Opinion of these quotes about Irish immigrants

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've not added the date, the author or the location. See if you can guess them. Also, I've only included bits of the extract in question. Note that I'm certainly not endorsing what's written below, I'm posting it because it's interesting.

"The Irish have also brought with them filth and intemperance. Dirty habits, which have become second nature to the Irish, do no great harm in the countryside where the population is scattered. On the other hand, the dangerous situation which develops when such habits are practised among the crowded population of big cities, must arouse feelings of apprehension and disgust. Among the nasty habits which the Irish have brought with them is that of emptying all their filth and refuse out of the front door, and this causes filthy puddles and heaps of garbage to accumulate and so a whole district is rapidly polluted. The Irish have brought with them the habit of building pigsties immediately adjacent to their houses. If that is not possible, the Irishman allows the pig to shares his own sleeping quarters. This new, abnormal method of rearing livestock in the large towns is entirely of Irish origin. The Irishman loves his pig as much as the Arab loves his horse. The only difference is that the Irishman sells his pig when it is fat enough for slaughter. The Irishman eats and sleeps with his pig, the children play with the pig, ride on its back and roll about in the filth with it."

"Two things make life supportable to the Irishman - his whiskey and his lively, happy-go-lucky disposition. He drinks himself into a state of brutish intoxication. Everything combines to drive the Irishman to drink - his light-hearted temperament, akin to that of the Mediterranean peoples, his coarseness, which drags him virtually to the level of a savage, his contempt for normal human pleasures, which he is incapable of appreciating because of his degraded condition, combined with his dirty habits and his abject poverty. The temptation is so great, that he cannot resist it; whenever he has any money in his pocket he tosses it down his throat in the form of whiskey. What else is to be expected?"

"All occupations which demand little or no skill are open to the Irish. Of course, the dissolute, volatile, and drunken Irish are unfitted for tasks which demand either a regular apprenticeship or that degree of skill which can only be secured by a long period of unremitting application to one's job."

"...so it is not surprising that a social class already degraded by industrialisation and its immediate consequences should be still further degraded by having to live alongside and compete with the uncivilised Irish".

[minionofmidas]

The Irishman loves his pig as much as the Arab loves his horse.

The second to fourth quote are just racist and nothing else, of course.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The second to fourth quote are just racist and nothing else, of course.

I don't disagree, but can you work out who wrote it? (half a chance you might know already though)

[minionofmidas]

The second to fourth quote are just racist and nothing else, of course.

I don't disagree, but can you work out who wrote it?

No.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The second to fourth quote are just racist and nothing else, of course.

I don't disagree, but can you work out who wrote it?

No.

Would it help if I said that the location [of the author's observations] was almost certainly the Little Ireland district in Manchester and that it was written in the middle of the 19th century?

[minionofmidas]

The second to fourth quote are just racist and nothing else, of course.

I don't disagree, but can you work out who wrote it?

No.

Would it help if I said that the location [of the author's observations] was almost certainly the Little Ireland district in Manchester and that it was written in the middle of the 19th century?

No, that would just make me think it was written by Friedrich Engels.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The second to fourth quote are just racist and nothing else, of course.

I don't disagree, but can you work out who wrote it?

No.

Would it help if I said that the location [of the author's observations] was almost certainly the Little Ireland district in Manchester and that it was written in the middle of the 19th century?

No, that would just make me think it was written by Friedrich Engels.

Which would, actually, be the right answer.

[A18]

Google Book Search is your friend.

Oddly, this comes from the same Engels who—in the same work, no less!—tells us that another author's "description is a perfectly true one, if we overlook his exaggerated and prejudiced defamation of the Irish national character."

[minionofmidas]

Google Book Search is your friend.

Oddly, this comes from the same Engels who—in the same work, no less!—tells us that another author's "description is a perfectly true one, if we overlook his exaggerated and prejudiced defamation of the Irish national character."

Makes you wonder what that author's views were...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Google Book Search is your friend.

Oddly, this comes from the same Engels who—in the same work, no less!—tells us that another author's "description is a perfectly true one, if we overlook his exaggerated and prejudiced defamation of the Irish national character."

Makes you wonder what that author's views were...

That author was Thomas Carlyle...

[Ban my account ffs!]

I think the quotes say a lot more about the English of the period than they do about the Irish.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Google Book Search is your friend.

Oddly, this comes from the same Engels who—in the same work, no less!—tells us that another author's "description is a perfectly true one, if we overlook his exaggerated and prejudiced defamation of the Irish national character."

Makes you wonder what that author's views were...

That author was Thomas Carlyle...

Engels is correct on that case.

Anyway my guess would have been MacAuley, though the Manchester thing did sort of give it away. I have a copy lying around somewhere waiting to be read of Marx & Engels' notes on the history of Ireland...

[minionofmidas]

I think the quotes say a lot more about the English of the period than they do about the Irish.

The English? The text was written by a German.
Mind you, his sources certainly included middle-class Englishmen.

[opebo]

Very amusing and wittily written little essays!

It is funny but many of my favorite writers are Germans translated.. Kafka, Mann, etc.