Then the writer grows
political, and says bitterly, that he "envied not the Union flag the
position it occupied as it flaunted in triumph from the chimney top of
the soup kitchen; it was its natural and most meet position; the rule of
which it is the emblem has brought our country to require soup
kitchens,--and no more fitting ornament could adorn their tops." All the
parade he could, he says, have borne, but what he considered
indefensible was the exhibition of some hundreds of Irish beggars "to
demonstrate what ravening hunger will make the image of God submit
to."[250] "His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant was there," wrote the
_Evening Packet_ (a Conservative journal); "the ladies Ponsonby and many
other fair and delicate creatures assembled; there were earls and
countesses, and lords and generals, and colonels and commissioners, and
clergymen and doctors; for, reader, it was a _gala day_,--a _grand
gala_." The provincial press dealt with the proceedings in the same
spirit.
Like many other great men, M. Soyer, in a short time, found that Ireland
was his "difficulty;" so he resolved, somewhat suddenly, it would
appear, to return to the more congenial atmosphere of the Reform Club.
Pages:
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711