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Postscript The Tocqueville that emerged from his Irish notes and letters was both an attractive and a complicated figure. He was at once a moralist, who was full of righteous indignation at man's inhumanity to man, and a social scientist, who was an astute connoisseur of the problems of political power. As a moralist, he was deeply disturbed by the Irish peasant's ambivalence towards the law, shocked by the appalling poverty of the people, understanding of their hatred for their feckless aristocracy, and touched by their simple and pious attachment to the faith of their fathers. He was also a compassionate, tolerant, and humane man, who had a nice, if slightly ironic, sense of humor. His humanity, moreover, was enhanced by a sincere love of liberty that was ever his morning and evening star. Indeed, the moralist dimension of Tocqueville was self-evident in his notes. As a social scientist, of course, Tocqueville was also deeply interested in and concerned about these problems presented in Ireland by the law, poverty, aristocracy, and religion, but to the social scientist, as distinguished from the moralist, they posed difficulties to be solved rather than wrongs to be righted. Because so many of Tocqueville's notes were in the form of interviews and conversations, the questions he set, as an apparently detached and neutral observer, had a tendency to mask his own opinions. A careful reading of his notes, however, and especially a closer examination of his questions, reveals a great deal not only about Tocqueville's preconceptions and assumptions with regard to Ireland, but also about what he thought was required in 1835 to solve its problems. If the Irish aristocracy, for example, was doomed as a class, as Tocqueville certainly believed it was, the real question for the future was who was to inherit the Irish political earth? Ifthe Irish democracy, moreover, was that aristocracy's inevitable residuary legatee, what was to be done about the apparently all-powerful political influence of the Roman Catholic clergy with that democracy? Tocqueville was certainly aware of the dangers of a clerical political ascendancy in Ireland. After dining in company, for example, with a number of bishops and clergy in Carlow, Tocqueville had observed that they Postscript appeared to be "clearly as much the heads of a party as the representatives of the church" (episode 12), and several days later, after a long conversation about religion with the bishop of Ossory, William Kinsella, in Kilkenny, he had shrewdly noted, "I believe that he is very sincere in wishing that the church shall not be part of the state, but I wonder if he does not think, at bottom, that the state would do well enough as part of the church" (episode 21). What Tocqueville thought should be done, however, about moderating the very considerable political power and influence of the Irish clergy, as distinguished from the dangers the clergy posed to the state, is a more difficult question because the answer has more to be inferred from his questions that induced from his observations. He did, however , early indicate that his own mind was still not made up on the question of the "voluntary remuneration" of the Irish clergy when he observed that this proposition would have to be well examined in the light of a "state of affairs altogether particular to Ireland" (episode I4). Tocqueville only then became somewhat more explicit when he asked the Protestant and fanatically anti-Catholic barrister, J. P. Prendergast, in Kilkenny, the leading question, "Do you not think the best way to loosen the ties that unite the people to the clergy would be to give the latter a salary from the state?" (episode 25). When this question is taken in conjunction with several others he also put to Prendergast, it becomes obvious that Tocqueville had, during his six weeks' stay in Ireland, progressively come to view the Irish situation as truly alarming. "Do you not think," he also asked Prendergast, "if this country separated from England, you would immediately have a violent revolution ?" Prendergast replied, of course, that he did not doubt it, and Tocqueville then asked, "Do you think that the temporary dictatorship of England would not be a blessing?"-to which Prendergast agreed. The following day Tocqueville posed the same question, with an interesting gloss, to John George, another Protestant barrister of more Liberal professions. "Do you not think," he asked George, "that a temporary dictatorship exercised in a firm and enlightened manner, like...

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