture of respect for those who died in an Irish cause, her use of the, her evident pleasure at being our honoured guest, symbolised the remarkable transformation in relations between our countries over recent years and it was deeply welcomed all over.

Many factors contributed to making the royal visit possible and such a success. In that regard, I would like to pay particular tribute to my predecessor,, who throughout her term of office did so much to foster reconciliation and friendship across these islands.

When the L.S.E. was founded in 1895 by the four leading Fabians, and,  and , its founders were convinced of the power of education in not only lifting their fellow citizens out of poverty but also of such citizens understanding, participating, and in time, offering an alternative form of society, one that would be egalitarian, democratic, tolerant, one which would extend and deepen democracy in every aspect of life. Such an achievement would also constitute, they felt, the establishment of socialism as an alternative to capitalism. It would also function as a mediating influence in radical change and thus serve as an alternative to the violence of the class conflict which was widely advocated in a number of countries at that time and which seemed a real prospect.

The century that was ending, was one of immense change. The response to such change, as intellectual historians such as have shown, gave us the great founding texts of, , ,  and others. But it was not only philosophers and political theorists who responded to the new order that was emerging. Shaw and other writers recognised the changes that were underway, read the philosophical and political books and pamphlets, and responded with essays, lectures and literary works.

The writer as public intellectual, as analyst and campaigner for change, was a role that George Bernard Shaw and others assumed with vigour and dedication and Shaw's involvement with the L.S.E. was part of that public engagement, as was his sustained interest in the social change he saw as necessary in Ireland, and the place of literature in assisting the consciousness that would demand and deliver that change.

Nelson O'Ceallaigh Ritschel in his recent excellent study Shaw, Synge, Connolly and Socialist Provocation shows how Shaw believed, like fellow, that the conversion of the middle classes was essential for the democratic choice they sought. He was not joined in that opinion by fellow playwright and Irishman. John Millington Synge held an alternative radical view based on what he saw as the real suffering of the downtrodden and thus he rejected as idealism the Shaw project of middle class conversion. It was Synge's work that brought closer to, O'Ceallaigh Ritschel shows.

As O'Ceallaigh Ritschel's work establishes, however, both writers were participants in the project of change. He shows, very valuably, how Shaw through the agency of, an Irish journalist, who had attended Shaw's Fabian lectures in London, went on to lecture in Dublin to the , founded by James Connolly, on democracy and drama, drawing on the works of and Shaw,  attended and was influenced and indeed as was Connolly himself. This connection between London and Dublin, this flow of ideas for social reform, or for the radical resolution of Ireland's relationship with Britain, knew no borders. The Irish literary presence in London, be it Shaw or mixed the projects of achieving literary success and a wider audience with the necessary irony of unresolved relationships, of Irishness. This would have a lasting effect, not only on the artistic form, but on the consciousness of audiences.

In so many ways the tragedy of modern Ireland's recent difficulties is that it did what the founders of the L.S.E. hoped. It was the first English-speaking country to decolonise, to walk in darkness down what would become a better lit road – a road illuminated by teachers and students at the L.S.E. The problem for Ireland was the failure to achieve economic lift-off at the same moment as soon after. By the time the more recent economic boom began, leaders and people had all but lost connection with the cultural and political elements of national revival which might, if retained, have provided an ethical brake, made a critique that would have constituted the regulation that was needed.

The L.S.E. at its foundation, even though it was aimed at the moderation offered as an alternative to class conflict had an emancipatory purpose, and its early discussions, through Shaw, had a direct effect on Irish realities and on Anglo-Irish relations.

It is perhaps insignificantly recognised in Ireland and Britain the practical orientation of the themes chosen by George Bernard Shaw in his lectures. He lectured on the working conditions of the labouring classes and their consequences but also on Ibsen and the morally informed social vision in his plays.

Peter Graham's Shaw Shadows: Rereading the texts of Bernard Shaw is quoted in O'Ceallaigh Ritschel's book. Shaw is explicit as to his view on the importance of there being a mediating option to the violence he saw as inevitably flowing from the institutionalisation of inequality and the denial of rights, even voting rights, for women.

"If Socialism be not made respectable and formidable by the support of our class – if it be left entirely to the poor then the proprietors will attempt to suppress it by such measures as they have already taken in Austria and Ireland. Dynamite will follow. Terror will follow dynamite. Cruelty will follow terror.... If, on the other hand the middle class will educate themselves to understand this question, they will be able to fortify whatever is just in Socialism and to crush whatever is dangerous in it."

The decades of the twentieth century at the L.S.E. will be for many others around the world, the periods when they encountered such teachers as. As a young student I recall Dr. Labhrás Ó Nualláin, born in Manchester, but Irish-speaking, who gave pioneering lectures at speaking of the L.S.E. and Laski's influence on those who had come to study, students who aspired to lead their countries in what were to be, or had been promised, as decades of  and national independence. Through Laski and his writings such as The Grammar of Politics the L.S.E. acquired a global reputation not only for theory and research but for analysis of the role of the State and State-making.

I associate such great achievements, as the, the , pioneering work on equality and the need for solidarity, the responsibilities of interdependency and support for the as a valuable legacy of the emancipatory scholarship of the L.S.E.

I remain still in awe too of the moral content of the scholarship and the life of such intellectual giants of social policy as. Professor Titmuss founded the subject of. The first occupant of the Chair of Social Administration at L.S.E. in 1942, his work was drawn upon by all of us who would later lecture in social policy, poverty studies or equality. His was an engaged view of research and scholarship and he did not avoid the challenge or the controversy, of engaging with competing models of government policy be it on public health or pensions, poverty or social justice.

As a young university teacher appointed at the end of the, I had myself hopes of the emancipatory power of a humanistic social science. I could not have foreseen the influence of the second coming of the ideas of theorists such as or the influence they would have, not only on theory, but on policy, policies that would be privileged in the UK and the US in the eighties and the nineties of the  as not policies chosen among options but as a single hegemonic version of the connection between markets, economic policy, and life itself.

I would this evening like to offer a brief reflection on public intellectuals, universities and the role of both in what I perceive to be an emerging democratic crisis, one that sets representative parliamentary accountability in conflict with unaccountable economic forces. It is a time when the credibility of parliamentary power has been called into question, when alternatives to the State in civil society are being advanced and when, at institutional level in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe and beyond the legitimation crisis of which wrote so many decades ago has begun to emerge. Having squandered credibility through light regulation and thus powerless regulatory authorities, the State itself has been made vulnerable.

There are, at any time, hegemonic myths that inform, even determine the discourse of the times. The myth of rational markets with infinite growth was the hegemonic myths of recent decades. Apart from some distinguished exceptions such as the Galbraiths, and, it was a largely uncontested myth in the modern period.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of State Socialism – itself a distortion of the utopian impulse, indeed a dystopia – an extraordinary hubris emerged by way of response which led to the articulation of what was little less than a utopian vision of the. Politics would now take second place to unregulated markets. It had a philosophical source in the renewed interest in the writings of such as Friedrich Von Hayek and.

We have, as a consequence, been living through a period of extreme individualism, a period where the concept of society itself has been questioned. The public space in so many countries of the EU has been, and it is as calculating rational choice maximizers, rather than as citizens, we have been invited to view our neighbours. That is the mark of our times, the hegemonic version, by which it is suggested, we live our lives together. Our existence is assumed to be, is defined as, competing individual actors at times neurotic in our insatiable anxieties for consumption as puts it in his book Consuming Life. As Zygmunt Bauman puts it – "Consumers become the promoters of the commodities they consume". They become a commodified entity in their presentation of themselves.

Behind these transitions lies an intellectual rationalisation. Standing in support of unregulated markets, of unaccountable capital flows, of virtual financial products, are scholars who frequently claim the legitimation provided by a university. The university is at times put under pressure to demonstrate its utility as the seat of the single hegemonic model of society and economy that prevails.

I believe universities are challenged now not only to recover the moral purpose of original thought, emancipatory scholarship, but also in their ethos, to recover the caring and concerned teaching such as that offered by Harold Laski at L.S.E. to students from abroad such as. That university teaching was more than instruction. It was encouragement to obdure, to overcome the strangeness of exile, and the loneliness of solitary study, that came with the move from one culture to another.

The ethos of the L.S.E. was also defined in its early days by significant public intellectuals such as who taught German Social Democracy at the school in the years 1895 to 1896. After the publication of his tragically neglected book Power in 1934, he taught classes on The Science of Power in 1936. The 1934 book had outlined in detail how collective behaviour could be manipulated. "If a crowd has gathered, particularly if music is playing you can get them to believe in anything", Russell had written.

This is a powerful legacy of teaching and research. It had its beneficiaries far beyond the lecture halls of the L.S.E. The who were building and shaping the Post-War Britain in many ways were also benefiting from the security of the welfare state and the National Health Service, which had the intellectual support of, among others, scholars at the L.S.E. as they delivered their labour, their ideas.

Now, in the second decade of a new century it is not for the L.S.E. alone that the challenge to recover or reinforce a university ethos of emancipatory scholarship exists. All of the universities in both our countries, indeed universities all over Europe, and beyond, are challenged.

Much ground has been lost in terms of the public space, the public world, the shared essential space of an independent people free to participate and change their circumstances, to imagine their future, be it in Ireland, Europe or at global level.

Intellectuals are challenged, I believe now to a moral choice, to drift into, be part of, a consensus that accepts a failed paradigm of life and economy or to offer, or seek to recover the possibility of alternative futures. And were universities not special places, the citizens of the future may ask, for the generation of alternatives in science, culture and philosophy?

The questions that are posed to universities now are questions that go far beyond ones of a narrow utility.

Are the universities to be allowed and will they seek the space, the capacity, the community of scholarship, the quiet moments of reflection necessary to challenge, for example, such paradigms of the connection between economy and society, ethics and morality, democratic discourse and authoritarian imposition as have failed, or alternatively drawing on their rich university tradition, at its best moments of disputation and discourse, will they seek to offer alternatives that offer a stable present and a democratic, liberating and sustainable future?

We are experiencing now, I believe, an intellectual crisis that is far more serious than the, dominates the programmes in our media. Such a crisis has arisen before at times of great or impending change and it has drawn a response from intellectuals as they were forced to react to the collapse of the prevailing assumptions and they engaged with the need for a new paradigm of life and politics.

When Max Weber, the great 19th Century social theorist, responded to the events of his time in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was not the in itself by any means, but it was a time of change in the forms of empire, creating transitions, the response to which would be dominated by the technocratic thinking of the time. Weber proposed a commitment to rationality as the key building block of the future.

He was anxious to save as much as possible of the heritage of a previous century but at the same time introduce something new but beyond logic, intuition, and religious sentiment. He thus critiqued the excesses of both and. Yet even then Weber saw the dangers of the potential abuse of that which would be claimed to be rational.

He spoke of the threat of a spring that would not beckon with its promise of new life, but would deliver instead the threat of a winter of icy cold. He prophesied an iron cage of bureaucracy within which conformity would be demanded to that which no longer recognised its original moral or reasonable purpose, a time that would come when what was irrational would wear the mask of rationality.

He was writing at a time when technocratic rationality had succeeded reason as the central concept in political writing. A century earlier reason had been central in 's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Weber, of course, could not have envisaged the consequences of the journey intellectual thought would make from reason to rationality, but then on to calculable rationality, and finally, in our own time, to the speculative gambling that is at the heart of so much global misery with its view of those humans who share our fragile planet, not as citizens, but as rational choice maximizing consumers.

We are in such a winter as Weber foretold. For example, we have arrived at quite widespread acceptance by policy makers of a proposition rejected by the majority of serious economic historians, that markets are rational. This, on occasion, leads, in the extreme, to the suggestion, absurd and all as it may sound, that it is people who are irrational, the markets rational. That public, for whom, Friedrich Von Hayek wrote that economics are too complex, it is suggested, require something other than the direction of elected governments.

They must be forced into a compliance with technocratic demands, for which there is frequently scant scholarly support and, needless to say, no mandate. This represents a challenge to democracy itself, I suggest, and to the scholarship that supports it. The mediating institutions are losing authority and the prospect of raw conflict increases all over the world as language, words without emancipatory force, give ground to what is unaccountable but global.

Neither is the intellectual crisis of our times simply a problem for the L.S.E. or Irish universities. When one of Europe's foremost public intellectuals Jürgen Habermas writes of the fragility of the European Union I feel he is referring to the contest in Europe that is now there for the public world. Social Europe was born as a concept in response to the legacy of war and social misery. It was connected to a democratic discourse.

As social Europe as a project is undermined by the commodification of ever more aspects of social life, as European social capital, the strongest in the world, is monetized, it is clear we have arrived at such a crisis now as great or greater than that faced by the previous generation of political and social theorists at the end of the 19th Century. It is a challenge for all of us to craft our response to our crisis as they did to theirs in their time.

I believe that a university response that is critically open to originality in theory and research, committed to in teaching, has a great opportunity to make a European, even global, contribution of substance; that such a university can be the hub of original, critical thought and a promoter of its application through new models of connection between science, technology, administration and society; I believe Irish and British universities have a great opportunity to break such new ground. The L.S.E. has the advantage of a fine heritage known worldwide.

Independent thought, from home and abroad, and scholarly engagement with our current circumstances are crucial. A paradigm drawn from the fiction of rational markets, I humbly suggest, needs not only to be let go. It needs to be replaced by a scholarship that is genuinely emancipatory, centred on originality rather than imitation, one that, for example, restores the in their common human curiosity, discovery and celebration of the life of the mind, enables new visions to emerge.

Following, I believe of course that utopian alternatives must be accompanied by a praxis that is envisaged, and I suggest that it must be one that is applicable within, and in the context of, institutions. I do not claim a space for abstract grand theory at the cost of middle range theories or policies that have immediate or short term application.

The concept of is being recovered in such intellectual work such as that of  and others and the insistence of Ernst Bloch that  not only involves a rejection of what is, and a hope for an alternative, but also a strategy for its implementation is central to the new writing as that of the scholars in the Centre for Utopian Studies at the.

In recent times, we have paid a heavy price for unfettered speculative accumulation, for light regulation for the global consequences of what followed acceptance of amendments to the in the US, an act that had its origins in responding to the  that sought to ensure it would never happen again. The amendments released a flood of virtual financial products across the world. To that, many countries including our own, added their own speculative bubble.

The architects of these developments frequently invoked, and found, intellectuals willing to support them – intellectuals who frequently drew on the prestige of a university for authority.

When I look back now at those subjects which I taught at and abroad – political science and sociology – subjects which in so many ways emerged from the late 19th Century of Weber, Marx, Durkheim, Freud, Croce and others, I am struck by the urgency in the approach of such theorists, in their day, to the social change of their times, and the effect their writings had.

As H. Stuart Hughes 40 years ago wrote, it was a time of rejection of positivism, an attempt to incorporate consciousness in social theory, but above all theorists responded to the urgency of the changes that were unfolding – with their own intellectual work. The work of represented the response of a public intellectual in his day many decades later.

In response to two World Wars that followed the reconstruction of nineteenth century Europe and the demand for new relations with a world it had previously dominated within the model of empire, Keyensian strategies emerged to address unemployment and poverty, demanded that the of the importance of health and education be recognised. There was an intellectual debate, one that offered and contested different democratic options.

The mid-twentieth century constituted an atmosphere where social capital emerged and social democracy mediated conflict. The twentieth century saw, too, a public debate about the role of the State, the rights of the individual and social policy, of the balance between these areas.

In succeeding decades, political philosophy and social theory gave way to issues of administration analysis of the role of the State faded and gave way to applied studies, in an administrative sense, of the State's actions.

A discourse based on solidarity interdependency, shared vulnerability, community, gave way to a discourse on lifestyle and individual consumption. A society of citizens gave way to a disaggregated mass of individual consumers.

I find Weber's nightmare of a rationality that, in time, would counter the original purposes of institutions, that would morph into an irrational form, incapable of adjustment to change internally or externally, difficult to reject as an account of the modern period. As the Canadian philosopher put it – we have been drifting to unfreedom and I suggest that in terms of society, social cohesion, there is nothing as irrational as unregulated markets.

Internationally too, the context for universities has been changing. As parliaments were weakened at home, an ever more volatile global financial world was emerging, one that was unaccountable, at best amoral in its demands and consequences.

The meant that speculative capital could move in real time.

At international level, while for a brief moment many decades earlier, in a previous century, such as at the birth of the, it seemed that international monetary and economic matters might be governed in an accountable way. Such a moment quickly disappeared never to return. Yet the need for such regulation remains, is urgent, and requires re-articulation.

For those of us then who have had the privilege of being university teachers, those who remain, the university is, and remains I suggest, a space from which new futures have always emerged and must do so again. The ethos of independent scholarship is what delivers a previous scholarship's achievements into the present, and challenges that scholarship for renewal and replacement.

I admire the singular dedication of researchers, the sacrifice they make but I also value the importance of the teams that are necessary for co-operative achievements in the sciences, and the time fundamental research takes. At the same time, I believe that the division of culture and the sciences is an unnecessary price that has been paid for the hegemony of a particular moment in the history of European scholarship, a moment of hubris that divided culture and science.

It is time to recover the unities of scholarship, to strike out for originality. That, I suggest, might be our most valuable European contribution, one that will be valued by future generations.

As subjects are re-cast, unities can be restored, and we should consider 's suggestion that it is in the interstices between subjects that the most exciting intellectual work happens.

There is not, for example, any better future for economics as a subject and discipline than as political economy within a system of culture. Would it not be an exciting initiative, I suggest with humility, for the L.S.E. and an Irish university to establish an endowed Chair to explore the ways in which an ethico-cultural idea of Europe and of the national could be invoked to check the drift to unfreedom?

I suggest that the universities and those who labour within them are crucial in the struggle for the recovery of the public world, for the emergence of truly emancipatory paradigms of policy and research. It is not merely a case of connecting the currency, the economy, and the people, it is about recovering the right to pose important questions such as did in his time – what might we know, what should we do, what may we hope?

It is a time to recover consideration of the public world we share, the fragile planet, for which we must have responsibility, and lodge within it a concept of intergenerational justice and the State, civil society, communities and citizens are needed to act in concert.

These issues and challenges we in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Europe share. Happily there has never been a better environment for us sharing our scholarship, our students and our concerns as we move together to a new version of our interdependent lives. We need to consider the revitalisation of the relationships between the institutional structure of our States and our citizens, to forge a connection between the citizens of Europe and our shared European Institutions.

We need to draw on the debate on alternatives within civil society as opportunities to extend or deepen democracy rather than as alternatives.

There is a moral basis to those who are protesting, to those who would like a new beginning, but I believe that to walk away from the State would be a tragic error on the part of those who seek an emancipatory transformation in our societies. Obviously, of course, to rely entirely on advocacy directed at the State, and to neglect the possibilities and promise of alternatives within civil society would be a disastrous choice, too. In combining the tasks of with a commitment to original thought and compassionate and emancipatory scholarship and teaching, public intellectuals can help bridge the space to that utopia and its praxis that we all, as vulnerable inhabitants of our fragile planet, need.

George Bernard Shaw would have encouraged us to save and reconstruct social democracy and to bring its refreshed promise to all the citizens of our shared Europe, to a Europe committed to an ever-deepening democracy.

I wish the L.S.E. the great future it deserves, built on its great founding principles to which we are all indebted and to which George Bernard Shaw contributed as an Irishman moving between our two islands, committed to justice and change, and recognising, in the life and the work, no borders to intellect or moral purpose.


text:
The Role of the University at a time of Intellectual Crisis

A Chancellor, Chomluadar na hOllscoile—

Cuireann sé áthas orm bheith anseo libh inniu agus táim thar a bheith buíoch daoibh as an chuireadh a thug sibh dom chun an onóir seo a ghlacadh.

I wish to thank the, you Chancellor and your colleagues for your conferring of an Honorary Doctorate of Laws on me as Uachtarán na hÉireann and I thank Professor Jim Browne, Vice-Chancellor and President of NUIG for his warm and generous remarks.

I have the warmest feelings towards Ollscoil Náisúnta na hÉireann — the National University of Ireland — and of course, formerly UCG. It has been a core part of my life as student and as a university teacher.

At the age of 19 while I was working in the ESB in I walked past its walls and I remember how some of us, then in different occupations, agitated for an evening degree course at what was then UCG now NUIG.

Some years later the walls came down and in so many of the constituent parts of the National University other barriers, too, have been removed. Great credit has been earned by those who have facilitated access.

The UCG of the 1960s was a fairly intimate experience. The relatively small numbers meant that it was possible to know and socialize with, not only those with whom one shared subjects, but with students from other faculties. The warmth of the university experience was as important as its formal purpose agus gach ball de Chomhairle Teachta na MacLeinn bhí aithne pearsanta againn ni h-amhain ar a chéile ach ar lion mhór daltai de na cumainn agus na clubainní spóirt.

Later as a university teacher I saw, too, the challenge that university life away from home presented to some. Within the vortex of success and failure, the expectations of self and parents lay, however, the beauty of knowledge and discovery formally or serendipitously encountered.

There was a commitment to teaching in UCG and, within the limits of resources, to patient and demanding research. When I look back I have come to value, too, even that small component of eccentricity that comes from prolonged concentration on a topic or a text.

The life of the university societies, too, was vigorous, be it in debating in and, drama, theatre, music or sport. It emphasises for me the importance of universities as communities of learning, teaching, disputation and personal and social development. Is it not as important to experience the development of the self and one's connection to citizenship and history as it is to become a useful unit in a consuming culture? Universities function within a culture and how they negotiate that relationship defines their atmosphere, their ethos.

That warmth of a community of learning has been, I feel at times, put under threat from the underestimated aggression that comes with a surrounding culture of extreme individualism.

It was a privilege to have been a university teacher at UCG. To recall the atmosphere of the late sixties, when many of us began, is a source for me of the greatest pleasure. I value the friendship of surviving colleagues and I miss the companionship of those who have passed on. I salute those who taught in Irish and English, who made a university that resonated of an ancient language and yet had an international reputation.

Universities are inextricably linked to their location and their times. Dá bhárr san mar a dhúirt mé bhí cúram ar leith i dtaoibh an Gaeilge lárnach i saoil UCG. Regionalism was becoming a topic of public debate and I remember the debate we had in UCG at the end of the sixties about extramural studies, initially about the very concept of universities being involved in general adult education and then, when this had been resolved, the excitement of our trips as young teachers that got us south as far as, north to , eastwards to.

In all of this we, as university teachers, were conscious of having something to share, a commitment to learning that might make us as university teachers useful in, among other things, debunking some of the bogus expertise directed at, what was assumed to be, uncomprehending citizens, in the early days of the emergence of a technocratic society.

I instance this not out of nostalgia but as a part of a necessary reflection on what our universities might be in the future as sources of original, creative, and emancipatory scholarship in the humanities and science.

The National University of Ireland finds itself, at the moment, in the most challenging of times. It is obviously a, a crisis that is not abstract in its form or its consequences—as expectations are shattered, exclusions from real citizenship created through poverty, unemployment, and all of the insecurity that flows from fear of losing one's home, loss of loved ones to unanticipated emigration, and a bewildering confusion as to self-worth.

The crisis is, however, also an intellectual one. Decades of have given way to decades influenced by the theories of such as, to unrestrained market dominance. A new dominant, largely uncontested paradigm has emerged. That paradigm has consequences for all institutions including universities. It is a paradigm that makes assumptions and demands as to the connection between scholarship, politics, economy, and society. It has fed off and encouraged, I suggest, an individualism without responsibility. It not only asserts a rationality for markets but, in policy terms, has delivered markets without regulation.

As a consequence, the public world is now a space of contestation. It is a space that sets what is democratic in tension with what is unaccountable.

Much ground has been lost in terms of the public space, the public world, the shared essential space of an independent people free to participate and change their circumstances, to imagine their future, be it in Ireland, Europe, or at global level.

Intellectuals are challenged, I believe now, to a moral choice—to drift into, be part of, a consensus that accepts a failed paradigm of life and economy—or to offer, or seek to recover, the possibility of alternative futures. And were universities not special places—the citizens of the future may ask—for the generation of alternatives in science, culture, and philosophy?

The universities have a great challenge in the questions that are posed now—questions that are beyond ones of a narrow utility.

Are the universities to be allowed and will they seek the space, the capacity, the community of scholarship, the quiet moments of reflection necessary to challenge, for example, paradigms of the connection between economy and society, ethics and morality, democratic discourse and authoritarian imposition that have failed, and drawing on their rich university tradition—at its best moments of disputation and discourse—offer alternatives that offer a stable present and a democratic, liberating and sustainable future?

There is now I believe an intellectual crisis that is far more serious than the economic one which fills the papers, dominates the programmes in our media. Such a crisis has arisen before at times of great or impending change.

When, the great 19th century social theorist, responded to the events of his time in the second half of the 19th century, it was a time of change in forms of empire, creating transitions, the response to which would be dominated by technocratic thinking. Weber proposed a commitment to rationality as the key building block of the future. He sought to save as much as possible of the rationalist heritage of a previous century but at the same time introduce something new, but beyond logic, intuition, and religious sentiment. He critiqued the excesses of both and. Yet even then, Weber saw the dangers of the potential abuse of that which would be claimed to be rational. He spoke of the threat of a spring that would not beckon with its promise of new life, but would deliver instead the threat of a winter of icy cold. He prophesied an iron cage of bureaucracy within which conformity would be demanded to that which no longer recognised its original moral or reasonable purpose.

He was writing at a time when technocratic rationality had succeeded reason as the central concept in the political writings. A century earlier, reason had been central in 's "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". Weber could not have envisaged the consequences of the journey intellectual thought would make from reason to rationality, but then on to calculable rationality, and finally, in our own time, to the speculative gambling that is at the heart of so much global misery, with its view of those humans who share our fragile planet—not as citizens—but as rational choice maximizing consumers.

as Weber foretold. For example, we have arrived at quite widespread acceptance by policy makers of a proposition rejected by the majority of serious economic historians—that markets are rational. This, on occasion, leads to the suggestion that it is people who are irrational, the markets rational. That public, for whom, wrote that economics are too complex, it is suggested, require something other than the direction of elected governments. They must be forced to compliance with technocratic demands, for which there is frequently scant scholarly support and, needless to say, no mandate. This represents a challenge to democracy itself, I suggest, and to the scholarship that supports it. The mediating institutions are losing authority and the prospect of raw conflict increases all over the world as language, words without emancipatory force, give ground to what is unaccountable but global.

Neither is the intellectual crisis of our times simply a problem for Irish universities. When one of Europe's foremost public intellectuals,, writes of the fragility of the , I feel he is referring to the contest in Europe that is now there for the public world. Social Europe was born as a concept in response to the legacy of war and social misery. It was connected to a democratic discourse.

As social Europe as a project is undermined by the of ever more aspects of social life, as European, the strongest in the world, is monetized—it is clear we have arrived at such a crisis now as great, or greater than, that faced by the previous generation, or political and social theorists at the end of the 19th century. It is a challenge for all of us to craft a response. I believe that an Irish university response that is critically open to originality in theory and research, committed to in teaching, has a great opportunity to make a European, even global, contribution of substance; that Ireland can be the hub of original, critical thought and a promoter of its application through new models of connection between science, technology, administration, and society; that our best contribution might be to issue an invitation to come and think with us, be original, in Ireland.

Independent thought, from home and abroad, and scholarly engagement with our current circumstances are crucial.

A paradigm drawn from the fiction of rational markets, I humbly suggest, needs not only to be let go—it needs to be replaced by a scholarship that is genuinely emancipatory, centred on originality rather than imitation—one that, for example, restores the unity between the sciences and culture in their common human curiosity, discovery, and celebration of the life of the mind.

Following, I believe of course that utopian alternatives must be accompanied by a praxis that is envisaged and I suggest one that is applicable within, and in the context of, institutions. I do not claim a space for abstract grand theory at the cost of middle range theories or policies that have immediate or short term application.

Dear colleagues, it is in the winter we can see the bare trunks of trees, the encroachments of that which threatens the growth of our spring. We need to use a sharp gaze in our intellectual winter to prepare for our spring—a spring that I remain certain is possible for us and for those with whom we share a vulnerable world.

In recent times, we have paid a heavy price for unfettered speculative accumulation, for light regulation for the global consequences of what followed acceptance of amendments to the in the U.S., an act that had its origins in responding to the, that sought to ensure it would never happen again. The amendments released a flood of virtual financial products across the world. To that, many countries, including our own, added their own speculative bubble.

The architects of these developments frequently invoked, and found, intellectuals willing to support them—intellectuals who frequently drew on the prestige of a university for authority.

When I look back now at those subjects which I taught at NUIG and abroad—political science and sociology—subjects which, in so many ways, emerged from the late 19th century of, , , , and others, I am struck by the urgency in the approach of such theorists, in their day, to the social change of their times, and the effect their writings had. As 40 years ago wrote, it was a time of rejection of positivism, an attempt to incorporate consciousness in social theory but, above all, theorists responded to the urgency of the charges that were unfolding.

In response to two World Wars that followed the reconstruction of 19th century Europe, its new relations with a world it had previously dominated within the model of empire, led to the application of strategies to address unemployment and poverty, to the recognition of the importance of health and education. There was an intellectual debate, one that offered and contested democratic options.

The mid-20th century constituted an atmosphere where social capital emerged and mediated conflict. The 20th century saw, too, a public debate about the role of the State, the rights of the individual and social policy, of the balance between these areas.

In succeeding decades, political philosophy and social theory gave way to issues of administration, and more and more pressure came on universities and scholars to prove their relevance within a hegemony version of the connection between society and economy, one that demanded a consensus on, not merely the desirability of economic growth, but of singular limited versions of economy. Analysis of the role of the State faded and gave way to applied studies, in an administrative sense, of the State's actions. The values based on solidarity, interdependency, shared vulnerability, community, gave way to a discourse of lifestyle and individual consumption.

I find Weber's nightmare of a rationality—that in time would counter the original purposes of institutions, that would morph into an irrational form, incapable of adjustment to change internally or externally—difficult to reject as an account of the modern period. As the Canadian philosopher put it—we are drifting to unfreedom.

Internationally, too, the context for universities has been changing. As parliaments weakened at home, an ever more volatile, global, financial world was emerging, one that was unaccountable, at best amoral, in its demands and consequences.

The new technology meant that speculative capital could move in real time. At international level, while for a brief moment, such as at the birth of the, it seemed that international monetary and economic matters might be handled in an accountable way. Such a moment quickly disappeared, never to return. Yet the need for such remains, is urgent, and requires rearticulation.

For those of us, then, who have had the privilege of being university teachers, those who remain, the university is, and remains I suggest, a space from which new futures have always emerged and must do so again. The ethos of independent scholarship is what delivers a previous scholarship's achievements into the present and challenges that scholarship for renewal and replacement.

I admire the singular dedication of researchers, the sacrifice they make, but I also value the importance of the teams that are necessary for co-operative achievements in the sciences, and the time fundamental research takes. At the same time, I believe that the is an unnecessary price that has been paid for the hegemony of a particular moment in the history of European scholarship, a moment of hubris that divided culture and science.

It is time to recover the unities of scholarship, to strike out for originality, seek as comparative standards the great moments of intellectual work from around the world, from the to the present. That, I suggest, might be our most valuable European contribution, one that will be valued by future generations.

As subjects are re-cast, unities can be restored, and we should consider 's suggestion that it is in the interstices between subjects that the most exciting intellectual work happens.

There is not, for example, any better future for economics as a subject and discipline than as political economy within a system of culture.

To you Chancellor, colleagues and distinguished guests, I suggest that the universities and those who labour within them are crucial in the struggle for the recovery of the public world, for the emergence of truly emancipatory paradigms of policy and research. It is not merely a case of connecting the currency, the economy and, the people; it is about recovering the right to pose such important questions as did in his time—what might we know, what should we do, what may we hope?

As the newly elected President of our country, I am very conscious that for the first time in many years young people now graduating from college are faced with very uncertain futures.

I indicated at my inauguration that I plan to hold a number of Presidency seminars which will hopefully throw light on how our country has made choices spiritually, morally, ethically since the turn of the century and, in the course of these seminars, I hope to explore ways which might help our country find new paths once again. It is my intention that the first of these seminars will focus on our young people and will explore relevant issues such as education, as well as focusing on issues of participation, employment, emigration, and mental health. I would hope that the second seminar will deal with the importance of ethics in every aspect of our social lives. It is with humility I suggested that I wanted the ninth presidency to be, above all else, a presidency of ideas.

The seminar on ethics will review the sources of ethics in different cultures and contexts. It will seek to challenge the fatalism of bogus inevitabilities and the drift to an unfreedom that is so evident.

To weather the storm currently assailing our country, we will need to have confidence in our capacity as a nation, in our wherever they may be, to overcome the current problems and to begin again with a vision of the potential that can be realised if we can draw on our strengths, na féidireachtaí gan teorainn as I called them in my inaugural speech. To navigate successfully through today's troubled, uncertain, and probably uncharted, waters—now, more than ever before—we need vision, foresight, and bold strategies. Now, more than ever, an original and confident education system is needed, to help us to achieve our social and economic objectives and to place us on a sustainable footing.

It therefore gives me great pleasure to be standing here before you today to receive this Doctorate in Laws from the National University of Ireland, a body which I know shares my belief in the true value of education and its capacity to deliver a creative consciousness and a participatory citizenship in a real.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.


text:
Michael D. Higgins' Inaugural Address

Muintir na hÉireann and friends of Ireland at home and abroad, there can be no greater honour than to have been elected Uachtarán na hÉireann—. I thank you the people of Ireland for the honour you have bestowed upon me and I accept and appreciate the great responsibilities of that office.

Citizens of Ireland, you have chosen me to be your ninth President, to represent you at home and abroad, and to serve as a symbol of an Irishness of which we can all be proud, an Irishness which is carried by every citizen and which we must recall and forge anew together. I enter the ninth Presidency with a sense of humility, but also with confidence in the great capacity of our people, the people of Ireland, not only to transcend but to realise all of the wonderful possibilities that I believe await us in the years ahead.

And I wish to acknowledge the immense contribution of those who have previously served in this office, particularly the two great women who have immediately preceded me. They have made contributions that developed our consciousness of human rights, inclusion, and the important task of deepening and sustaining peace within and between communities in every part of our Island. It is work I will endeavour to continue and build upon.

As your President, I am grateful for the extent of the support, the strong mandate you have given me. I also realise the challenges that I face, and that we face together, in closing a chapter that has left us fragile as an economy, but most of all wounded as a society, with unacceptable levels of unemployment, mortgage insecurity, collapsing property values and, most of all, many broken expectations.

During my campaign for the Presidency, I encountered that pain particularly among the most vulnerable of our people. However, I also recognise the will of all of our people to move beyond anger, frustration or cynicism and to draw on our shared strengths, to close the chapter on that which has failed, that which has not been the best version of ourselves as a people, and open a new chapter based on a different version of our Irishness. It will require a transition in our political thinking, in our view of the public world, in our institutions, and most difficult of all, perhaps, in our consciousness.

In making that transformation, it is necessary to move past the assumptions which have failed us and to work together for such a different set of values as will enable us to build a sustainable social economy and a society which is profoundly ethical and inclusive, a society and a state which will restore trust and confidence at home and act as a worthy symbol of Irishness abroad, inviting relationships of respect and co-operation across the world. We must seek to build together an active, inclusive citizenship based on participation, equality, respect for all and the flowering of creativity in all its forms. A confident people is our hope, a people at ease with itself, a people that grasps the deep meaning of the proverb ní neart go cur le chéile—our strength lies in our common weal—our social solidarity.

''Sin iad mór-théamaí na hUachtaránachta atá curtha romham agam, agus mé lán-dóchasach go bhfuilimid ar tháirseach ré nua d'Éirinn agus d'Éireannaigh, sa bhaile agus i gcéin. Ré nua ina mbeidh bunluacha na cothroime agus an chirt, agus spiorad na cruthaíochta, faoi bhláth: poblacht, a mbeidh Éireannaigh de gach aicme agus traidisiún bródúil aisti.''
 * [Translation from : These are the major themes of my Presidency that I have set before me, and I am fully confident that we are on the threshold of a new era for Ireland and Irish people, at home and abroad. A new era in which the fundamental values of fairness and justice, and spirit of creativity are flourishing: a republic of which Irish people of all classes may be proud.]

My Presidency will be a Presidency of transformation, recognising and building on the many positive initiatives already under way in communities, in the economy, and in individual and collective efforts throughout our land. It will be a Presidency that celebrates all of our possibilities. It will seek to be of assistance and encouragement to investment and job creation, to innovation and original thinking—a Presidency of ideas—recognising and open to new paradigms of thought and action. It will aspire to turn the best of ideas into living realities for all of our people, realising our limitless possibilities—ár feidireachtaí gan teorainn.

In implementing the mandate you have given me, I will seek to achieve an inclusive citizenship where every citizen participates and everyone is treated with respect. I will highlight and support initiatives for inclusion across Ireland and also make it a priority to visit and to support the participation of the most excluded in our society, including those in institutional care. I will champion creative communities who are bringing about positive change at local level by giving recognition to their achievements on the national stage.

I believe that when we encourage the seedbed of creativity in our communities and ensure that each child and adult has the opportunity for creative expression, we also lay the groundwork for sustainable employment in the creative industries and enrich our social, cultural, and economic development. In promoting inclusion and creativity, I will be inviting all citizens, of all ages, to make their own imaginative and practical contribution to the shaping of our shared future. Active citizenship requires the will and the opportunity to participate at every level and in every way—to be the arrow, not the target.

Next year  is 75 years old and a Constitutional Convention is planned by Government. As President, I encourage all citizens, of all ages, at home and abroad, to take the opportunity of engaging with this important review as an opportunity to reflect on where we have come from and how we might see ourselves into the future.

During my Presidency, I also intend to hold a number of Presidency Seminars which may reflect and explore themes important to our shared life, yet separate and wider than legislative demand, themes such as the restoration of trust in our institutions, the ethical connection between our economy and society, the future of a Europe built on peace, social solidarity, and sustainability. The first of these seminars will focus on being young in Ireland. It will address issues of participation, education, employment, emigration, and mental health. I hope also that the seminars during the next seven years might encompass consideration of global issues, stressing the importance of the ethical connection between politics, economy, development, and society.

In preparing for my Presidency, I recognise that our long struggle for freedom has produced a people who believe in the right of the individual mind to see the world in its own way and indeed that individual innovation and independence of mind has given Ireland many distinguished contributions in culture, science, and technology, often insufficiently celebrated. However, in more recent years, we saw the rise of a different kind of individualism—closer to an egotism based on purely material considerations—that tended to value the worth of a person in terms of the accumulation of wealth rather then their fundamental dignity. That was our loss, the source, in part, of our present difficulties. Now it is time to turn to an older wisdom that, while respecting material comfort and security as a basic right of all, also recognises that many of the most valuable things in life cannot be measured.

Our successes, after all, in the eyes of so many in the world, have been in the cultural and spiritual areas—in our humanitarian, peace-building, and human rights work—in our literature, art, drama and song—and in how that drama and song have helped us cope with adversity, soothed the very pain which they describe so well, and opened the space for new possibilities. Our arts celebrate the people talking, singing, dancing and ultimately communing with each other. This is what meant when he said that: “Ireland without her people means nothing to me”. Connolly took pride in the past but, of course, felt that those who excessively worshipped that past were sometimes seeking to escape from the struggle and challenge of the present. He believed that Ireland was a work in progress, a country still to be fully imagined and invented—and that the future was exhilarating precisely in the sense that it was not fully knowable, measurable. The demands and the rewards of building a real and inclusive in its fullest sense remains as a challenge for us all, but it is one we should embrace together.

A decade of commemorations lies ahead—a decade that will require us to honestly explore and reflect on key episodes in our modern history as a nation; that will require us to draw on the ethics and politics of memory in such a way as will enable us not only to be sensitive to differing and incomplete versions of that history, but also to remain open to the making of reconciliation or to the acceptance of different versions of aspects and events of memory, if we are required.

A common future, shared future built on the spirit of co-operation, the collective will and real participation in every aspect of the public world is achievable and I believe we can achieve it together. In our rich heritage some of our richest moments have been those that turned towards the future and a sense of what might be possible. It is that which brought us to. It is that which has enabled us to overcome adversity and it is that which will enable us to transcend and celebrate the real Republic which is ours for the making. Every age, after all, must have its own aisling and dream of a better, kinder, happier, shared world.

''Ní díomas ach dóchas a bheidh ag teastáil uainn ins na blianta dúshlánacha atá amach romhainn. Dóchas as ár n-oighreacht shaibhir, as ár ndúchas iolrach; dóchas as ár n-acmhainn samhlaíochta agus cruthaíochta; as an daonnacht choiteann a fáisceadh as stair chasta ár muintire i ngach cúinne d'Éirinn.''
 * [Translation: We will need not arrogance but hope in the challenging years ahead of us. Hope from our rich inheritance, our diverse heritage; hope from our capacity for imagination and creativity; from the common humanity wrought from the complex history of our people in every corner of Ireland.]

It is my wish to be a President for all of the Irish at home and abroad. We Irish have been a people for a great part of our history. The circumstances that have impelled, and that continue to impel, many citizens to seek employment and a better life elsewhere, are not ordained by some mysterious hand of fate. They challenge our capacity to create a sustainable and prosperous economy and an inspiring model of the. We, in our time, must address the real circumstances that generate involuntary emigration, and resolve that in the years ahead we will strive with all our energy and intellect, with mind and heart, to create an Ireland which our young people do not feel they have to leave and to which our emigrants, or their children, may wish, in time, to return to work and live in dignity and prosperity. I invite all of the Irish, wherever they may be across the world, to become involved with us in that task of remaking our economy and society.

''Agus, ár muintir atá lonnaithe i dtíortha ar fuaid an domhain mhóir, bíodh a gcás, a gcearta agus a ngaiscí siúd ar ár n-aire againn. Tá rian a saothair agus a ndíograis fágtha acu ar gach tír inar lonnaigh siad: ar an gcultúr polaitíochta agus creidimh, sna réimsí oideachais agus sláinte, san eolaíocht, san saol gnó agus sna h-ealaíona, na h-ealaíona ar fad: agus i ngluaiseachtaí éagsúla ar son chearta daonna agus dínit an duine. Ní suarach iad na gaiscí seo mar thaisce inspioráide dúinne sa bhaile.''
 * [Translation: And, as for our people who are located in countries throughout the world, whatever their case, we care about their rights and their achievements. The mark of their work and dedication is imprinted on every country where they settled: on the political and religious culture, in the fields of education and health, in science, in the business world and the arts, all of the arts: and in various movements for human rights and human dignity. These achievements are not negligible as a repository of inspiration for us at home.]

Let these, then, be our shared hopes, our common purpose, as we face the future. We Irish are a creative, resourceful, talented, and warm people, with a firm sense of common decency and justice. Let us address the next seven years with hope and courage as we work together to build the future for our country—an Ireland we can all feel part of, an Ireland we all feel proud of.

Muintir na hÉireann, ar aghaidh linn le chéile leis an dóchas agus an misneach sin a bhí is ba choir a bheith i gcónaí in ár gcroí.
 * [Translation: People of Ireland, let us move forward together with the hope and the courage that was, and that should always be, in our hearts.]'

title: Michael D. Higgins' Inaugural Address


text:
Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/479

Rh bringing his results before the Geological Society of London. In 1864 he was appointed assistant in the museum of that society. In 1867 he went on an exploring expedition to Nicaragua and Venezuela. In 1871 he was appointed to the mining school established by the Cleveland iron masters first at Darlington and then at Redcar. Here he made a special study of the Lias and its fossils, in conjunction with the Rev. J. F. Blake, and the results were published in an important work, The Yorkshire Lias (1876), in which the life-history of the strata was first worked out in detail. In 1875 Tate was appointed professor of natural science in the university of Adelaide, South Australia. He now gave especial attention to the recent and tertiary mollusca of Australia. He was the chief founder of the Royal Society of South Australia, and was in 1893 president of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science. He died at Adelaide on the 20th of September 1901.  TATI, a district of British South Africa forming, geographically, the S.W. corner of Matabeleland, but attached administratively to the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Area about 2500 sq. m. The railway from Cape Town to Bulawayo crosses the territory with a station at Francistown, the principal settlement. Francistown stands 3254 ft. above the sea and is 126 m. S.W. of Bulawayo by rail. The town of Tati, on the river of that name, is 18 m. S.E. of Shashi river railway station. Tati owes its importance to the presence of gold, first discovered by the German traveller, Karl Mauch, in 1864. Mining began in 1868, but it was not until 1895 that work on a large scale was undertaken, and it has been frequently interrupted since that date. The chief mine is the Monarch, situated by the railway. A concession to work the gold-mines, and for other purposes, was obtained in 1887 by Mr S. H. Edwards from Lobengula, the Matabele chief, and the mining rights are vested in a company, thereafter formed, called the Tati Concessions Company. (See and .)  TATIAN (2nd cent. ), Christian apologist, missionary and heretic. Such knowledge as we have of his life is derived from (1) his own Oratio ad Graecos (see § 3); (2) Irenaeus, Adv. Haereses, i. 28, i.; (3) Rhodon, quoted in Eusebius’s ''Hist. Eccl. v. 13, 1; (4) Clement of Alexandria, Strom. i. 1, 11; (5) Eusebius, Chronicon anno A.D. 171; (6) Epiphanius, Panarion'', i. 3, 46. Convenient collections of these passages may be found in E. Schwartz’s Tatiani Oratio ad Graecos, Texte und Untersuchungen, iv. 1, pp. 51–55; and in A. Harnack’s Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur, i. pp. 485–96. From these data the following outline of his life can be reconstructed. He was a Syrian (Clem. Alex. and Epiphanius) born in Mesopotamia (Or. 42) and educated in Greek learning, in which he became proficient (Or. i. and 42). He was initiated into the Mysteries, though into which is not stated (Or. 29), but after this became acquainted with the Old Testament, and was converted to Christianity. He then went to Rome, where he was a hearer of Justin, and together with the latter incurred the enmity of a certain philosopher Crescens. As this fact is mentioned both in Justin's Apology and in Tatian’s Oratio ad Graecos, and the Apology can be dated with fair security about A.D. 152 (see ), the conversion of Tatian must have been before this date. After the death of Justin he became a heretic—according to Eusebius’s Chronicon in 173. Among his pupils were Rhodon, and perhaps Apelles (see Victorinus Reat. schol. 44, in Ep. Hieronymi ad Avitum, ep. 124) and Clement of Alexandria (Storm. i. 1, 11). He made a missionary journey to the East and worked in Cilicia and Pisidia, using the Syrian Antioch as the centre of his efforts (Epiphan.).

According to Epiphanius, Tatian went to the East after the death of Justin (c. 165), and then became heretical, and Eusebius states that he was recognized as heretical in 173. Zahn (Forschungen zur Geschichte des Kanons, i.) and most writers accept this as in the main correct; it is generally thought that his heresy was recognized in Rome, and it is suggested that this was the reason why he returned to the East. The statement in Epiphanius is capable of being interpreted in this sense, and whereas Tatian was always regarded as heretical in the West, he seems to have been unsuspected in the East. This fact, however, does more than support the suggestion that Tatian’s heresy was recognized before he left Rome: it throws some doubt on the theory that after being turned out of the Church in Rome he worked as a missionary in the East without being suspected. Harnack (Texte und Untersuchungen, i. 1, pp. 196 ff.) once suggested that the missionary work in the East belongs to an earlier period, and that Tatian left Rome and returned to it between his first arrival and the death of Justin Martyr. But in his Chronologie, i. pp. 284 ff., he has withdrawn this, and it is probably too hypothetical; it is, however, the only serious effort to deal with the difficulty, which if not insoluble is at least unsolved.

The Heresy of Tatian.—As in the case of most heresies, we have only the partisan statements of opponents. Everything is therefore open to some doubt, but the following points seem fairly certain. The heresy which Tatian either founded or adopted was that of the Encratites. Their main doctrines were the evil nature of matter, an absolute forbidding of marriage, abstinence from wine and perhaps from meat. It would also seem that Tatian believed in the existence of aeons, one of whom was the Demiurge of the world. He denied the salvation of Adam. It is also stated that in his celebration of the Mysteries (i..e. the Eucharist) he used only water (see Tertullian, De Jejun. 15; Hippolytus, Philos., 8, 4, 16 and 10, 18; Jerome in Amos ii. 12 and Iren., Adv. Haer., i. 28, iii. 23).

Writings.—According to Eusebius, Tatian wrote many books (Hist. Eccl., iv. 29); of these the names of the following have survived:—(1) (mentioned in Or., 15); (2)  (mentioned in Or., 16); (3) ; (4)  (Eus., v. 13, 1—a quotation from Rhodon) an attempt to deal with the contradictions to be found in the Bible; (? 5)  (mentioned in Or., 40 as a book which Tatian intended to write, but there is no evidence that he carried his plan into effect; (6)  (Clem. Alex., Strom., iii. 12, 8); (7) The Diatessaron; (? 8) a recension of the Pauline epistles (Eus., ''Hist. Eccl.'', iv. 29) says that he was accused of producing a of the epistles so as to smooth the grammar, and in Jerome’s preface to St Paul’s Epistle to Titus it is stated that he rejected some of the epistles, but not that to Titus. Of these books only two—the Diatessaron and the  are still extant.

The (Oratio ad Graecos) belongs to Tatian’s Catholic period. He has the double purpose in view of exposing the weakness of the pagan view of the universe and of commending the Christian explanation. For the former purpose he seems to have made use of an already existent book, perhaps the of Oenomaus of Gadara, a Syrian who wrote in the time of Hadrian. The same source seems to have been used by Minucius Felix and Tertullian, and Eusebius in his ''Praep. Evan.'', v. 19, quotes some other fragments of the work of Oenomaus. The main argument employed is an exposition of the contradictions, absurdities and immoralities of Greek mythology. A special attack is made on the doctrine of Fate or Necessity. Tatian insists that man is a free agent: that his sins and the consequent evils in the world are the result of free choice, and that the same free choice can remedy the evil.

His positive explanation of the universe is rather difficult to follow. He lays great stress on the Logos doctrine; all good is to be found in union with the Logos; ah evil is in matter or in “spirits of a material nature”; the origin of evil in the world seems to be the choice of the latter rather than of the former; and redemption consists in the reverse process. But the choice of evil was not made only by man but by angels, who by their evil choice became the demons, that is, the gods of the heathen world. Both men and angels will be judged at the end of the world, when the good will receive again the immortality which was lost through sin, and the wicked will receive death through punishment with immortality. Tatian does not deny the stories of the Greek mythology—indeed he protests against any attempt to allegorize it—but he insists that these stories are the record of the deeds of demons and have no religious value. The truth of his views he rests, rather strangely, on the argument that Moses, the writer of the Pentateuch, lived long before Homer, whom he regards as the earliest Greek religious writer, and to prove this he quotes a series of synchronisms, which were made use of by

title: Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/479


text: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tati

title: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Tati


text:
Page:Diary of a Nobody.djvu/182

 CHAPTER XVII.

20.—To-day being the day on which Daisy Mutlar and Mr. Murray Posh are to be married, Lupin has gone with a friend to spend the day at Gravesend. Lupin has been much cut-up over the affair, although he declares that he is glad it is off. I wish he would not go to so many music-halls, but one dare not say anything to him about it. At the present moment he irritates me by singing all over the house some nonsense about "What's the matter with Gladstone? He's all right! What's the matter with Lupin? He's all right!" I don't think either of them is. In the evening Gowing called, and the chief topic of conversation was Daisy's marriage to Murray Posh. I said: "I was glad the matter was at an end, as Daisy would only have made a fool of Lupin." Gowing, with his usual good taste, said: "Oh, Master Lupin can make a fool 180

title: Page:Diary of a Nobody.djvu/182


text:
Page:Diary of a Nobody.djvu/183

THE DIARY OF A NOBODY. of himself without any assistance." Carrie very properly resented this, and Gowing had sufficient sense to say he was sorry.

21.—To-day I shall conclude my diary, for it is one of the happiest days of my life. My great dream of the last few weeks—in fact, of many years—has been realised. This morning came a letter from Mr. Perkupp, asking me to take Lupin down to the office with me. I went to Lupin's room; poor fellow, he seemed very pale, and said he had a bad headache. He had come back yesterday from Gravesend, where he spent part of the day in a small boat on the water, having been mad enough to neglect to take his overcoat with him. I showed him Mr. Perkupp's letter, and he got up as quickly as possible. I begged of him not to put on his fast-coloured clothes and ties, but to dress in something black or quiet-looking.

Carrie was all of a tremble when she read the letter, and all she could keep on saying was: "Oh, I do hope it will be all right." For myself, I could scarcely eat any breakfast. Lupin came down dressed quietly, and looking a perfect gentleman, except that his face was rather yellow. Carrie, by way of encouragement said: "You do look nice, Lupin." Lupin replied: "Yes, it's a good make-up, isn't it? 181

title: Page:Diary of a Nobody.djvu/183


text:
Page:Diary of a Nobody.djvu/184

THE DIARY OF A NOBODY. A regular-downright-respectable-funereal-first-class-City-firm-junior-clerk." He laughed rather ironically.

In the hall I heard a great noise, and also Lupin shouting to Sarah to fetch down his old hat. I went into the passage, and found Lupin in a fury, kicking and smashing a new tall hat. I said: "Lupin, my boy, what are you doing? How wicked of you! Some poor fellow would be glad to have it." Lupin replied: "I would not insult any poor fellow by giving it to him."

When he had gone outside, I picked up the battered hat, and saw inside "Posh's Patent." Poor Lupin! I can forgive him. It seemed hours before we reached the office. Mr. Perkupp sent for Lupin, who was with him nearly an hour. He returned, as I thought, crestfallen in appearance. I said: "Well, Lupin, how about Mr. Perkupp?" Lupin commenced his song: "What's the matter with Perkupp? He's all right!" I felt instinctively my boy was engaged. I went to Mr. Perkupp, but I could not speak. He said: "Well, Mr. Pooter, what is it?" I must have looked a fool, for all I could say was: "Mr. Perkupp, you are a good man." He looked at me for a moment, and said: "No, Mr. Pooter, you are the good man; and we'll see if we cannot get your son to follow such an excellent example." I said: "Mr. 182

title: Page:Diary of a Nobody.djvu/184