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/WO 
 
 "THUMPING ENGLISH LIES." 
 
 Froude's Slanders 
 
 IRELAND AND IRISHMEN. 
 
 A Course of Lectures Delivered by him in Association Hall, New York, during 
 October and November, 1872. 
 
 WITH 
 
 PREFACE AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 Col. JAS. E. McGEE, 
 
 AND 
 
 WENDELL PHILLIPS'S VIEWS OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 New York : 
 J. A. McGEE, PUBLISHER, 
 
 No. J BARCLAY STREET. 
 1872. 
 
-J. 
 
 J>f\ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 
 
 J. A. McGEE, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 PREVIOUS to the arrival of James Anthony 
 Froude among us, his advent was heralded 
 by sundry paragraphs in the New York papers, 
 which, from their uniform laudatory tone and strong 
 family resemblance, induced many sceptical people 
 to attribute them to that gentleman himself or to 
 some person deeply in his counsels. His subsequent 
 appearance in New York in the character of a lec- 
 turer on Irish history was the signal for renewed 
 encomiums on the -'distinguished historian," and 
 leading articles even were devoted by a portion of 
 the press to prove that he was all that was good, 
 great, and illustrious in modem historical literature. 
 The American people were congratulated on being 
 at last in a position to obtain a full and clear expo- 
 sition of the history of the quarrel between England 
 and Ireland, and to hear an elaborate disquisition on 
 
Preface 
 
 the causes that led to the disagreement between the 
 two countries, with a philosophic summary of the 
 mutual relations between the conquerors and the. 
 vanquished. All this was to be done by one, said 
 the New York Times, " who has studied Irish his- 
 tory as no other man has." That ubiquitous but 
 inquisitive class of Bohemians, the interviewers, 
 speedily surrounded the eminent historian and 
 embryo lecturer, and reproduced in their respective 
 journals his most trivial remarks equally with his 
 most profound observations; a prominent publish- 
 ing house, probably with a keen eye to business, 
 feted him magnificently ; while that portion of our 
 mercantile community which is composed of Eng- 
 lishmen or the agents of English houses fawned 
 on him with a humility which argued more for 
 their patriotism or 'prudence than for fheir man- 
 hood. Everything, in fact, was done to excite 
 public curiosity, and thus, at least, obtain for the 
 distinguished visitor a large audience and a good 
 reception on the occasion of his first lecture. 
 
 Froude himself assisted in this combined move- 
 ment in his favor. In his speech at the Scribner 
 banquet, he was moderate, nay, even modest, in his 
 speech, and very conciliatory in his manner; while 
 
Preface. 5 
 
 to the various gentlemen of the press who called 
 upon him for an expression of his views he was 
 courteous, communicative, and apparently candid. 
 He had no motive whatever, he assured them, in 
 coming to. the United States to lecture but a desire 
 to do justice to the people of Ireland, whose many 
 good qualities he admired, and whose wrongs at 
 the hands of England he strongly deprecated. He 
 had lived thirty years in Ireland ; knew the people 
 well, and admired them ; had enjoyed their hospi- 
 tality, and had even been, during a long period of 
 illness, nursed with unusual tenderness by an hum- 
 ble peasant of the West ; with many other remarks 
 of the same sort, and, as it has since prove'd, all of 
 equal sincerity. 
 
 Still, it seemed strange to many that a man who 
 had gained an enviable reputation of a certain sort 
 at home by maligning the ill-starred Mary Queen 
 of Scots, and by becoming the eulogist of her mur- 
 derer Elizabeth, and of the infamous Cecil, should 
 have come so far to advocate the cause of a people 
 who had suffered so much and so terribly from the 
 persecutions of the latter personages, their aiders and 
 abettors ; that an Englishman whose sole title to 
 fame rested on his strong English and Protestant 
 
6 . Preface. 
 
 prejudices should be at the pains of leaving his 
 country and the society of his friends to vindicate 
 the character and defend the good name of Catho- 
 lic Ireland. Thus they wondered; but they said 
 little, preferring to await events. 
 
 These came soon enough, justifying and more 
 than justifying all their prognostications. The very 
 first lecture which Froude delivered in Association 
 Hall in this city, before a large and what is called 
 a fashionable audience, clearly demonstrated that 
 what the newspapers had said in favor of his learn- 
 ing and impartiality, and all that he himself had 
 averred of his love for the people of Ireland, and his 
 intention to defend the justice and truthfulness of 
 their cause, and arraign England before the bar of 
 the American people, were mere shams, lures to 
 attract the public attention of a people the vast 
 majority of whom he well knew have ever been 
 and still are in full sympathy with the oppressed of 
 all nations, and particularly with the Irish. The 
 subject selected on that occasion was " The Con- 
 quest of Ireland by the Normans," but the text of 
 the discourse bore little affinity to the title. The 
 condition of the country anterior to 1169, the long 
 Danish wars that had depopulated the country, im- 
 
Preface. 7 
 
 poverished the people, desolated the churches, dis- 
 organized the hierarchy and clergy, and demoral- 
 ized the people were not even alluded to. Ireland 
 was, through no fault of hers, then in a state of great 
 distress, and some dissension doubtless prevailed 
 among her local rulers; and Mr. Froude's main 
 object seemed to have been to prove that Henry 
 II. and his filibusteros were, therefore, justified in 
 attempting to subdue her. Now, it follows that if 
 this point be well taken, as the lawyers say, the 
 whole case is admitted; for, if England was justi- 
 fied in invading Ireland on account of the latter's 
 internal dissensions, she is justified in holding her 
 as Ion? as these dissensions exist; and as the for- 
 mer can and will always create these dissensions, 
 she is justified in holding Ireland for ever. This is 
 the matter in a nutshell, and it was evidently Froude's 
 plea. But this is simply the argument of the robber ; 
 certainly not the doctrine of a Christian or of an 
 enlightened and philosophic historian, as Mr. 
 Froude's friends claim him to be. But the lecturer 
 had another point to make — an assault on the 
 papacy ; and he of course introduced that much-dis- 
 puted and very inefficacious document known as 
 Pope Adrian's Bull. His first effort was, in fact, but 
 
8 Preface. 
 
 the prelude to a general attack on Irish nationality 
 as such, and on Catholics generally, no matter of 
 what nation. 
 
 His strategy was fully disclosed in his subsequent 
 four lectures on " Ireland Under the Tudors," " The 
 Penal Laws," " Grattan and Curran," and on " The 
 Present Condition of Ireland " ; for even in his 
 very last appearance before a New York audience, 
 on the same subjects collectively, he wanders from 
 Ireland and England to the revolt of the Nether- 
 lands, and the alleged cruelties of the Duke d'Alva, 
 to the massacre of S. Bartholomew in Paris, and 
 even to Rome itself. In all his harangues, for it 
 would be too great a stretch of courtesy to call 
 them lectures, he carefully evades the main question 
 at issue : Have the people of Ireland always had a 
 right to govern themselves ? and has not England 
 invaded those rights — persistently, cruelly, and un- 
 justly deprived the people of their own laws, soil, 
 and polity ? and how has it been done ? He dwells, 
 it is true, on the wars of the Anglo-Irish lords of 
 the Pale and the native Irish chiefs, the prolonged 
 struggle of the great O'Neil with successive Eng- 
 lish armies, the uprising of 1641, the confedera- 
 tion of Kilkenny, the contest between James II. 
 
Preface. g 
 
 and William of Orange, the efforts of the Catholics 
 in the eighteenth century to evade the bloody pe- 
 nal code, and the poverty and destitution of the 
 people of the present century • but only to misstate 
 facts, deduce inferences not justified by history, and 
 draw conclusions totally absurd, if they were not so 
 gravely false. 
 
 Because the Irish fought for their existence 
 in detail, Henry and Elizabeth were justified in 
 slaughtering them indiscriminately ; the Scotch 
 Presbyterians who purchased the confiscated land 
 of Ulster tolerated the presence and even employed 
 as menials a few of the rightful proprietors of the 
 soil, consequently the sons of those so robbed had 
 no right to regain their own lands as against the 
 Undertakers aforesaid ; Cromwell, the hero of Wex- 
 ford and Drogheda, on account of hanging two of 
 his Roundhead soldiers for stealing a hen, was a 
 model of justice and clemency; the penal laws, the 
 most infamous code the modern world has yet seen, 
 were not so bad after all, as they were the natural 
 consequence of the stubborn and unreasonable re- 
 sistance of the people to the will of the sovereign, 
 who only wanted them to give up their religion ; 
 the Union was necessary for the welfare of Eng- 
 
io Preface. 
 
 land and a fortiori right ; and the terrible famine ot 
 '46, '47, '48, was simply the consequence of the too 
 rapid increase of the population ! This was the gist 
 of his argument. 
 
 Mr. Froude had respectable and, generally, in- 
 telligent audiences ; but, as far as related to Ireland, 
 their knowledge was less than of the interior of 
 Africa. Ireland is not fashionable, you know, and 
 then she is so Romish. They laughed heartily at 
 his stale jokes, believed his wholesale charges 
 against the character of the Irish people, and be- 
 came " wild with enthusiasm," we are told, when he 
 made a hit at the Catholic Church. The lecturer, 
 though neither a witty nor a brilliant man, had little 
 difficulty in seeing through their foibles. He ridi- 
 culed the Irish judiciously, maligned them profusely, 
 and now and then threw in a scrap of bigotry, by 
 way of seasoning, to keep their attention awake, 
 while he steadily pursued his chief design, which 
 was to convince or persuade them that all the com- 
 plaints of the Irish people against England are ill- 
 founded ; that England is and ever has been the 
 benefactor of her victim ; and, as a corollary, the 
 American people should turn a deaf ear to all the 
 accusations of the oppressed nation as causeless and 
 
Preface. 1 1 
 
 unworthy serious consideration. This was the ver- 
 tebra of his whole discourse. 
 
 Now, will any one say that all this was done 
 without a deep, far-seeing purpose ? That a man 
 like Froude, so deeply engaged in important literary 
 labors in London, will leave his club, his coteries, 
 and his beloved State Paper Office, and spend 
 months in a foreign country, for the sake of a few 
 dollars or a slight increase of notoriety, is hardly 
 credible, and we certainly must be excused if we 
 do not believe it. He is but one of the many 
 whom England has been and is employing to carry 
 out her policy toward the exiled Irish on this con. 
 tinent. Her vengeance is not bounded by the 
 Atlantic. There is not an English official in this re- 
 public, from the British Minister at Washington to 
 the lowest understrapper at the smallest Consulate 
 in the Union, who has not a lie or a sneer for the 
 Irish. It comes as natural to them as to draw 
 their salaries ; in fact, the two operations are more 
 intimately connected than many people suppose. 
 
 We do not know that Mr. Froude derives any 
 pecuniary emolument from his lectures here other 
 than that received from the sale of tickets ; but if, 
 on his return, he does not become the recipient of 
 
1 2 . Preface. 
 
 some token of gratitude from his Government, we 
 shall be very much disappointed. There are a 
 great many ways in a monarchy of rewarding a du- 
 tiful subject besides paying him money. Honors, 
 titles, social recognition in higher society than that 
 in which he is accustomed to move, influence in 
 Downing Street for his poor relations, and a thou- 
 sand other inducements we might mention, are held 
 out by the English authorities to those who serve 
 them well ; and, though Mr. Froude may not have 
 succeeded to any appreciable extent in dividing the 
 mass of Americans from their fellow-citizens of Irish 
 birth, his coolness, audacity, and zeal deserved suc- 
 cess. 
 
 This gentleman may not be either a veracious or 
 a profound historian, but he wields a facile pen 
 dextrously, and has more twists and turns mentally 
 than the famous labyrinth of Crete is said to have 
 had topographically. Among others, he has a 
 fashion of uttering a falsehood, then denying it, 
 then mitigating it by another, and again, when de- 
 tected, offering on impossible terms to prove he is 
 guiltless. Doubtless he will issue his late lectures 
 on Ireland in book form, and, as he must, on reflec- 
 tion, be ashamed of many of the statements made 
 
Preface, 13 
 
 by him to please his Association Hall audience, he 
 may possibly seek to slun over, explain, or totally 
 eliminate them, we think it well to present them to 
 the public at the earliest moment as taken down by 
 the best reporters at the time of utterance, so that 
 all may be able to judge by comparison how little 
 faith James Anthony Froude has in his own asser- 
 tions or in his own knowledge of the true facts of 
 Irish history. J. E. M. 
 
 New York, December, 187a. 
 
Froudfs First Lecture. 
 
 DELIVERED OCTOBER 16, 1872. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 I have come to this country to address 
 you on the history of the connection be- 
 tween two islands in both of which I 
 presume that you feel an interest, and I 
 cannot better introduce the subject than 
 by reading to you a letter once written by 
 an American Ambassador to an English 
 Prime Minister. The occasion was the Irish 
 Rebellion of 1798, when seventy Irish 
 gentlemen of birth and fortune who had 
 been secretly concerned in the insurrection 
 were in the hands of the Government. 
 
1 8 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 They had been engaged in correspondence 
 with the Directory of the French Republic. 
 They had been betrayed by their own 
 confederates, as so many times Irish con- 
 spirators have been betrayed, and they 
 were banished from Ireland on condition 
 that they should retire to some country 
 then at peace with Great Britain ; and it 
 was understood that they meant to seek an 
 asylum in the United States. Your repre- 
 sentative in England then was Mr. Rufus 
 King, a name honorably known through 
 more than one generation of American 
 statesmen. There survives yet a letter of 
 remonstrance addressed by Mr. King to 
 our Prime Minister, in which he urges 
 England to debar these seventy gentlemen 
 from making the United States their place 
 of retreat, dreading such an acquisition to 
 any nation. 
 
 The lecturer read the letter, a quaintly 
 worded epistle, and made these comments : 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 19 
 
 I suppose that if an ambassador from this 
 country should write such a letter in these 
 days he would not have a very long tenure 
 of office. It is now the pride of both 
 England and America to offer a safe 
 asylum to any patriot or any refugee from 
 persecution and misfortune. 
 
 It is needless to say that the entreaty of 
 Mr. King was not acted upon, and that 
 most of these gentlemen died quiet citizens 
 of the United States, and America has been 
 since a land of promise to the Irish nation. 
 The Irishman at the present day looks to 
 America as his natural protector. Thus 
 she has become, whether for good or evil, 
 a party to Irish politics. She is the 
 Supreme Court of Appeal in the Irish 
 imagination, and if ever the hatchet is to be 
 buried,, if ever Celtic Protestant and Irish 
 Catholic are to end their quarrel in a 
 general reconciliation, it will be when this 
 country has pronounced that Ireland ought 
 
20 Fronde s Lectures, 
 
 to be satisfied and has no longer a griev- 
 ance which legislation can remove. 
 
 I am not here to talk commonplaces 
 about English tyranny or Irish acrimony, 
 but the fact remains that at this day, after 
 700 years of forced connection, we are still 
 unmatched. If the votes of the Irish 
 population were taken, men for men, two- 
 thirds would ask for a separation, immedi- 
 ate and eternal. It stands confessed before 
 all the world that after all our efforts we 
 have not made friends. Seven centuries of 
 of injury divide us. They desire us simply 
 to take ourselves away, and leave them to 
 manage their own affairs in their own way 
 as they best please. When we have clear- 
 ed out and trouble them no more, they will 
 then be willing, perhaps, to interchange 
 civilities with us, to take our money if we 
 are pleased to lend it to them. If they 
 could leave their anchorage and float their 
 island away into the middle of the Atlantic, 
 
Froudcs Lectures. 
 
 21 
 
 I don't think we should have any right to 
 object. To have to part from a high-spirit- 
 ed and brilliant race to whom we have 
 given our laws and language, who have 
 distinguished themselves in our institutions, 
 would be a disgrace to our statesmanship ; 
 but, if the Irish persisted in it, we could not 
 deny that the experiment of a forced union 
 has been tried long enough. We should 
 be obliged then to bid them God speed. 
 
 But philosophers have not yet discover- 
 ed how to uproot the soil of Ireland, and so 
 long as England remains a great power, 
 with fleets, and navies, and commercial in- 
 terests in every corner of the world, 
 England cannot, England will not let go 
 her hold upon an island lying close under 
 her side. She cannot risk the possibility 
 of a hostile state establishing itself between 
 her and the Atlantic. She will not consent 
 either to a separation or to measures 
 designed to bring it about. Every con- 
 
22 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 9 
 
 cession which will promote the happiness 
 of the Irish people we are willing to make, 
 we are willing to volunteer ; but we cannot 
 commit political suicide. Until England is 
 beaten upon her knees, Ireland must share 
 the fortunes of the stronger country. If 
 the Irish race refuses to be reconciled to 
 us, then we must continue as we are — each 
 a thorn in the other's side — or they must 
 themselves seek another home, or else they 
 must fight for their independence, and win 
 it like men. Should they achieve such an 
 enterprise, though my duty would then be 
 to my country, and though I would strug- 
 gle to hold Ireland to its obedience, yet, as 
 a member of the great human brotherhood, 
 when it was done, I should willingly wel- 
 come them as another among the nations 
 of the earth. 
 
 But political freedom, gentlemen, is too 
 precious a jewel to be lightly owned. It is 
 not to insubordination and mutiny, it is not 
 
Fronde s Lectures, 23 
 
 to oratory and newspaper articles, that the 
 fates award the crown of national independ- 
 ence. That crown is the reward only of 
 united, persistent determination to be free 
 — a determination which flinches from no 
 danger, admits of no compromise, but 
 expresses itself in deed as well as in word. 
 
 To win independence, they must first 
 learn to obey. They must learn subordi- 
 nation and self-sacrifice. They must forget 
 their quarrels and feuds, uniting themselves 
 into one harmonious whole with a common 
 purpose. To bestow independence upon a 
 people who have never earned it is to give 
 wings to those who have never learned to 
 fly. Those who desire to be free must first 
 show that they can control themselves. 
 
 If I were to sum up in one sentence the 
 secret of Ireland's misfortunes, I should say 
 it lay in this : that while from the first she 
 has resisted England, complained of Eng- 
 land, appealed to Heaven and earth against 
 
24 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 the wrongs England has inflicted on her, 
 she has ever invited others to help her, and 
 never herself made an effective fight with 
 her own ranks. Compare the history of 
 Scotland with that of Ireland. England 
 first invaded Scotland, and endeavored to 
 incorporate it into England by force. The 
 whole Scottish people told Edward it 
 should not be. England could overrun 
 their country, build castles and garrison 
 them — she could intrigue, bribe, and threat- 
 en. The English failed. They could not 
 kill the whole people, and while the people 
 lived the people were determined to be 
 free. England found it had a wolf by the 
 throat. She could not strangle it, the 
 effort to hold it down was too exhausting 
 to be maintained, and the contest was aban- 
 doned. To-day a union exists between the 
 two, and it was effected on equal terms. 
 To-day Scotland retains her religion, all her 
 laws; the Scottish nobles remain on the soil 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 25 
 
 which they so nobly defended. Out of the 
 union of England and Scotland arose the 
 country which the world knows as Great 
 Britain. 
 
 Ireland, too, was invaded. Ireland, in- 
 stead of a narrow river and a dry marsh for 
 a frontier, had a trench of sea before her 70 
 miles across. She had a larger population 
 than Scotland, and a country no less diffi- 
 cult to be overrun ; yet the invaders fastened 
 themselves upon her soil, and she to-day re- 
 mains under the yoke of the stranger. She 
 has had no Bannockburn, she has had no 
 Bruce nor Wallace. She persists that she 
 is in chains, and she cannot break them. 
 She has all the liberty which England 
 and Scotland have. There is no country 
 in the world where a government can be 
 defied with so much immunity, and where 
 mutiny is allowed so much freedom of 
 speech, as in Ireland at the present day. 
 Yet she makes nothing of it. 
 
26 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 What is the explanation of the difference ? 
 Are the Irish less brave than the Scots? 
 They have proved their courage on a hun- 
 dred battle-fields. Was Ireland occupied 
 in such overwhelming force that resistance 
 was impossible? Forty thousand British 
 were defeated at Bannockburn. For five 
 centuries the English available force in Ire- 
 land rarely exceeded 1,500 men. The Irish 
 were forever quarrelling among themselves. 
 The Scots were together. A Douglas 
 cared more for his country than himself. 
 An O'Donneli would take the English side 
 if they would help him to a slice of his 
 neighbor's land. An old proverb says: 
 " When you find an Irishman on the spit, 
 you can always find two other Irishmen to 
 turn it." O'Donneli was no exception. 
 He it was who, when reproached for selling 
 his country, said he thanked God that he 
 had a country to sell ! 
 
 No people ever allowed performance to 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 27 
 
 limp so miserably behind promise. Look 
 at the history of Irish Rebellions, and you 
 read that the temptation of revenge upon 
 the hereditary foe has been stronger than 
 the hatred of the national foe. Who does 
 not know, if familiar at all with the history 
 of Ireland, that, if accident set Ireland free 
 to-morrow, the first step after a declaration 
 of independence would be a declaration of 
 civil war? But until Ireland is united in 
 its determination to have liberty or die, 
 independence would be a curse to her. 
 England has only one wish for Ireland, and 
 that is to give her all the advantages and 
 blessings she can. Separation we cannot 
 agree to. All else we yield to, and I ap- 
 peal to American opinion to assist us in de- 
 termining what more can we do than has 
 been already done. The English and Irish 
 are divided by a cloud of mutual distrust, 
 and cannot understand each other. I be- 
 lieve you wish well to England. The Eng- 
 
28 Fronde s Lectures, 
 
 lish-speaking race are connected by ties 
 which cannot exist between any other 
 countries. Ireland lies between us. On 
 one or other or on both of us her future 
 fate depends. America may form the 
 intermediate element with which a combi- 
 nation hitherto impossible may be at last 
 effected. 
 
 At any rate, England will never be able 
 to resist the expressed opinion of America 
 as to the character of her relations with 
 Ireland. Let America pronounce any 
 judgment with the impartial authority of a 
 mutual friend, such a judgment will carry 
 a weight with it which we shall be unable 
 to oppose. I don't believe we shall desire 
 to oppose it. If we do, a declaration of 
 opinion in the name of justice will be likely, 
 sooner or later, in some shape or another, 
 at one time or another, to convert itself 
 into force. On the other hand, when the 
 voice of America tells the Irishman that 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 29 
 
 justice has been done to him ; when he 
 learns from a quarter which he cannot sus- 
 pect that if he wants independence he must 
 win it for himself, and that he must rely in 
 future upon his own industry, I believe the 
 Irishman will then be satisfied. 
 
 But the Irishman has been called a rebel 
 and whipped ; he has been patted on the 
 back, and told that no poor country since 
 the world began has been treated as his 
 country has been. There is no remedy for 
 him, it has been said, but to manage him by 
 Irish ideas. Let us have the one thing 
 which has never yet been tried for him — 
 steady, impartial justice. The Irishman re- 
 quires to be ruled by just laws — laws which 
 shall defend the weak from the strong, and 
 the poor from the rich. If he is incorri- 
 gible, then I will give him up ; but the ex 
 periment remains to be tried. A move 
 ment in this direction has lately been 
 begun. The Irish Land Act of Mr. Glad- 
 
30 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 stone is the most righteous measure which 
 has been passed for thirteen centuries. It 
 is no easy matter to touch in old countries 
 what are called the laws of property, and 
 we are compelled to move slowly. I don't 
 know how you find it here, gentlemen, but 
 free institutions have a tendency in most 
 countries to throw quite as much power as 
 is good for them into the hands of the rich. 
 That, at least, is our experience. The rich 
 man finds the world so pleasant to him that 
 he thinks it well enough, and hardly cares 
 to have it do better, especially if he is 
 obliged to put his hand in his own pocket. 
 But we have made a beginning, and we 
 invite you to help us out with the problem. 
 You need not tell us to come out of Ire- 
 land, for we cannot and will not. There is 
 a case on both sides and a counter-case. 
 There are direct claims and indirect claims. 
 There are injuries which to the Irish imagi- 
 nation seem mountainous, and by us are 
 
Froude's Lectures. 31 
 
 not denied, yet can be explained, as we be- 
 lieve. 
 
 The lecturer then sketched somewhat at 
 length the wrongs of Ireland, pleading the 
 extenuations in behalf of his own country, 
 and addressing himself to his audience as 
 gracious and impartial arbitrators, inclined 
 naturally toward those who have been op- 
 pressed, and yet not unwilling to hear 
 what may be urged in the way of extenua- 
 tion. He went back to the days of the 
 Norman Conquest, when England, though 
 permeated with a strange people, retained 
 her individuality, while Ireland lost her 
 own ; and he made an amusing delin- 
 eation of the characteristics which so 
 strongly mark the Irish character, an in- 
 dulgence in which, the lecturer argued, had 
 up to this time rendered them incapable 
 of intelligent and steady self-government. 
 The superstitious legends of saints and 
 their powers came in for a share of witty 
 
32 Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 mention, and the Irish fondness for brawls 
 was not forgotten in the lecturer's sum- 
 ming up of the discouraging elements in 
 the Irish disposition. He followed the 
 history of the Normans in Ireland from 
 the time they subjugated the whole people 
 with 60,000 of their own men, and conclud- 
 ed the lecture by reading a description of 
 Ireland as it was when left to itself at the 
 close of the fifteenth century, before the 
 second period of English interposition, 
 leaving it to the audience to judge for 
 themselves whether it was for the interest 
 of humanity that Ireland should then be 
 left to enjoy her independence. 
 
Froude's Second Lecture. 
 
 DELIVERED OCTOBER 19, 1872. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 The only remark that I wish to make — 
 I trust I am not out of order in making it — 
 is that I observe a very distinguished ora- 
 tor of this city, whose name is as well 
 known across the Atlantic as it is here, and 
 whose speeches I have often myself read 
 with very great pleasure and instruction, 
 was pleased to speak of the Bull of Pope 
 Adrian, to which I alluded in my last lec- 
 ture, as " being a thundering English lie." 
 Well, if it was an English lie, it was a Nor- 
 man lie ; and I am sure Father Burke must 
 
34 
 
 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 have made that remark with very great 
 distress to himself, being as he is a Nor- 
 man, of very eminent Norman descent. 
 There is no purer blood in Ireland than 
 that of the Burkes ; and I think I can re- 
 lieve his mind about the fact of Pope Adri- 
 an's having issued the Bull. If Father 
 Burke will have the kindness to look into a 
 volume of papers lately published from the 
 archives of the Vatican by Dr. Tiner, he 
 will not find that particular Bull ; but he 
 will find a letter from his successor, in 
 which that Bull is spoken of, and dwelt 
 upon as the only basis of the authority 
 which the English exercised in Ireland. I 
 am quite sure Father Burke will have great 
 pleasure in doing that. 
 
 In my first lecture, I described the Nor- 
 man conquest of Ireland, and the final re- 
 sult of it after three centuries of universal 
 anarchy. I have now to draw your atten- 
 tion to the person of an English prince 
 
Fronde s Lecture s. 
 
 35 
 
 whom 1 have been accused of attempting 
 to whitewash — King Henry the Eighth, 
 the English Bluebeard ! It is astonishing 
 what accusations people will allow them- 
 selves to make. In this place, happily, I 
 have nothing to do with King Henry's ma- 
 trimonial relations, but have only to deal 
 with him as an English sovereign. He 
 was a hater of disorder, and he determined, 
 if possible, to end disorder in Ireland. He 
 sent the Duke of Norfolk over to invite the 
 Irish chiefs to a friendly conference. He 
 wished, he said, " to proceed with sober 
 ways and amiable persuasions founded in 
 law and reason, rather than by strength 
 and violence." He didn't mean to force 
 the Irish to submit to the English law ; still 
 less did he wish to deprive the chiefs of 
 their lands and heritages. He sought ra- 
 ther to conserve them in their own, to gain 
 their assistance in reducing Ireland to 
 quiet. They had laws of their own if they 
 
2,6 Froudes Lectin 
 
 would execute them. He <de Norfolk 
 point to them how wretched th y had 
 made their country. There corld be no 
 order and prosperity, he said, untu the sen- 
 sualities of an unbridled people were 
 brought under _e law. 
 
 In this respect, at any rate, he must be 
 allowed to have been moderate. No re- 
 monstrance could have been more gentle. 
 The next step he took was harsher. You 
 have probably heard of Irish absentees, 
 who have never gone near their estates, 
 but lived away from them, and simply oc- 
 cupied themselves in consuming the rents 
 which came. For the modern English 
 statesman there is nothing so sacred as 
 property. It was proposed, at the begin- 
 ning of the century, to attach the rents of 
 the absentees, and there was immediately a 
 great outcry all over the country ; but 
 King Henry VIII. took an entirely differ- 
 ent view. He simply in one sweep took 
 
Froudc s Lectures. 37 
 
 away, the ; ates of those gentlemen and 
 gave .hei.j to others. It was confiscate 1, 
 but confiscation of a kind I heartily wish 
 there was more of. 
 
 Neituer this, however, nor the persua- 
 sions of the Duke of Nc '^.lk produced any 
 effect upon the Irish chiefs. They pre- 
 ferred their own ways, and intended to 
 keep them. The Englishman who wrote 
 the description of Ireland I read in my 
 last lecture had stated very correctly that 
 the most deserving of the people in the 
 country were the Irish peasantry, whom 
 the chiefs were trampling on. He recom- 
 mrnded, if nothing else should serve, that 
 the peasantry should be armed, and drilled, 
 and officered, and in that condition, he 
 reasoned, they would compel their masters 
 to be just to them. I wish it had been 
 adopted. It would have been best in every 
 way, and would have amounted to the 
 establishment of an Irish police three cen- 
 
38 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 turies sooner. But it was thought too 
 violent a remedy, and was not tried. The 
 next best plan would have been to send 
 over a small English army to have acted as 
 police, to have established laws, and com- 
 pelled rich and poor to obey them. But 
 England did not like to pay taxes to main- 
 tain standing armies of this kind. The 
 Duke of Norfolk said he could no nothing 
 without a military force of some kind. So 
 King Henry was driven back to trying 
 home rule in another form. There was an 
 Earl of Kildare, the head of the house of 
 Geraldine. He was exceedingly popular 
 with the Irish people. He promised to do 
 all that was right and proper if King 
 Henry would trust the government to him, 
 and so this method was tried. But the 
 Geraldines, although in London very much 
 like other people, over in Ireland were 
 more Irish than the Irish themselves. The 
 rule of the Geraldines was simolv the rule 
 
Fronde s Lectures, 39 
 
 of Irish ideas : that every one was to do as 
 he pleased, and the stronger was to perse- 
 cute the weaker. Everything-, then, went 
 on as before. 
 
 King Henry, with all his known weakness, 
 was a choleric sort of gentleman at times. 
 "By heaven!" he seemed to say, " if this 
 people will not learn their lesson, I must 
 try the whip with them." Kildare was 
 arrested and sent to London, and a few 
 companies were sent over to Ireland. And 
 now there comes one of the episodes of 
 which you read. Lord Thomas Fitzgerald, 
 son of Kildare, as soon as he heard of his 
 father's arrest, broke out in insurrection, 
 and called upon all to help him. He began 
 with the murder of an archbishop. There 
 was a great deal of satisfaction at that, and 
 everybody was in arms, and there was 
 shouting and hurrahing, and burning of 
 villages, and massacring of people, and all 
 the usual accompaniments of an insurrec- 
 
40 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 tion of this kind. It lasted until the 
 English Governor landed with a few hun- 
 dred soldiers, and then the patriot army 
 just melted away like a snowdrift. Lord 
 Thomas, with five of his uncles, was exe- 
 cuted for this business. When a nobleman 
 is sent to the scaffold, the eyes of all men 
 gush out like rivers, and the shout of in- 
 dignation rises. The meaner multitude 
 may perish by thousands, and their memo- 
 ry perishes with them. Mankind, truly, 
 are most absurd beings in their judgment. 
 If young lords wish to keep their heads on 
 their shoulders, they ought not to murder 
 archbishops. But the time had come when 
 a new element was about to be introduced 
 into the quarrel between England and 
 Ireland. 
 
 To certain minds, especially the Teutonic 
 mind, the Catholic religion had become 
 incredible. Before the Norman Conquest. 
 Ireland's devotion to Popery had been at. 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 41 
 
 least lukewarm. Henry VIII., when he 
 broke with the Pope, had left Mass stand- 
 ing, so that the religious services remained 
 unaltered. The Irish bishops — I am speak- 
 ing now of the bishops of Henry VII I. 's 
 time, and not of Elizabeth's time — for- 
 swore the oath and took the oath to the 
 King without any difficulty. That they 
 afterward took the oath to Elizabeth is an 
 entire illusion, but it is perfectly certain 
 that they did for Henry VIII. There 
 were many hundreds of convents and 
 abbeys in Ireland. The King dissolved 
 them, and the lands were granted away to 
 the Irish fiefs. Irish religion, until that 
 time, had set singularly easy on both chief 
 and prelate. Some of the bishops had large 
 families. They were a lax set; very unlike 
 the venerable gentlemen whom we are 
 accustomed to see in such stations. Be- 
 tween them and the laity there was no 
 special affection. The young Lord Kil- 
 
42 Frondes Lectures. 
 
 dare, a grandson of the Earl, in one of his 
 follies, burned a cathedral. He was called 
 to account afterward. " Be Jasus ! my 
 lords," he explained, " I could not have 
 done it, but I thought his grace the arch- 
 bishop was inside !" A change was com- 
 ing in these matters, but it had not come 
 in the days of Henry VIII. The chiefs, 
 after the Geraldine Rebellion, seemed in- 
 clined to be on good terms with him. A 
 grand parliament was held in Dublin. All 
 seemed well disposed toward England. 
 Up to this time, the Pope had been the 
 actual sovereign of Ireland, and the kings 
 of England had ruled it only as the Pope's 
 vicegerents. At this parliament, the Pope 
 was thrown overboard. The King of Eng- 
 land was declared henceforward the King 
 of Ireland. The Celtic leaders came into 
 power. 
 
 For some reason or other, King Henry 
 VIII. seemed to please the Irish. It 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 43 
 
 is hard to say why, unless it was because 
 they felt that he meant well by them. He 
 showed no desire to seize the lands of Irish 
 owners and distribute them to adventurers, 
 and as long as he lived Ireland showed no 
 disposition to separate itself from England. 
 
 Whence, then, came the change which 
 followed immediately afterward ? It arose 
 from two causes. The habits of centuries 
 cannot be changed in a generation, and the 
 quarrel with the Pope was followed by the 
 birth of the Protestant religion. 
 
 Henry VIII. had not altered religion, 
 strictly speaking. He had left the Mass 
 standing, and, as far as the body of the 
 people were concerned either in England or 
 Ireland, the only true difference they ex- 
 perienced was that their affairs, whatever 
 they were, could be settled at home with- 
 out their having the trouble and expense 
 of sending counsel or other people to re- 
 present them at Rome. The immediate 
 
44 Frondes Lectures. 
 
 successor of King Henry declared war 
 against the Mass. A ritual which had been 
 of universal use for many centuries was 
 abolished by a stroke of the pen. The pro- 
 tector, Somerset, and his companions con- 
 sidered that they had a mission to extirpate 
 idolatry. Churches were plundered, and 
 sacred desks were desecrated and turned 
 down. Every object of superstition was 
 insulted with ostentatious profanity. They 
 went too fast even for England, and drove 
 Ireland entirely wild. They taught her the 
 fatal lesson that unless she supported the 
 Pope she would have to part with religion 
 as well. At this critical moment, the mind 
 of Ireland thus received an irrevocable 
 twist. She was threatened with a revolu- 
 tion, social as well as spiritual, and Irish 
 ideas and traditions, which Henry VIII. 
 had begun to assail, linked themselves in- 
 separably with the laws of God and piety. 
 Queen Mary— " Bloody Mary "—followed 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 45 
 
 her brother, and the pendulum swung 
 violently back, and the papal supremacy 
 was restored. The creed, it was per- 
 ceived, could not stand without the Pope. 
 Ministers and bishops who had counte- 
 nanced the separation of Rome confessed 
 their errors and did penance. England was 
 restored to the bosom of her mother, and it 
 was all settled by the funeral fires of three 
 hundred men and women who were 
 burned up at the stake. Ireland furnished 
 no such martyrs, for in Ireland not a Pro- 
 testant yet existed. Those who had been 
 sent from England fled away. The peni- 
 tent Irish chiefs replaced the monks and 
 nuns, with means sufficient to support 
 them. The young Earl of Kildare came 
 back and was reinstated. The Catholic 
 reaction which was sweeping around 
 through Europe caught the Irish in its 
 stream. Ireland chose her place on the 
 Pope's side, and chose it irrevocably, and 
 
46 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 from the moment another Protestant sover- 
 eign ascended the English throne the cause 
 of the Catholic religion and the cause of 
 Irish independence became inseparably and 
 irrevocably one. 
 
 So stood the matter at the opening of 
 the reign — in some respects, I may call it 
 the great and glorious reign — of Queen 
 Elizabeth. It was then that England be- 
 came the ardent champion of the Reforma- 
 tion, burst her narrow limits, and became a 
 great power in the world. It was then — 
 but I must not linger over the brilliant 
 aspect of the period. I have to do with 
 the land on which the sun of all that glory 
 never shone, on which the shadow fell 
 darker from the lustre elsewhere, black as 
 polar midnight. 
 
 I shall endeavor to be just to all parties. 
 Elizabeth never sought the dangers thrust 
 upon her. Your own great historian, 
 whom I have been proud to call my friend, 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 47 
 
 Mr. Motley, rather blames her backward- 
 ness than finds fault with her overalacrity. 
 While the Catholics speak of her as a 
 scourge and tyrant, Mr. Motley quarrels 
 with her lukewarmness. In a quarrel so 
 desperate, I think she did well in hesitating 
 to take up the sword. When she did draw 
 it, she didn't sheathe it again until the star of 
 liberty, which at one time was threatening 
 to come down in blood, became fixed for 
 ever in the northern heavens never again 
 to grow pale. That Ireland, having thrown 
 in her fortune in the losing side, should 
 share in the defeat and suffer from it was 
 inevitable. Would that I could say that 
 Elizabeth's conduct toward that country 
 had been as upright as her cause was just, 
 and that she had borrowed no poisoned ar- 
 rows from the quiver of her adversaries ! 
 In the main, I insist that she desired only 
 good to Ireland. Elizabeth came to the 
 throne, and found she had to keen in order 
 
48 .Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 two furious faetions who, if she let them 
 loose, desired nothing so much as to tear 
 each other to pieces. She returned, as far 
 as the altered circumstances would allow, 
 to her father's policy. She sent the Pope 
 about his business again, and established 
 the English Episcopal Church, with the 
 Apostolic succession, as it is called, and a 
 liturgy so like the Mass that the clergy at 
 home now use it who differ from the Catho- 
 lics in nothing except the papal suprem- 
 acy ; while it was elastic enough for Pro- 
 testants to use it in a sense of their own. It 
 was sometimes asked, Why could not Eliza- 
 beth have left her subjects to choose their 
 own religion — left religion free, as we say 
 now? Simply because it was impossible. 
 The Roman Catholic religion it was impos- 
 sible for her to tolerate, because the 
 Roman Catholic religion declared her a 
 public enemy, and never ceased from the 
 moment she came to the throne to use 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 49 
 
 every possible means to drive her from it. 
 If she had allowed Catholics and Protest- 
 ants to have their separate chapels, it 
 would have been found in England as in 
 France that there would have been civil 
 war and fighting in every town and village. 
 They say something may perhaps be urged 
 for this policy in England where they were 
 half Protestants, but why did she try it in 
 Ireland, where there were no Protestants ? 
 It is easier to blame her for what she did 
 than to say precisely what she ought to 
 have done. 
 
 The Irish ^ pretend that if she had left 
 their religion alone they would have re- 
 mained good subjects. She would have 
 been an exceedingly sanguine person if she 
 had trusted to any such expectation. So 
 long as England was Protestant, Ireland, 
 whether she was disturbed in the matter of 
 her religion or not, would* have been equal- 
 ly on the side of Elizabeth's enemies ; and 
 
50 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 it is to be understood that the idea of gov- 
 erning Ireland by a province is repugnant 
 altogether to English principles. What- 
 ever forms of freedom England possessed, 
 it was essential that Ireland should have 
 the same forms of freedom. Ireland was 
 to be governed constitutionally, it was said, 
 by her own Lords and Commons. The 
 bishops formed an actual majority in the 
 House of Upper Lords of Ireland, and to 
 have allowed them to remain there without 
 requiring from them so much as an oath to 
 the sovereign would have been to hand 
 over Ireland to her deadly enemies. 
 
 What, then, did Elizabeth ' do ? These 
 Bishops had taken the oath of supremacy 
 to her father. She required them to take 
 it again. It would have been well if she 
 had gone no further. It is idle to pass laws 
 which cannot be executed ; but it was the 
 will and custom that every important act 
 of Parliament passed in England should be 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 51 
 
 passed in the Irish Parliament also. It 
 was thought probable if a difference was 
 made it would give the English Catholics a 
 ground for complaining. So the English 
 liturgy and prayer-book were formally 
 extended to Ireland, the Mass was pro- 
 hibited, and the service of the Established 
 Church was set up in its place. That was 
 the law, but what was the execution of it? 
 At the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, it 
 was not executed at all, and there was not 
 the slightest attempt to do it. Nine-tenths 
 of the Bishops refused to take the oath. 
 She removed two of them, and left all the 
 rest to govern their dioceses in their own 
 way. Having established Protestantism, 
 she ought to have sent over Protestant 
 clergymen and a handful of Protestant 
 colonists, but she did nothing of the kind. 
 For appearance' sake, she had a Protestant 
 law, but left it to be laughed at like boys 
 at a scare-crow. Money Elizabeth was 
 
52 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 exceedingly chary of giving to any pur- 
 pose. Thus Ireland was abandoned to 
 anarclry. Enough had been done to exas- 
 perate the Catholics ; nothing had been 
 done to weaken them. Elizabeth ordered 
 her viceroys to avoid exciting the pre- 
 judices of the people — to keep things 
 smooth. So fearful was she of giving 
 offence that for the first thirty years of her 
 reign she did not establish Protestant 
 schools in the country. In fact, she showed 
 that she was afraid to meddle with Popery. 
 She wished, like her father, to reform 
 Ireland, to put down murder, and establish 
 law, order, and security. For all those 
 years, the English garrison in Ireland 
 rarely exceeded 1,500 men, and she pro- 
 voked resistance by her apparently weak 
 force. Why was this small number of 
 heretics allowed to remain in the land at all ? 
 Why didn't the Irish nation, who were 
 bound by no oath and no obligation, rise 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 53 
 
 with their sticks and pikes — for these 
 would have been sufficient — and drive 
 Elizabeth's retinue of ill-clothed, ill-paid, 
 and half-starved mercenaries into the sea ? 
 For this reason, that Ireland was not a 
 nation at all. Elizabeth understood their 
 nature only too well. She knew that they 
 hated each other too cordially to unite 
 against her in defence either of religion or 
 country ; that there was a cheap and easy 
 way to manage them by turning their 
 swords against one another. According to 
 the English Constitution, there was no 
 standing army and no organized police. 
 It was mockery to extend such a system 
 to Ireland. Elizabeth ought to have 
 established a force there answerable only 
 to the viceroy, to enforce law and establish 
 order. Four thousand men distributed 
 in garrisons would have been sufficient, 
 and the most honorable course in the long 
 run would have been the cheapest. 
 
54 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 But Elizabeth fell back on the Constitu- 
 tion. The loyal part should keep in order 
 the disloyal part. She pitted the chiefs 
 one against another. In fact, a great Irish 
 leader becoming dangerous, she bribed a 
 neighbor to make war upon him, with the 
 promise of his land. The result was per- 
 fectly horrible. The forty-five glorious 
 years of Elizabeth were to Ireland years of 
 unremitting wretchedness. 
 
 Where was then the Irish heart that 
 beats ever so true to the cause of Ireland's 
 liberty? Where was it? Let the echoes 
 answer in the war-shrieks of the Irish clans. 
 Alas ! for Ireland. She has many times 
 been found ready to betray her comrades, 
 and England never knew the plan of hiring 
 one to betray another fail. A terrible 
 record of blood and suffering follows. Mo- 
 thers and their children perished with hun- 
 ger, if not by the sword. And Elizabeth 
 wished no harm. She did not wish to 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 55 
 
 hurt a single Irish person for its own sake. 
 Englishmen undertook to settle in the 
 country to keep the peace. Elizabeth 
 would not hear of it, because she said she 
 would not countenance what she called 
 spoliation, and so the murdering went on. 
 The English soldiery, their garrisons too 
 scanty to take prisoners, finally came to 
 look upon their enemies as wild beasts 
 which they were entitled to exterminate. 
 
 The reign of Queen Elizabeth was termi- 
 nated by one of the most magnanimous 
 acts of her life. The question of strength 
 between the two countries had now been 
 tried. Three times Ireland had resolved to 
 shake off the English yoke. Three times 
 she had failed, and now she lay panting and 
 exhausted ; but the problem of a final set- 
 tlement was as far off as ever. To govern 
 Ireland required a force of sufficient 
 strength to keep the peace, and for such a 
 state of affairs there was no provision made 
 
56 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 in the English Constitution. If Ireland 
 was ever to be identified with England, if 
 the two islands were ever to be linked to- 
 gether in one common unity of purpose, 
 there was only one expedient by which 
 such a thing could be brought about. Ire- 
 land must be colonized by men of another 
 race and of another creed on whom Eng- 
 land could rely. Not men like the Nor- 
 mans, but men who would themselves set 
 an example of industry, and introduce new 
 habits. The chance to bring about what I 
 may call this new reformation offered soon 
 after Elizabeth's death. The Catholics had 
 everywhere believed that James Stuart was 
 at heart one of themselves, and that as soon 
 as he became King of England he would 
 proclaim his Catholic tendencies. James 
 had a shrewd Scotch head on his shoul- 
 ders. He had wit enough to see which 
 way the stream was running. The English 
 Catholics in their disappointment set Guy 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 57 
 
 Fawkes to blow him up. Ireland, though 
 still feeble and convalescing from her last 
 overthrow, raised her hand and struck a 
 weak and unavailing blow. Six of the best 
 counties in the North were declared for- 
 feited, and 10,000 Scotch and English fami- 
 lies were carried over to till the virgin soil 
 which until that hour had scarcely been 
 scratched by plough or spade since the 
 waters of the Deluge. 
 
 Such was the beginning of Ireland's 
 troubles. The Irish had ever been the 
 owners of their own soil, and it was a hard, 
 cruel thing to strip them of their habita- 
 tions and turn them naked into the forests. 
 At that time, there was not more than 
 600,000 people in Ireland, and there was no 
 room for the new colonists. Old Ulster, 
 the centre of this colonization system, and 
 the point where it received its first practi- 
 cal benefits, was the garden spot of the pro- 
 vinces. For thirty years, Ireland had an era 
 
58 JFroudes Lectures. 
 
 of peace. The Irish race was exhausted by 
 its struggle. Further Protestant immi- 
 grants streamed in. The Irish peasants 
 who were aliens lived side by side, ex- 
 changed hospitalities, and intermarried 
 among those who had preserved their 
 lands, holding them by English tenure, 
 recognizing the value of industry in the 
 other settlers, and preferred them as ten- 
 ants to their own people. A second Pat- 
 rick in the form of Protestantism had com- 
 pelled it to be done. 
 
 The Reformation, however complete, 
 had left on one side a great Church estab- 
 lishment, with archbishops and bishops for 
 its chief ministers, and on the other side a 
 crown and aristocracy for its support ; and 
 still again, on another side, a great English 
 nation which was Protestant in heart as 
 well as in name. Where Romanism was 
 overthrown, there remained another power 
 in a contest which was to be wasred be- 
 
\ 
 
 Fronde s Lectures. 59 
 
 tween what was called divine right and the 
 principles of justice and truth — the high 
 doctrines of which brought the Earl of 
 Strafford and Charles the Second to the 
 scaffold. This new settlement in Ulster 
 was Calvinistic. In 1636, Sir Thomas 
 Wentworth, better known as the Earl of 
 Strafford, was sent there as an exile. Straf- 
 ford was two men in one. He was the de- 
 voted servant of the monarchy and the em- 
 bodiment of the spirit that was arising in 
 England, and yet a clear-headed statesman 
 who knew that anarchy in Ireland could 
 only be held in check by English reforma- 
 tion. He saw the value of the Ulster set- 
 tlement, much as he disliked to respect the 
 materials of which it was composed. He 
 proposed to make another settlement — an 
 English settlement in the province of Kil- 
 gore, which he had hopes would contain 
 more loyal elements. He wished to 
 strengthen the English colon)', but he 
 
60 Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 assisted his friends the bishops in imprison- 
 ing the Presbyterians, and the result of this 
 policy was to make deadly enemies of 
 them. In 1639, Scotland made the first 
 move in the great civil war against the 
 king. 
 
 This brings us to the event of the Irish 
 Rebellion of 1641. The picture is so horri- 
 ble that it is only necessary to glance at its 
 leading features ; but in passing I must ask 
 you to attend for a moment to a sketch of 
 the different parties into which the Irish 
 population was at this time divided. Im- 
 migration and peace had in fifty years 
 nearly trebled the Irish population. Sir 
 William Betty, who is a most excellent au- 
 thority, claims that in 1641 there were 
 nearly a million and a half of people in Ire- 
 land — 1,200,000 Catholics, 300,000 Protest- 
 ants. Of the Protestants, 200,000 were in 
 Ulster, and they were chiefly Nonconform- 
 ists. The other 100,000 were English 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 61 
 
 gentlemen with their servants, dependants, 
 their friends, and those who had settled 
 around them, and were chiefly what we 
 call Cavaliers. There was also another 
 class, descendants of the Norman conquer- 
 ors. They were Catholics, and had trav- 
 elled as noblemen in England and on the 
 Continent, recognizing the spirit of the 
 English institutions. They wished to see 
 the English Reformation destroyed, and 
 Ireland relapse into anarchy. Such men 
 as these wished only to see the Catholic 
 religion re-established, and in other respects 
 that the country should continue as before 
 the Reformation. In English questions, 
 they were on the side of the king, and 
 were ever ready to assist him against the 
 Long Parliament. The second class of the 
 Catholics was opposed to a junction with 
 the old Irish settlers who in their own view 
 were the real owners of the land and the 
 rulers of the count r v. If the further view 
 
62 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 is taken that there was no longer an Eng- 
 lish force in Ireland that could be relied 
 upon, because every soldier was called 
 home to the civil war, and that every man 
 looked to the sword as the only means left 
 to settle the difficulty, you have the mate- 
 rials of that wild confusion that ruined the 
 peace of the country and distracted the 
 people. 
 
 The Catholic element in the Irish Parlia- 
 ment had determined to take possession of 
 the government. They held private meet- 
 ings among themselves to ascertain what 
 use they should make of the power that 
 they had given to it. Opinions differed. 
 The more moderate proposed that they 
 should declare in Parliament for Charles 
 I. against the Puritans, settle the admin- 
 istration in Dublin in the king's name, 
 depose the Puritan authorities, and then 
 send a force into England to act with 
 the Royalist army. In addition, the Irish 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 63 
 
 conceived that it would be very foolish to 
 throw away an opportunity which might 
 never return. If they took the king's side, 
 and the king got the better of the Parlia- 
 ment, the best they could expect would be 
 to be governed by the same parliamentary 
 construction. 
 
 They might perhaps recover their reli- 
 gion, but not the land in the six counties 
 which had been taken from them ; and, that 
 English encroachment of the soil might 
 still continue, they shook themselves free, 
 and took the reigns into their own hands. 
 I have spoken of the horrible massacres of 
 the native Irish during the reign of Eliza- 
 beth. In my reading of history, one tre- 
 mendous phenomenon for ever forces itself 
 upon my mind, and that is that every 
 political crime or the payment of every 
 farthing, with compound interest, is de- 
 manded by justice when the bill is sent in 
 to the person representing the criminal. 
 
64 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 It is not those who commit the crime who 
 are generally to suffer for it. It falls on 
 others who are innocent, and this has been 
 so from the beginning of time in all the 
 great miseries of the provincial govern- 
 ments of the world. I cannot precisely 
 understand it, but there is one important 
 lesson which we may draw from this great 
 historical precedent. It is this : the man 
 who will do a wrong if he thinks that the 
 risk is his own and he only will be held 
 answerable will think more gravely over 
 it if he knows that he will escape scot-free, 
 and that the baneful effects of his evil deed 
 will fall upon unborn generations. Sir 
 John Hawkins would never have gone into 
 the slave trade if he could have looked 
 forward and seen Gettysburg. I believe 
 he would have scuttled his ships, and sunk 
 them in mid-ocean. At the outbreak of 
 the Rebellion in 1641, the Irish race did not, 
 so far as we can understand, contemplate 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 65 
 
 first any tolerable murder. They looked 
 upon the settlers as robbers. They intend- 
 ed to dispossess them of all the wealth 
 they had acquired, and to send them back 
 naked to the sea. Each Protestant's house, 
 on the morning of October 23, was sur- 
 rounded by armed gangs. Men, women, 
 and children were seized, and stripped 
 naked to their skins, and turned out in the 
 wild autumn weather, to make their way 
 as they could, in that condition, to the 
 nearest port. Neighbor turned against 
 neighbor — servant against employer. The 
 valet who had undressed his master over 
 night was at his bedside with a pike when 
 he awoke in the morning. Churches were 
 burned, crops were destroyed, and cattle 
 were killed and left on the fields as carrion. 
 First Ulster suffered, and, in a few weeks, 
 the entire island was covered with miser- 
 able crowds, famished and wretched, hunt- 
 ed along the road by fierce and desperate 
 
66 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 men. So sudden, so overwhelming was 
 the convulsion that, for the first day or 
 two, there was no respect for the blood 
 shed. Saxons and Scots suffered alike. 
 Fighting" brought on murder, murder mas- 
 sacre, and massacre was followed by further 
 massacre. The Long Parliament at West- 
 minster soon rang with the story that 
 150,000 Protestants had been deliberately 
 murdered in cold blood. 
 
 Later writers now treat the massacre of 
 1641 as the creation of pure imagination. 
 Impartial investigators generally find the 
 truth between the extremes, and Sir Wil- 
 liam Petty, one of the most cool and dis- 
 passionate of men, states the number killed 
 in the rebellion to have been 38,000. Look- 
 ing at the matter as we are now able to 
 do, we can see in this outburst of frenzy 
 the natural retribution of offended justice. 
 The English Government were conscious 
 that they had done no harm to Ireland. 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 6 7 
 
 The ^tyranny of the Earl of Strafford had 
 formed one of the greatest questions in the 
 prosecution which ended in his execution. 
 In 1641, as I said, there were a million and 
 a half of people in Ireland. In 1650, there 
 were not 900,000. More than one-half of 
 the population in those nine years had 
 been destroyed by sword and famine. 
 What the sufferings were in detail it is too 
 easy to conjecture, but observe what hap- 
 pened after this bloody strife. Oliver 
 Cromwell landed in Dublin in 1649 ; he 
 brought with him some 14,000 men, foot 
 and horse, which, together with the garri- 
 son at Dublin, made a total force of 18,000 
 men to operate against 200,000, and not a 
 fortress, not a trench, for protection. The 
 speaker continued in an eloquent manner, 
 describing the operations of Cromwell, and 
 in conclusion, in speaking of Ireland's 
 troubles, said : " What is the explanation ? 
 The Irish rebellions from first to last are 
 
68 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 made of loud promises and vain perform- 
 ances. They flame up like straw, and like 
 straw, after it has been blazed, they go out 
 in dust and ashes." , 
 
Froudes Third Lecture. 
 
 DELIVERED OCTOBER 21, 1872. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 My last lecture ended with an account 
 of the rise, the consequence, and the col- 
 lapse of the great Irish Rebellion of 1641. 
 It commenced with massacre, and it ended 
 in ruin. For nine years the Irish leaders 
 held the destinies of their country in their 
 own hands. These were years of anarchy 
 and mutual slaughter. A third of the 
 population perished in the most piteous 
 misery. The heaviest suffering fell upon 
 the innocent peasantry, their wives and 
 little ones. Had the Rebellion been 
 
jo Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 sustained by an honest determination to be 
 free, had the Irish nation been purifying 
 itself in that furnace of calamity, when the 
 clouds cleared off had there been seen a 
 liberated people standing erect amid the 
 ruins of their homes, the price would not 
 have been too much for the admission of 
 one more free commonwealth among the 
 nations of the world. The curtain rose 
 on a far different spectacle. Ireland, with 
 its chiefs and its armies, its patriotic heroes 
 and its devotees, lay prostrate at the feet 
 of a few thousand English Puritans. What 
 was to be done with it ? I ask you, gentle- 
 men, with an experience of two centuries 
 of progress and enlightenment to guide 
 anew, what would you have had Cromwell 
 do? Will you say that he should have 
 proclaimed a universal amnesty, and have 
 bidden the Irish decide upon their own 
 destiny? They would have voted by 
 enormous majorities for the objects the\ 
 
Froudes Lectures. 
 
 n 
 
 lad sought and failed to gain by arms, 
 rhey would have bidden the English and 
 Scotch colonists to have simply taken 
 themselves away, and to have left Ireland 
 :o her own people. 
 
 : The English, you may say, had no busi- 
 ness there. It was too late to raise 
 questions of that kind. Ireland had form- 
 ed part of the dominions of England. I 
 will not say how it had come about. 
 England 120 years before had shaken off 
 the Papal authority. The Popes had 
 levied war upon their devoted subjects, as 
 they were pleased to call all Protestant 
 states. They had used the swords of 
 Spain and Austria to force them back into 
 submission, and the reek of slaughtered 
 men had gone up from hundreds of battle- 
 fields. It had pleased Ireland in this war 
 to take the Italian side. She had made her 
 provinces for centuries the theatre of 
 desperate insurrection. Had she succeeded 
 
72 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 in establishing her independence, she 
 would have still been a thorn in England's 
 side. Had Elizabeth left her to herself, 
 it would have been but for the French 
 and Spaniards to come in ; and, closed 
 around with hostile arms, and with hostile 
 nations on either side of her, England, and 
 the cause for which England was fighting, 
 would have come to an inglorious end. It 
 could not be, and the resolution once 
 formed that Ireland, whether she would or 
 not, must remain attached to England, 
 and the rest had followed as out of 
 necessity. We must look at the position 
 as men, and not as dreamers and enthu- 
 siasts. 
 
 What was Cromwell to do ? I will tell 
 you what he did, and you shall judge for 
 yourself whether he did ill. The Irish 
 demanded liberty of conscience. " I med- 
 dle with no man's conscience," the Lord 
 Protector answered ; " but if you mean by 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 73 
 
 liberty of conscience liberty to have the 
 Mass, that will not be suffered where the 
 Parliament of England has power." "Mon- 
 strous!" you may say. Well, gentlemen, I 
 suppose it will be easy for me to utter 
 some commonplaces on the beauties of 
 liberty of conscience. Speaking here in 
 this place, before the freest people in the 
 world, and speaking of a subject on which 
 the English people are more sensitive than 
 perhaps on any other subject, at this time 
 I cannot utter those words. Before I de- 
 nounce a great man like Cromwell, I must 
 be sure that either you or I would have 
 acted more wisely or generously under the 
 same circumstances. 
 
 The Mass, as we know it, is the sacred 
 rite of a religion which is one of many 
 modes, and one of the oldest, and in some 
 respects the most beautiful modes, of wor- 
 shipping our common Maker. It has bor- 
 rowed one precious jewel from the coronet 
 
74 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 of its adversary, for it has learned to re- 
 spect the rights of conscience in others, 
 and in learning that it has parted with the 
 single element which made it an object of 
 dread to others. In itself, the Catholic 
 creed has been and is the belief of some of 
 the noblest men who have done honor to 
 humanity. 
 
 But this is not the creed which Crom- 
 well refused to tolerate. The Mass, as he 
 knew it, was a system which, wherever it 
 had power, was at that moment punishing 
 by sword and by fire every deviation from 
 its own ordinances. It had made Germany 
 a charnel-house ; Ireland it had plunged 
 into unutterable woe. I will not pro- 
 nounce whether Cromwell did right or 
 wrong ; but this I know, that, if we or our 
 fathers had been struggling in a death- 
 wrestle for a century with such a spirit, we 
 should not hesitate, if the chance was in 
 our power, to stop the fountain from which 
 
Froudes Lectures. 
 
 75 
 
 those waters of bitterness were flowing". 
 Had Cromwell's policy toward Ireland 
 been persevered in as a whole, I believe I 
 should not be here addressing you on any 
 questions of difference between England 
 and Ireland. We had formed a design for 
 the pacification of that country which 
 would have made future trouble there im- 
 possible. 
 
 The Ulster settlers who had been driven 
 out on the first rising, and all other English 
 and Irish owners who had stood by the 
 English Parliament throughout the war, 
 were replaced in their estates. All the 
 other Irish landholders had been engaged 
 in the war against England, and the lands 
 of these were declared confiscated. The 
 honest peasantry who possessed any real 
 right in their farms by having performed 
 honest labor openly were protected, sub- 
 ject only to the condition to be obedient to 
 the new government ; but noble lords and 
 
76 Froudes Lectures. 
 
 gentlemen whose trade was fighting, who 
 had called themselves lords of the soil, and 
 as such had maintained themselves by poor 
 men's industry, were, by one huge sweep, 
 dispossessed. They were not driven out 
 of Ireland altogether, nor left without 
 means of support if they chose to exert 
 themselves. Of the four districts of Ire- 
 land, one was still to be theirs. The great 
 province of Connaught was assigned to the 
 gentry as exclusively their own. As the 
 Saxon conquerors of England drove the 
 Britons into Wales, so Cromwell pushed 
 the fighting Irishmen into Connaught. In 
 the rest of Ireland he planted the army 
 who had conquered it. 
 
 Each soldier had his lot assigned to 
 him. If he wished to return home he 
 would sell it to another Englishman, who 
 would be ready to take it. Many Pro- 
 testant families were distributed over the 
 land, to promote industry and order. The 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 77 
 
 reformed religion was made a reality. 
 Flemings and Huguenots, all were welcom- 
 ed, and all were encouraged to bring with 
 them their trades and occupations. Pre- 
 ceding settlers had introduced manufac- 
 tures into Ireland, and they had built 
 ships and begun to trade. Commercial 
 jealousy had taken the alarm in England. 
 These short-sighted, fantastic, absurd, and 
 iniquitous laws Cromwell tore up by the 
 roots. He saw no justice in Irish indus- 
 try's feeding the pockets of English manu- 
 facturers. He saw, if Ireland should be- 
 come a full partner in England's prosperity, 
 the fiction of a separate interest and sepa- 
 rate nationality ought to come to an end. 
 He abolished the Irish Parliament. Ire- 
 land was incorporated into England, and 
 made part of it, and her towns and counties 
 sent their representatives to Westminster, 
 Thus were the elements of mischief swept 
 out of the way, and a new and wholesome 
 
78 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 stock of energetic Protestants planted in 
 her soil, with a full and free participation 
 in every benefit which England possessed. 
 Cromwell bade Ireland turn a fresh leaf in 
 her tragical history, and enter upon a 
 career of honesty and prosperity. We 
 call all this tyranny from our modern point 
 of view. We must look facts in the face 
 and not be frightened by words. In fifteen 
 years, the three provinces which were thus 
 treated had grown from a wilderness into 
 a garden. Bogs were drained and planted 
 with trees; dwelling-houses sprang up; 
 fields were fenced up; ships came back to 
 the harbors ; life and property were made 
 secure ; and the Irish peasant and farmer, 
 under the rule of the Cromwellians, lived 
 side by side, each adding to the other's 
 welfare. 
 
 Enough of Cromwell. I, as an English- 
 man, honor him and glory in him as the 
 greatest statesman and the greatest soldier 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 79 
 
 that our race has produced. What is more, 
 gentlemen, I consider him to have been 
 the best friend, in the best sense,of_£he 
 people of Ireland.^ The Restoration came. 
 The Stuarts were brought back, and with 
 the Stuarts came the old story of com- 
 promises and half measures. The Irish 
 Parliament was at once set up again. 
 The Irish expected that Cromwell's soldiers 
 would be expelled ; that the confiscated 
 estates would be restored to their owners. 
 England was content to weaken the Pro- 
 testants without conciliating the Catholics. 
 Something over one-third of the lands was 
 restored. The Connaught plan was aban- 
 doned now ; exiled Irishmen were allowed 
 to return to their homes. Two-thirds 
 of the land was left with the Cromwellians, 
 and old rivals were once more left face 
 to face, with animosities deepened a 
 thousand-fold. The Episcopal Church was 
 re-established. It suited as ill the Irish 
 
80 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 Protestants as it suited the Scotch Presby- 
 terians. The latter set up their kirk ; the 
 Irish Protestants were less fortunate. 
 
 The archbishops and bishops were re- 
 placed in their dioceses. To counterbal- 
 ance them, the Catholics were allowed to 
 establish a rival hierarchy. The Catholic 
 Primate was received in state at Dublin. 
 For the Protestant Nonconformists, mean- 
 while, there was no mercy. They were 
 assumed to be republicans, and repub- 
 licans, just then, were looked upon as 
 venomous reptiles. The Northern Presby- 
 terians and the Cromwellians were the 
 bone and sinew of the Protestant interest. 
 They were the best soldiers, the best 
 farmers, the best artisans, and the best 
 men of business. In all matters, secular 
 and spiritual, they had the stern resolution 
 which distinguished Calvinism ; yet it was 
 thought wise to let the bishops persecute 
 these men. Their chapels and schools 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 8 1 
 
 were closed, their ministers were enjoined, 
 and it was a turning-point in the history 
 of the country. The proudest and bravest 
 of the Puritan colonists sold their allotments, 
 and bade Ireland a stern farewell. They had 
 given their blood in vain. Kings and priests 
 had come back again, and with kings and 
 priests it seemed they were to have no 
 abiding-place. They turned their faces 
 to the setting sun, and the descendants 
 of the conquerors of Ireland are now 
 citizens of the United States of America. 
 
 Gentlemen, I was once present, a few 
 years ago, at a very extraordinary scene. 
 It happened that there was some uncer- 
 tainty as to where James VI. was buried in 
 Westminster Abbey. The Dean of West- 
 minster, who is my friend, had a commis- 
 sion from the Secretary of State to search 
 among the tombs and discover where 
 James's coffin lay. It was not thought 
 prudent to conduct such an investigation 
 
82 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 by daylight. It was done at night, and he 
 asked me — perhaps one or two other gen- 
 tlemen — to be present. We went; and 
 there, by flaring torches, among those old, 
 dark arches, we were probing among the 
 ashes of the great dead. We looked upon 
 all that remained of kings and princes and 
 warriors and statesmen and prelates. We 
 felt almost guilty for the liberty we were 
 taking in disturbing their august repose. 
 At last we came to a tomb where evidently 
 some great person had once lain. At first 
 we knew not what it was or who it was. 
 It was the tomb of Oliver Cromwell, Lord 
 Protector of England. They had taken 
 him up from his tomb. They had hanged 
 his body on the gallows at Tyburn, and 
 had posted his head on the spire of 
 Westminster Hall. They had flung out 
 the Cromwellians. They had flung out 
 Cromwell, and there was this sad and 
 awful memorial of what has been. It 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 83 
 
 gave us thoughts which had better not 
 be uttered. 
 
 Well, gentlemen, the Cromwellians in 
 Ireland were gone. Other Englishmen 
 came in their place — money-makers, land- 
 jobbers, and speculators. The persecution 
 of the Protestants was checked after its 
 first success, and the Ulster settlement con- 
 tinued to prosper. But the Protestant 
 colonies in the South received their death 
 blow. The Catholics overspread them or 
 absorbed • them. The Catholic religion 
 swept back like a returning tide. James 
 II. followed Charles, and James, himself a 
 Catholic, lent the influence of the crown to 
 the reaction. In both countries, he set him- 
 self to undo the Reformation. In Ireland, he 
 went to work without disguise. He placed 
 Catholics in the highest offices in the state. 
 He appointed Catholic judges, a Catholic 
 chancellor, and Catholic magistrates, made 
 the army Catholic, and expelled the Pro- 
 
84 Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 testant officers. He disa med the Protests 
 ant gentry, and, finally, he appointed the 
 brother of the Catholic archbishop vice- 
 roy. The next step was to have been the 
 reversal of the land settlement, and the 
 universal restoration of the Catholic pro- 
 prietors. It was to have been managed 
 quietly by form of law, but the English 
 revolution came in the way. James abdi- 
 cated and went to France, and William of 
 Orange became King of England. How 
 was all this to affect Ireland ? According 
 to English lawyers, no act of the Irish Par- 
 liament was valid which had not passed 
 under the great seal of England. The 
 King of England, whoever he was, was held 
 to be King of Ireland also. The Irish inter- 
 preted the Constitution differently. They 
 insisted that, though James might have lost 
 the English crown, he was still King of 
 Ireland. They invited James to come to 
 them, and he came. They invited Louis 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 85 
 
 XIV. to help them, and he sent money, 
 5,000 men, and some of his best officers. 
 The factions Cromwell had overthrown 
 were once more in the possession of the 
 Irish Government. It remained for them 
 to accomplish at once what their grand- 
 fathers had failed to do, and root up con- 
 clusively and for ever the detested Pro- 
 testant settlements. They called a Free 
 National Parliament, and in the acts of it 
 you will see an inevitable tendency of the 
 English towards " home rule." They were 
 perfectly natural acts. Under one con- 
 dition, they were perfectly righteous acts; 
 but their resolution on the field of battle 
 should equal their courage in the senate- 
 house. They destroyed Cromwell's plan- 
 tations. They dispossessed the late colo- 
 nists who had been settled on their soil as 
 completely as they themselves had been. 
 
 You may say this was right, that 
 England ought to have acquiesced. I say 
 
86 Froudes Lectures. 
 
 it was right with one provision — that 
 Ireland was prepared to back up words 
 with deeds. Where there is the question 
 of the dismemberment of an empire, the 
 province which aspires to a separate 
 existence must have strength to take it. 
 England would have been craven had 
 she consented to a separation at her own 
 free will which would be a death-blow 
 to her own liberty. Nor was Ireland 
 herself without men who would strike 
 a blow for English protection and for 
 their own hearths and homes. The new 
 king came in person to lead the movement, 
 and the work of the conquest had to be 
 over again. The times had changed in 
 England, and not for the better. William's 
 troops were a motley compound of Dutch, 
 English, Germans, and French Huguenots, 
 little disciplined and dissolute. The Irish, 
 on the contrary, had never been in better 
 condition. They had been drilled by 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 87 
 
 French officers, and were well armed and 
 equipped. They were, besides, on their 
 own soil, fighting- for everything they held 
 most dear. Yet the result was in no way 
 different from what it has always been 
 under similar circumstances. At the battle 
 of the Boyne, the Irish did not so much 
 as make a creditable stand, but were 
 beaten by their own negligence, being 
 driven from a position which the most 
 moderate care would have made impreg- 
 nable. They fought bravely and well, but 
 they stood only until the French general 
 had been killed by a cannon-ball ; then 
 they broke into an irretrievable route, and 
 never rallied again. 
 
 William was unwilling to follow them. 
 He was tolerant. He knew little of Irish 
 history, and understood little or nothing 
 of the Irish people. He saw nothing but 
 a high-spi'rited and unfortunate race who 
 had been long misgoverned and oppressed. 
 
88 Froude s Lectures, 
 
 He was anxious to quiet Ireland on any 
 terms, and the easier the terms he allowed, 
 the sooner he thought the work would be 
 accomplished. Cromwell gave the Irish 
 no submission until they had submitted ; 
 William insisted upon peace while they 
 were still in a condition to stipulate. The 
 war ended, but it only ended in the famous 
 articles of Limerick and Galway, and 
 reproaches for broken faith. 
 
 I ask, then, why was the rebellion in 
 Ireland unsuccessful? I have already 
 indicated the answer, but I must again 
 repeat it. Because the hearts of the masses 
 of the people were not in the matter. 
 Never had life gone so well as under the 
 reign of Cromwell. No administration 
 will prosper which robs the poor and 
 leaves the rich free to strain the laws 
 for their own pleasure. An aristocracy 
 which existed only to be a drain upon the 
 resources of the country was little better 
 
Froude s Lectures. 89 
 
 than a mockery and a curse. At that 
 time, the Huguenots were looking to 
 Ireland for a home. The Irish Catholics 
 were passionately attached to France, and 
 were going back to France in tens of 
 thousands, and it cannot but suggest itself 
 how happy it would have been for all at 
 that time if there could have been no such 
 population. With care and wisdom at 
 such a time, it might have been done with 
 the consent of all parties concerned. 
 Impossible ! I believe statesmen find all 
 measures impossible except those that will 
 come about by themselves and without 
 any care from them. 
 
 Grant that this was impossible, then, at 
 this juncture. I think the time had come 
 that there should have been an end of 
 penal law. I can make allowance for those 
 who thought differently, for in reflecting 
 moments I often think differently myself. 
 I dare say after the revolution I should 
 
go Froude s Lectures. 
 
 have concluded that it was impossible for 
 the two religions to stay safely side by side. 
 In Catholic countries, there was no tolera- 
 tion for Protestants. Take human nature 
 as it is, there is no great wonder that 
 ordinary Protestants should have been in- 
 clined to have set the example ; but all ex- 
 perience had proved that penal laws could 
 not have been enforced in Protestant 
 countries. They were against the genius 
 of free institutions. Penal laws might suit 
 Spain or Italy, where they fell in with the 
 opinions of all the people. I say expe- 
 rience had shown that they could not have 
 been carried out in Ireland. The revolu- 
 tion had left the Catholics for the present 
 deprived of power to hurt, and oppressive 
 laws proved only a mockery and an insult. 
 Religion should have been declared free. 
 Their law should have been Protestant in 
 return ; for, notwithstanding the bishops' 
 persecutions, there were still Presbyterians. 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 91 
 
 The loyalty of the Presbyterians had been 
 proved in the Rebellion. 
 
 Protestants of all persuasions should have 
 been allowed to settle there, and the dis- 
 abilities of the Nonconformists ought to 
 have been for ever abandoned. With a 
 broad platform which embraced members 
 of all reformed communions, a vigorous 
 system of school teaching, an influx of 
 skilled artisans, and the extinction of all 
 political disaffection, how different would 
 have been the fate of Ireland ! 
 
 Two considerable manufactories had 
 already been established, and were thriving 
 there. The linen manufacture in the North 
 was Protestant. The woollen manufacture 
 was spreading over the country — every 
 cabin had its spinner's wheel, and every 
 village in the country its hand-looms. 
 Irish woollen was the very best in the 
 world. Labor was cheap in Ireland, and 
 the water-power unsurpassed. Assisted by 
 
92 Froudes Lectures. 
 
 all these advantages, there was no telling 
 what might have been the extension of this 
 particular branch of industry. Mechanics, 
 Scotch, English, and Dutch, and colonies 
 of shipwrights, were only waiting for politi- 
 cal quiet to emigrate to her borders. The 
 Catholics might have been left unmolested 
 for ever, and would have been, if there had 
 been an assurance in the general prosperity 
 of the country that the two religions would 
 have lost their sectarian bitterness in com- 
 mon occupation and common thriving 
 labor. The Rebellion had widened the 
 breach between the two creeds, and un- 
 happily the manner in which it was dealt 
 with made the wound incurable. 
 
 The Catholics made a violent effort to 
 recover the forfeiture of their estates, and 
 according to law they were supposed to 
 have forfeited also all the lands which they 
 retained. The Rebellion had cost England 
 £9,000,000 of money before ft was subdued. 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 93 
 
 The English Parliament insisted that the 
 remaining lands should be sold, and that 
 the proceeds should be applied to pay the 
 bill. Had this been done, there would have 
 been, at any rate, none of the excuses which 
 were afterward given for interfering with 
 Irish trade. Industrial prosperity, at any 
 rate, would have gone on undisturbed. 
 Good intention in one direction and fault in 
 another blighted the prospects and de- 
 stroyed an opportunity which can never 
 return. 
 
 The articles of Limerick and Galway 
 were adopted, and the Catholics claimed 
 the same toleration which they had enjoyed 
 under Charles II., and claimed that it was 
 part of the conditions of the treaty that 
 they were to be allowed to retain their 
 estates. The estates had been actually for- 
 feited ; but instead of being sold, as the 
 English Parliament demanded, they were 
 given away to King William's favorites, so 
 
94 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 that from this source there was no fund 
 at all to pay the cost of the war. The 
 English Parliament was exasperated, and 
 the two branches of that old body were 
 irritated by quarrels and recriminations. 
 These difficulties might in time have 
 quieted themselves, but unhappily every 
 day and amid fresh causes of suspicion the 
 question arose, Who was to be King of 
 England after King William died, and 
 Queen after Queen Mary ? 
 
 England itself had had enough of the 
 Stuarts, and decided for the House of Hano- 
 ver. The Irish Catholics very naturally 
 declared for the Pretender, and asserted that 
 the Stuarts were the lawful heirs to the 
 throne, while the Protestants naturally in- 
 sisted that people attached to these doc- 
 trines should be silenced or driven out of 
 the country. This disturbing spirit was 
 not confined to the Catholics, but showed 
 tself among the peers and bishops of the 
 
Frondes Lectures. 95 
 
 Established Church. An attempt having 
 been made to assassinate King William, the 
 English Parliament passed a severe act for 
 the protection of the king's person. This 
 act they sent over to be re-enacted by the 
 Parliament in Ireland. 
 
 At this time, woollen weaving was grow- 
 ing so prosperous in Ireland that the Eng- 
 lish manufacturers were trembling for their 
 own supremacy. England thought of Ire- 
 land only as a colony, and we all know how 
 England has handled her colonies in the 
 last century. Was England to be ruined 
 for the sake of a miserable and troublesome 
 dependency ? Her manufacturers peti- 
 tioned Parliament to lay such restrictions 
 upon Ireland and the Irish trade as should 
 destroy that trade for ever. Parliament re- 
 garded Ireland as powerless to resist, and 
 the fatal laws were forced on her which at 
 one swoop overwhelmed her woollen trade, 
 and cut off at a single blow that great 
 
9& Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 source of employment for her unhappy 
 people. 
 
 Thus was her trade struck away, and she 
 was a prostrate, ruined country. Twenty 
 thousand Protestant workmen immediately 
 left Ireland, and either came to this coun- 
 try or returned to the places from which 
 they had gone out. Many more followed, 
 and this sad detriment to the country was 
 accelerated by another cause, which was 
 scarcely less absurd and pernicious. 
 
 The Episcopal Church had been rein- 
 stated in its privileges. By the Act of 
 Uniformity, no person might preach in a 
 church or chapel who had not been or- 
 dained by the bishops. In England, the 
 law had been softened by a Toleration Act. 
 In Ireland, there was no Toleration Act ; 
 and, in passing, I must say I believe bish- 
 ops have produced more mischief in the 
 world than any other set of men. The 
 bishops took upon themselves to enforce 
 
Froudes Lectures. 97 
 
 the Act of Uniformity. England's arms 
 had borne the brunt of the battle in the 
 Rebellion, and this was their reward. The 
 Irish Parliament, dismayed and distracted, 
 saw no better remedy now than to recall 
 the promise of toleration which had been 
 made to the Catholics. 
 
 In this emergency, England behaved 
 more than cruelly, for she allowed the Irish 
 Parliament to pass laws which foreshad- 
 owed distress ; but the Irish judges and 
 magistrates received private orders that 
 the laws were not to be enforced. The 
 Irish Protestants admitted the tyranny of 
 these laws, and in its despair the Irish Par- 
 liament appointed a commission, and Pro- 
 testant Ireland prayed for admission into 
 the Empire on the same occasion. She 
 laid herself at the feet of Great Britain. I 
 suppose that when the history of my coun- 
 try is read no more unkind act can be 
 found than this refusal to Ireland's request 
 
98 Fronde's Lectures* 
 
 when it was presented to her in the year 
 1704. But England — fifty years before, the 
 England of Cromwell and of the Puritans — 
 was now filled with men of money, capital- 
 ists, manufacturers, and traders who have 
 no interest beyond their ledgers, and 
 whose political foresight looks no further 
 than to the balance-sheet of the succeeding 
 year; and to have admitted Ireland to the 
 union would have been to admit Ireland to 
 free trade. It would have been to open the 
 manufactures of which England has now 
 the monopoly. . Union was refused, and the 
 Irish Parliament was left to find some 
 other means of self-protection. 
 
 The problem which presented itself to 
 the churchmen, lay and spiritual, who ruled 
 Ireland at the beginning of the century 
 was at once to keep the dissenters down, 
 and invent some plan which would prevent 
 the further growth of Popery. An act had 
 been passed in England to disable Catho- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 99 
 
 lies from purchasing inherited property in 
 land. 
 
 Now, then, what was the effect of this 
 act ? The effect was to root out all moral 
 principle from the middle and upper classes 
 in the country. Worthless children pre- 
 tended to be Protestant in order to make 
 themselves independent of their parents. 
 Gentlemen affected conversion that they 
 might be sheriffs and magistrates, and able 
 to buy a piece of land. Lawyers qualified 
 themselves to be admitted to the bench and 
 bar. Ireland was filled with men perjured 
 to the lips to save themselves. It was 
 ruled, in addition, that no one was a Pro- 
 testant in the eye of the law who was not a 
 member of the Established Church. Non- 
 conformists had hitherto a recognized ex- 
 istence ; they were liable to banishment, 
 but to no special disability. Their presence 
 was acknowledged by the law, but they 
 were placed in the same position as a Cath- 
 
I oo Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 olic. No one was allowed to serve his 
 country in any capacity, except that of a 
 petty constable, until he had received the 
 sacrament from an ordained clergyman. 
 
 One more touch had still to be added to 
 the picture of the condition to which Ire- 
 land had been reduced. The English cloth 
 manufacturers possessed the monopoly of 
 the European markets. The Irish weaving 
 industry was at an end. The advantage of 
 England lay in the quality of her wool. 
 If Irish wool were mixe'd with French wool, 
 the French could compete successfully 
 with England. The Irish wool must be 
 monopolized for the English manufacturer. 
 The English Parliament passed an act that 
 no Irish wool should be exported, except 
 to England. England fixed the price which 
 she thought it was best to pay for it. The 
 French were willing to pay much more for 
 it. Stringent laws were passed by which 
 England thought to prevent smuggling, 
 
Fronde s Lectures, ioi 
 
 Ireland's coast is very favorable for this. 
 It is indented with dangerous bays navi- 
 gable only by the natives. Coast-guards 
 were bribed. Every one, from the lowest 
 to the highest, entered into the smuggling 
 trade. All of them went hand-in-hand to 
 defeat English avarice and evade English 
 laws. Ingenuity could not have devised a 
 system better suited to the Irish tempera- 
 ment. This state of things continued for 
 three-quarters of a century. It was count- 
 ed no sin to smuggle. A priest once con- 
 sulted his bishop as to what he was to say 
 to it. The bishop said that, as King George 
 had no right to his crown, he certainly had 
 no right to the customs duties. 
 
 This was the condition of Ireland as she 
 stood at the accession of George I., and as 
 she stood until her chains were broken by 
 the war with the American colonies. The 
 viceroy came over to open Parliament, but 
 stayed no longer. For the greater part of 
 
102 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 the time, the country was governed by the 
 Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the 
 House. The Peers being most of them 
 absentees, the Upper House was virtually 
 the House of the Bishops of the Established 
 Church. 
 
 Even with accessions, the Established 
 Church amounted to no more than one- 
 tenth of the population. It had the church 
 revenues, and if, with these advantages, it 
 made no progress, the reason is not far to 
 seek. The tithes, if properly distributed, 
 would have supported a clergyman in every 
 parish. But some, who had interest with 
 the higher authorities, held several bene- 
 fices ; one had as many as sixteen. The 
 country went to ruin. The bishops were 
 appointed by the Crown. Some of them 
 were very excellent men. Bishop Berkeley 
 alone would have redeemed his order from 
 obloquy. Dean Swift said: "No blame 
 rests with the Court for these appointments. 
 
Fronde s Lectures, 103 
 
 Excellent moral men are always selected, 
 but, unfortunately, it always happens that, 
 as the worthy divines cross Hounslow 
 Heath to take possession of their bishop- 
 rics, they are regularly robbed and mur- 
 dered by highwaymen, who take their 
 robes, go to Ireland, and are consecrated 
 bishops in their stead." I found in Dublin 
 Castle a request from a bishop for a sepa- 
 rate ship for himself and his property, and 
 to carry 4,000 ounces of silver plate. 
 
 From the wreck of her trade, the linen 
 manufacture escaped. Ulster was allowed 
 to retain its trade, and with it its Presby- 
 terian Church, but the inhabitants also 
 retained great indignation at the way their 
 religion was treated. The rest of the 
 countiw was left to the Parliament of Ire- 
 land, which I have described, and by which 
 and under which was formed the extra- 
 ordinary race of modern Irishmen with 
 whom we are familiar. Her state had no 
 
104 Froudes Lectures 
 
 longer any attraction for men of intellect. 
 Noble men and men of fortune lived on the 
 continent. They leased their lands to 
 middlemen on easy terms, and asked no 
 questions so long as their rent was paid. 
 The lease-holder desired to be an easy 
 gentleman too. He was as much a Pro- 
 testant as any one. His creed was that of 
 his forefathers — that labor was dishonor- 
 able. So he underlet the land to men like 
 himself, who again underlet the property 
 Sometimes there were half a dozen men 
 holding leases of the same estate. AH these 
 so-called gentry were living beyond their 
 means, eating, drinking — especially the 
 drinking — horse-racing, and borrowing 
 money. Under this cursed system, the 
 Irish people rather starved than lived, and 
 then we quarrel with them for being im- 
 provident and discontented. Never have 
 any people been so used ; first plundered 
 violently by their agents, they were then 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 105 
 
 plundered by form of law. Except during 
 the short interval of Puritan rule, the dogs 
 were treated better than the poor Irish. 
 The prime fault rests with the English. 
 They took possession of Ireland for their 
 own purposes, and they must answer for 
 their injustice. The Irish middlemen must 
 bear their share of the blame. The Eng- 
 lish agents would have left a peasant a few 
 rags, but the Irish middlemen would have 
 only left him his bones. The curse was 
 too much liberty ; not too much for the 
 poor, but too much for the rich. Lord 
 Donegal once plundered his tenants so, 
 ruling 6,000 people, that a cry of indigna- 
 tion went to the ears of the viceroy. The 
 viceroy, judging from what he said about 
 it privately, would have been glad to hang 
 Lord Donegal. But the law did not allow 
 the promotion of a noble lord in such a 
 style, and the 6,000 people, all Protestants, 
 all came to England. Every man kept his 
 
io6 Fronde s Lectm es. 
 
 household armed. Half the county of 
 Kerry was ruled over for many years by 
 Donald Mahoney and his fairies. Donald 
 was head tenant of some lord who lived in 
 England. His fairies were 4,000 tenants, in 
 white sheets and blackened faces, -whose 
 business was to see that no unwelcome 
 person set foot in Killarney. He be- 
 queathed his best blue breeches to his 
 daughter as the best man in Kerry. 
 
 Private wars were over, but faction rights 
 had taken their place. The black-thorn 
 had superseded the battle-axe, and it had 
 this advantage, that the beaten might not 
 be murdered entirely. Duelling became so 
 prevalent that it was proposed at last to 
 make the survivor pay for the support of 
 his late adversary's family. When a new 
 secretary came over from. England, he had 
 to be proved by standing are. At one 
 time, a new secretary came over, and an 
 opposition member of Parliament soon 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 107 
 
 picked a quarrel with him. They met in 
 Phoenix Park. The secretary fired in the 
 air. The member then took deliberate aim, 
 but his pistol missed fire. He cocked it 
 again, and again it missed fire. The secre- 
 tary bowed and said, " There appears to 
 be something the matter with your flint." 
 That was fixed, but again it missed fire. 
 The secretary remarked, " I think you 
 had better change your flint.'' It was 
 changed, and this time he had better 
 success, and the ball went through his 
 opponent's hat. The secretary was going 
 to fire in the air again, but the member in- 
 sisted that he should shoot at him, and that 
 a refusal would be an affront. It was 
 finally settled, after some words, and they 
 shook hands. This was the most popular 
 secretary that ever held office in Ireland. 
 
 Where was the Irish Parliament of this 
 time ? It was sitting regularly ; it met at 
 alternate years, and voted supplies ; but the 
 
108 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 Irish Parliament was managed, too. Half 
 the revenue of Ireland was settled regu- 
 larly on the Crown, and the Crown claimed 
 the distribution of it. Out of these funds, 
 when political matters were more quiet, 
 were provided pensions for the mistresses 
 of the Georges. As the Irish Parliament 
 grew more troublesome, the money was 
 applied to purposes of political corruption. 
 When a man would get annoying, the 
 viceroy would send privately to him, and 
 tell him that if he held his tongue he might 
 make something by it. The larger traitors 
 were corrupted with positions ; and sine- 
 cure offices were created for others. 
 
 There is a treacherous motive manifested 
 in the usage that Ireland has undergone at 
 the hands of England, her mother country. 
 1 did not mention to you what action the 
 English Parliament took in regard to this 
 question, and before bringing this speech to 
 a close I will do so. Instead of sanctioning 
 
Froudes Lectures. log 
 
 the requests that were constantly and im- 
 peratively made by these would-be Irish 
 noblemen, chancellors, and lords, they were 
 considerably modified, so that several dema- 
 gogues who were seeking to despoil their 
 own country by occupying high positions 
 at the expense of the Irish people were 
 disappointed. In 1782, one of the Boyles 
 had gathered within himself hopes of 
 achieving patriotic distinction, and mani- 
 fested to Parliament his desire to be made 
 a chancellor, the perquisites of the office 
 being something over £2,000 per year. 
 
 Rebellious in 1798, these people, who 
 were desirous of distinction, sent a son of 
 Healy Hutchinson — one of Ireland's ablest 
 statesmen — to Parliament with a petition 
 asking that a number of his friends be giv- 
 en office, the object being to ascertain if 
 England was willing to offer bribes suffi- 
 cient to induce the Irish counsellors to 
 desert their clients, the Irish public. To 
 
_L 
 
 no Frondes Lectures. 
 
 show you how modest this request was, I 
 will state that the conditions under which 
 these Irish partisan patriots — the counsel- 
 ors — offered to abandon their country's 
 service were that Lord Shannon should 
 Up made Lord Chancellor ; that two sons 
 of Healy Hutchinson — the champion of 
 Irish liberty — be made viscounts ; and that 
 Hutchinson's wife be made a viscountess 
 for life. Lord Shelburne, in behalf of Par- 
 liament, stated to the petitioners that this, 
 although it might seem to those interested 
 a very trivial matter, involved many ques- 
 tions of rights which the English Govern- 
 ment was bound to respect, and reminded 
 the overzealous gentlemen that the major- 
 ity rule was a good one. 
 
 It was, in short, a petition which would 
 have deprived many of the Irish people of 
 their right to act, if, indeed, Parliament 
 ever recognized that right. Not only 
 would it have subjected them to still great- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 1 1 1 
 
 er tyranny, but it would have taken the 
 precedence of other and perhaps better 
 laws which might thereafter have been 
 enacted. It provided for the support of 
 Mealy Hutchinson and his friends, at an 
 annual expense to the English Government 
 of over $3,000,000. And now the question 
 recurs, Where would this money come 
 from? I will tell you. It would come 
 from the hard toil of the poor Irish pea- 
 sants, and there is where most of the 
 money has come from that has in past 
 years supported these Irish aristocrats. 
 
 It is said that no one in this present age 
 can realize what hardships and sufferings 
 these oppressed people of Ireland have un- 
 dergone in times past ; and, judging from 
 what we know of the reign of tyranny 
 there one hundred years ago, we can hard- 
 ly say that it would be difficult to imagine 
 such outrageous proceedings on the part 
 of England, looking at her as she is to-dav. 
 
1 1 2 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 It is now becoming- common for people to 
 think that corruption is very essential to 
 good government, and, looking at it from 
 the standing-point of late customs, I should 
 say it was. At least it seems as if this 
 peculiar phase of political life was creeping 
 into every kind of government. And now 
 the matter is reduced to this proposition : 
 We must either have liberty, and cast out 
 corruption; or have corruption, and cast 
 out liberty. 
 
Froudfs Fourth Lecture. 
 
 DELIVERED OCTOBER 23, 1872. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I have described to you the principles 
 of government which prevailed in Ireland 
 during the greater part of the last century. 
 We have no right to be surprised that the 
 result was not satisfactory. The natural 
 remedy was revolution, and, if the Irish 
 could have made revolution, had they pos- 
 sessed sufficient unity of purpose, sufficient 
 national virtue, sufficient patriotism in the 
 proper sense of the word to have risen up 
 and sworn that they would end their ser- 
 vitude or all die, the whole world would 
 
U4 Froudes Lectures. 
 
 have clapped their hands and cried out 
 that it was well done ; but, whether people 
 are strong enough to make revolutions or 
 not, the laws under which society is al- 
 lowed to exist do not fail in one way or 
 another to punish injustice. Misgovern- 
 ment, like curses, always comes home to 
 roost. What Ireland could not accomplish 
 for herself America accomplished for her. 
 For a centur}' and a half the stream of 
 Protestant emigrants had set steadily from 
 the shores of Ireland to America. The 
 Cromweliians, the Scotch and English Cal- 
 vinists, the artisans and mechanics, the mis- 
 sionaries of industry and reformation who 
 had been planted in the Isle at lucid inter- 
 vals of statesmanship, had been driven out 
 by the restraints of government and the 
 pedantry of Episcopalianism. They had 
 come to America in the same way, against 
 the mother country, which the Catholic 
 peasantry come now. They had brought 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 115 
 
 with them a consciousness of wrong, and 
 waited only to pay England for her treat- 
 ment of them. 
 
 A century waned. Irish society began 
 to show symptoms of uneasy forces work- 
 ing within it. South and North there were 
 risings of the peasantry. The behavior of 
 the poor starving creatures was at first 
 most creditable to them. They tore down 
 fences. They hunted cattle over the coun- 
 try, but to human life there was little inju- 
 ry or none. They petitioned only to be 
 allowed to keep their little farms on terms 
 not wholly ruinous to them, and the Eng- 
 lish viceroys allowed that never had people 
 a greater justification for revolt. Allow 
 me to say they had a very great many 
 more wrongs to complain of at the time 
 than had America at the time she asserted 
 her own independence. Lord Townsend, 
 who was Viceroy in Ireland, in a dispatch 
 to the Home Government, drew a graphic 
 
n6 Frondes Lectures, 
 
 picture of the landlord's tyranny. But, of 
 course, there was no redress. A constitu- 
 tional government could act only by Parlia- 
 ment, and Parliament law at that time was, 
 unfortunately, the landlords' law. The year 
 before the tea had been sent floating in 
 Boston Harbor, the Ulster grandees had 
 sent out a contingent of exasperated emi- 
 grants unusually numerous. The Ulster 
 linen manufacture had been developed by 
 the skill and industry of the Presbyterians. 
 Compared with the Southern provinces, 
 Ulster was a garden. Land had increased 
 greatly in value. Capital made in trade 
 had been sunk in the soil, and educated, 
 .enterprising peasantry had converted bog 
 and mountain into corn and flax fields. 
 The noble lords to whom a large part of 
 these lands belonged, as it was called, who 
 had never, perhaps, so much as cast their 
 eyes on the surface of their property, con- 
 cluded that the increased value did not be- 
 
Frondes Lectures. nj 
 
 long to the tenants who had created it, but 
 to themselves who had allowed it to be 
 created. As leases fell in, they demanded 
 enormous fines before they would renew 
 them, or rents which could not possibly be 
 paid. They served ejectments without a 
 scruple. Families which had been a hun- 
 dred years upon the soil, chiefly Protes- 
 tants, were turned adrift. These were 
 made homeless and houseless, and were 
 robbed — for no other word can be used 
 about it — by those who ought to have been 
 their natural protectors. 
 
 Most, if not all, of these poor people 
 came off to New England. In the whole 
 number there was probably not a man who 
 could draw trigger or carry a knapsack 
 that did not try to clear scores with the 
 representatives of England in the War of 
 Independence. Nor, as I told you in my 
 first lecture, were the arms of these exiles 
 the sole auxiliaries which the Irish contri- 
 
1 1 8 Fronde s Lectures, 
 
 buted to the American cause. The entire 
 Protestant population left in Ireland, ex- 
 cept that portion belonging to the Estab- 
 lished Church and the landed gentry, saw 
 that the American cause was their own, 
 and in their hearts did what lay in them to 
 further American success. 
 
 There is no occasion for me to say any- 
 thing of the relation which now exists be- 
 tween the Irish Catholics and the American 
 people ; the generous hospitality which 
 America extended to them in their dis- 
 tress ; the affectionate and grateful hope 
 with which in the old country they look to 
 America. So deep is that feeling upon 
 both sides now that I am rather bound to 
 insist on the bonds now forgotten which 
 once existed between America and the 
 Irish Protestants. Whatever difference of 
 opinion may now be entertained here on 
 these Irish questions, there was a time 
 when the Irish Protestants were nearer to 
 
Frondes Lectures. 119 
 
 America in heart and in sentiment than the 
 Catholics. As this statement of mine has 
 been loudly questioned, I shall prove what 
 I say. 
 
 You must allow me to read an address 
 to you from the leading Catholics of Ireland 
 to the Irish Secretary, in the momentous 
 year of 1775. It was signed by many of 
 the Catholic nobility, and purports, as you 
 see, to represent the feeling of the whole 
 Catholic community. 
 
 " Sir (so it runs) : We flatter ourselves 
 that the occasion, the motives, and your 
 goodness will engage you to excuse this 
 trouble. As we are informed that an 
 intended subscription among his majesty's 
 affectionate, loyal, and dutiful Roman 
 Catholic subjects of the kingdom of 
 Ireland to raise a fund among ourselves to 
 be employed to encourage recruits to 
 enlist for his majesty's service was never 
 judged necessary by the Government ; yet 
 
120 Frondes Lectures. 
 
 being desirous to give every assistance 
 in our power, and to give every proof of 
 our sincere affection and grateful attach- 
 ment to the most sacred person and 
 Government of the best of kings ; and 
 justly abhorring the unnatural rebellion 
 which has lately broken out among some 
 of his American subjects against his 
 majesty's most sacred person and Govern- 
 ment ; impressed with a deep sense of our 
 duty and allegiance ; and feeling ourselves 
 loudly called upon by every motive and 
 every tie that can affect the hearts of good 
 and loyal subjects, we take the liberty to 
 make on this interesting occasion an hum- 
 ble tender of our duty and affection to our 
 good and gracious king ; and we hum- 
 bly presume to lay at his feet 2,000,- 
 000 of loyal, faithful, and affectionate 
 hearts and hands, unarmed indeed, but 
 zealous, ready, and desirous to exert them- 
 selves strenuously in defence of his majesty 
 
Fronde's Lectures. 121 
 
 against all his enemies of what denomina- 
 tion whatever, in any part of the world 
 wherever they may be ; and to exert in an 
 active manner the loyalty and obedience 
 which has always been with them unan- 
 imous, constant, and unalterable," etc., etc. 
 
 This remarkable address might tempt 
 English administrators less virtuous than 
 Mr. Gladstone to reconsider their policy 
 towards the Irish Catholics. Eighty years 
 of penal laws had produced this passionate 
 devotion to the "best of kings." Seventy 
 years had followed of apologies, abject 
 apologies, concessions of justice to Ireland, 
 and we are called tyrants and oppressors, 
 and assassins of Irish liberty. 
 
 But I am speaking here of the relations 
 of the two parties in Ireland and America ; 
 and by the side of this address of the 
 Catholics I will lay a letter of the viceroy 
 to Lord North, written at precisely the 
 same time. The Irish House of Commons 
 
122 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 was composed almost entirely of the landed 
 gentry, the members of the Established 
 Church, and of all classes of Irish Pro- 
 testants, those less likely to sympathize 
 with America. Through a house so com- 
 posed the viceroy had succeeded in car- 
 rying with very great difficulty, as he 
 confessed, and with the help of a purchased 
 majority, a bare vote condemning the 
 revolt of the Colonies. 
 
 The letter alluded to the gaining strength 
 of the Presbyterians in the North, who in 
 their hearts, it says, are Americans, and 
 who are seeking to induce Ireland to take 
 an adverse part in this contest. 
 
 You will see from these papers, resumed 
 the lecturer, that I have not misstated the 
 part taken by the two sections of Ireland 
 at the opening of the war. Well, gentle- 
 men, the Revolution broke the chains of 
 Ireland, both Catholic and Protestant. The 
 same questions were at stake on both sides 
 
Fronde s Lectures, 123 
 
 of the Atlantic — the right of the mother 
 country to utilize her so-called dependen- 
 cies for her own interest ; and the struggle 
 decided in one country was decided in the 
 other. I will not weary you with details 
 of the familiar story. As the wrestle with 
 America grew more intense, England's 
 other enemies took advantage of her diffi- 
 culties. France, Spain, and Holland suc- 
 cessively declared war against her. She 
 stood, a little country with her 8,000,000 
 souls, assailed at home with the strongest 
 powers in Europe, and fighting desperately 
 to retain her hold on this enormous conti- 
 nent. Unjust and arrogant as was the pol- 
 icy that led her into her difficulties, I am 
 most proud as an Englishman, from the 
 very bottom of my heart, of the courage 
 with which she bore herself in that tremen- 
 dous conflict. She could not conquer 
 America, but she could still give account 
 of those neighbors of hers who thought to 
 
124 Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 quit reckoning with her when her hands 
 were tied. Her Rodneys could still shat- 
 ter the armies of France, her Elliotts could 
 still make bonfires of the floating batteries 
 that thought to drive her out of Gibraltar. 
 She was never more fierce and dangerous 
 than when it was seen she was beaten upon 
 her knees. 
 
 But her experience here had not been 
 thrown away. She understood that if she 
 was to keep her remaining colonies she 
 must listen to their just complaints, and she 
 did not care to provoke another domestic 
 war. A beginning was made in Ireland, 
 with the repeal of some Roman Catholic 
 disability. So fast as any law was seen to 
 be clearly wrong and impolitic, England 
 now made haste to repeal it, and, having 
 once launched upon a career of reform, in 
 a very few years she would not have left 
 the Irish one civil or social grievance to 
 complain of, had it not been for one cause. 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 125 
 
 I say there was no practical wrong at 
 that time of which Ireland had to complain 
 that would not have been removed com- 
 pletely, and in a very few years, under the 
 Constitution as it stood at the time of Lord 
 Cornwallis's surrender. But Ireland de- 
 manded the concession of her own Parlia- 
 ment and freedom from English legislation. 
 You say Ireland was the best judge of her 
 own disorders, and the best judge of the 
 remedies that would cure them. I reply 
 that self-government is the best of all forms 
 of government, and for that reason it re- 
 quires the best kind of men to administer 
 it. It requires experience, wisdom, self-re- 
 straint, union, patriotism. England had 
 governed Ire.land ill, most ill. Granted; 
 but, looking to Ireland's actual state and 
 the condition of the Irish people, was there 
 better hope for Ireland if the authority of 
 England was altogether removed ? 
 
 I wish to speak with all honor, admira- 
 
126 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 tion, even enthusiastic admiration, of Mr. 
 Grattan. Not only was Mr. Grattan one of 
 the most brilliant orators of his own and of 
 any age, but, what is more to the purpose, 
 one of the most honest of men. In the 
 secret state correspondence of those years, 
 I have looked into mysteries which the 
 right hand that wrote them would gladly 
 have concealed from the left. In these sin- 
 gular labyrinths of intrigue and treachery, 
 I found Irishmen, whose names stand fair 
 enough, concerned in transactions which 
 show them to have been knaves and scoun- 
 drels, but I never found a shadow of stain 
 on the reputation of Mr. Grattan. I say 
 nothing of the temptations to which he 
 was exposed. There were no honors with 
 which England would not have decorated 
 him. There was no price so high which 
 England would not have paid to silence 
 him. He was one of those perfectly disin- 
 terested men who do not feel temptations 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 127 
 
 of this kind. They passed by and over 
 him without giving him even the pain of 
 turning his back upon them. At every 
 step of his life, Grattan was governed en- 
 tirely by what he conceived to be the 
 interest of his country. Whether he was 
 as wise as he was upright is another ques- 
 tion altogether. 
 
 As the American war approached its last 
 year, every available soldier was with- 
 drawn from Ireland. The people demand- 
 ed arms for their own protection, and the 
 request was one which could not be re- 
 fused. Corps of volunteers were formed 
 all over the country. In a few months, 
 forty to fifty thousand of them enrolled, 
 and there was no other military force in 
 Ireland. Mr. Grattan took the opportun- 
 ity of demanding a free constitution for his 
 country. The volunteers turned politi- 
 cians, and rapped their hands on the butts 
 of their muskets. Ireland had been a 
 
128 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 province too long. She should now be 
 free. 
 
 America was winning absolute independ- 
 ence. Mr. Grattan didn't go so far as 
 America. She was willing Ireland should 
 remain united by the tie of a common 
 sovereign, but she wanted to be inde- 
 pendent of the English Parliament, the 
 English Minister, and the English law 
 courts. She should have her own Legis- 
 lature and her own Cabinet, and she 
 should be governed henceforward by such 
 laws, and no other, as the representatives 
 of her own people had made for her. 
 England had had enough just then of at- 
 tempting to coerce unwilling representa- 
 tives. English statesmen did not conceal 
 from themselves the danger of the experi- 
 ment to be tried. 
 
 It was not without having considered 
 that question from a point of view little 
 dreamed of by the Irish patriots that they 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 129 
 
 were willing- at last that the experiment 
 should receive a trial. They gave way. 
 The Constitution of 1782 was established, 
 and, amid cannon salvo, patriotic elo- 
 quence flowing like water-spouts, and a 
 volley of 50,000 muskets, Ireland was de- 
 clared a nation. Esto perpetua ! exclaimed 
 Grattan, winding up the magnificent pero- 
 ration of the finest speech ever heard in 
 the House, on College Green. If the cur- 
 tain could then have fallen on Ireland, 
 could she then have withdrawn among her 
 own mists, we should have taken leave of 
 her at that moment with the belief that she 
 had shaken off her mourning weeds, and 
 that her regeneration was at last complete. 
 History dispels the illusion. How could 
 it be otherwise? So little hope had Eng- 
 land that good would come of the rash 
 adventure that at one time in the English 
 Cabinet thoughts were entertained of tak- 
 ing Ireland at her word. The volunteers 
 
130 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 threatened that if the Constitution was re- 
 fused they would break from England alto- 
 gether. What if England had told them 
 they were free to go? If she was to retain 
 no control over the Legislature of Ireland, 
 and no control over the military force, 
 then was it worth while to retain a mere 
 titular sovereignty ? 
 
 What had she before done to the million 
 Protestants and the two million Roman 
 Catholics, since they were so anxious to be 
 independent, and to take their independ- 
 ence, and then settle their own differences ? 
 Was it likely that this revolution was seri- 
 ously contemplated ? Lord Rodney had 
 destroyed the French fleet in the West 
 Indies, and America was strong enough to 
 strangle a serpent that came seeking her, 
 but too young yet to search adventures in 
 the other hemisphere. No other power 
 would have been able to interfere, and a 
 few years' experience under such condi- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 131 
 
 tions might have done more than other con- 
 ditions of affairs to make Ireland sick of it. 
 The Duke of Portland, however, after spe- 
 cifying certain conditions which he intended 
 to exact from the Irish Parliament in his 
 new position, went on thus in a most pri- 
 vate and secret dispatch : 
 
 " The refusal of the Irish Parliament to 
 consent to the subject is such an indication 
 of sinister designs as would warrant Eng- 
 land in throwing up the government, and 
 leaving it to that fate which their folly and 
 treachery should deserve. If such should 
 be their sentiments after our effort to en- 
 deavor to bring them to a sense of their 
 condition and of the responsibility of such 
 refusal, I should hesitate but little to order 
 the first, and leave them to be the victims 
 of their own insanity, as the country, on 
 such terms, would not be worth pasturing." 
 
 If the English Cabinet had been troubled 
 with moral scruples, I do not doubt that to 
 
132 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 have left Ireland awhile in this way to her- 
 self would have simplified the Irish prob- 
 lem for all time. No friend to either party 
 would have entered the island, and Protes- 
 tant and Catholic would have been left to 
 fight out their battles in their own way. 
 The Protestants were inferior in numbers, 
 but they had the wealth, the education, and 
 the arms. They had the energy and the 
 industry, but they had split into Conform- 
 formists and Noncomformists. I, for my 
 part, looking at the relative condition of 
 the two parties at that time, think that the 
 numerical strength of the Celtic Catholics 
 would have availed them little, and they 
 would have been, in all probabilty, either 
 exterminated or completely subjugated. 
 
 The answer to the papers was not satis- 
 factory, but in justice to the Catholics the 
 Duke of Portland was not allowed to fulfil 
 his threat. England determined to make 
 the best of the opposition. 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 133 
 
 You will now have to observe the value 
 of self-government to a country conditioned 
 as Ireland was. England had a pretty clear 
 and direct authority to hold the Empire 
 together. It was necessary for her to have 
 some authority, still more if she intended 
 to follow out the cause of beneficent legisla- 
 tion which she had commenced for the 
 regeneration of the country. Ireland had 
 obtained liberty ; Ireland had obtained ju- 
 dicial independence. If liberty and inde- 
 pendence were to realize anything, now at 
 last the field would be clear, and the land- 
 lords who had clamored for political reform 
 were in alliance with the genius of the 
 peasant. Dean Swift somewhere says the 
 greatest blessing to a country is the man 
 who can make land grow two years of corn 
 where only one grew before. Grattan's 
 Reform Law for Ireland was as barren as 
 they found it. The Constitution of 1782 
 might hold out against the encroachment 
 
134 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 of England, but there were no guarantees 
 against famine, anarchy, and social tyranny. 
 Here is Ireland — here is Dublin described 
 by an eye-witness in 1783, within a year of 
 that ever-memorable event : 
 
 " The Defenders," so this writer says, 
 " lived on the spoils like wasps sucking a 
 people's blood. Farmers are ruined; the 
 avenues to the Parliament House are be- 
 set by strife ; manufacturers are praying 
 for relief against approaching famine ; the 
 guards of the city are doubled, and ordered 
 to hold themselves ready to massacre the 
 people." 
 
 In the midst of this scene occurs a singu- 
 lar illustration of the new judicial system. 
 There was nothing for which Grattan had 
 fought harder. Irish causes were to be 
 decided in Irish courts, and appeals were 
 to be heard in the Irish House of Lords. 
 The very first case which came on for hear- 
 ing was an exceedingly difficult one. It 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 135 
 
 involved a large property which was to be 
 divided, and debts were of the greatest 
 consequence. A decree had been given by 
 the judges, but such was the plan that the 
 decision had been rendered by the casting 
 vote of the Lord Chancellor. The case 
 was carried up before the House of Lords, 
 and an Irish nobleman, who, besides his 
 peerage, was clergyman, the Dean of 
 Derry, actually wrote to one of the liti- 
 gants, and promised him his vote for £200. 
 And what was Grattan about, now that 
 he had emancipated his country? Was 
 Grattan -discovering how the peasants 
 should feed their starving children ? The 
 members of the House of Commons were 
 engaged then in obstructing the ad- 
 ministration, and Grattan had no longer 
 power to lead them. They had discovered 
 that by their new opposition their power 
 of imprisoning the Government was in- 
 creased, and they were engaged in ad- 
 
136 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 justing their demands upon the Irish 
 Opposition members, which their peace 
 now rendered necessary. Corruption, 
 which was before so scandalous, had now 
 become infamous. The ordinary business 
 of administration could not be carried on 
 until the members of Parliament had been 
 rewarded according- to their notion of their 
 own deserts. The English viceroys could 
 not help themselves, for the purse-strings 
 were speedily untied by designing men. 
 Dublin soon became an open market for 
 Government offices ; and sinecures, peer- 
 ages, and places of state were openly ex- 
 posed at public sale. Irish political 
 morality was completely sapped. The 
 Houses of the Legislature were filled with 
 an army of noblemen greedy to swallow 
 the golden bait. The free Ireland, wel- 
 comed in with so much enthusiasm, existed 
 only to bring liberty into contempt. 
 
 The principal thing for the Irish member 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 137 
 
 of Parliament to look at was for opportuni- 
 ties to destroy the Government, and not for 
 any public purpose of good or any useful 
 association, but simply to extort further 
 benefits of money and promises for its lead- 
 ing members. The Government was some- 
 times resisted amid mingled indignation 
 and distrust, but resistance, if successful, 
 was possibly won by further uses of the 
 same dishonorable influences. Such was 
 Ireland in the times before the Constitu- 
 tion of 1782 from a living reality. Such 
 was Ireland when she saw in Europe, high 
 above the smoke of the burning Bastile, 
 arising the terrible portent of the French 
 Revolution. 
 
 Already they had demanded parlia- 
 mentary reform in Ireland. The House of 
 Commons, as it stood, was too evident a 
 mockery. It consisted at this time of 300 
 members, 64 of them returned for county 
 and 236 for borough towns. Of the 300 
 
138 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 seats about, sixty were fairly open to bid- 
 ders. Protestants could not be voted for, 
 and Protestants could only be elected ; and 
 at one time a particular nobleman, owning 
 from 10 to 12 boroughs, controlled from 10 
 to 30 members. The Irish seats were sold, 
 ^"2,000 being the average price. A noble- 
 man could sell a peerage for ;£ 12,000, and 
 buy half a dozen seats with the money. 
 Mr. Grattan and other prominent Irish 
 noblemen, finding that the condition of 
 affairs was simply ridiculous, formed them- 
 selves into an organization. It was called 
 the "Whig Club," and was designed to 
 promote parliamentary reform ; but what 
 that reform was to be they could not agree 
 among themselves, so great was the oppo- 
 sition of the Catholics. 
 
 Generally in Europe, when the Catholics 
 came in contact with the spirit of reform, 
 it was not as friends, but as enemies. 
 There were too ugly stories of rampant 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 139 
 
 spoliation of many kinds in circulation. The 
 Protestants held nine-tenths of the land, 
 and the Irish masses stood uncertain when 
 the French Revolution broke out. After 
 the first year or two, the friends of liberty 
 were in ecstasy, but as the sky darkened and 
 the true meaning of that tremendous trans- 
 action became apparent, the Whig spirits 
 were dismayed and horror-struck. All hu- 
 man society appeared to be threatened, and 
 established courts and established institu- 
 tions instinctively drew toward each other, 
 in defence of religion and good order. 
 England declared war against the Jacobins, 
 and her attitude toward the Roman Catho- 
 lics immediately changed. Hitherto the 
 Roman Catholic religion had been treated 
 as its dangerous enemy. It was now held 
 as conservative law. Hitherto she had not 
 been disposed to shield the Catholics from 
 the severe execution of the penal law, but 
 now the great English statesmen, William 
 
140 Froude s Lectures. 
 
 Pitt and Burke, took up the cause of Cath- 
 olic Emancipation. The Presbyterians of 
 the North had been Republican from the 
 very first. They retained their approbation 
 of the Long Parliament, and the success of 
 the Revolution in America had quickened 
 the ashes of the old fires. Calvinism was 
 dying away. The spirit of the dead passed 
 from religion to politics, and their animosity 
 for Catholics was but little less than their re- 
 sentment against the landlords. Some of 
 the more ardent spirits in Dublin and Belfast 
 believed that the time was coming when 
 Ireland might indeed rise out of the ashes 
 of the Catholic and Protestant religions, and 
 then make a supreme effort to establish an 
 Irish Republic. I need only mention to you 
 the names of the two Emmets, of Wolf Tone, 
 of Arthur O'Connell, and Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald. They were patriots, true pa- 
 triots — generous, brave, enthusiastic, and 
 unable to believe that they could fail. 
 
Froudes Lectures. 141 
 
 They were filled with the passionate con- 
 viction that without political independence 
 all their blessings would fail. Like Grat- 
 tan, they meant separation from England, 
 and as a step toward it they demanded par- 
 liamentary reform, and so far were unwill- 
 ing to act with the Whig Club. They or- 
 ganized themselves into the celebrated 
 body of United Irishmen, with central 
 lodges at Belfast and the capital, with sub- 
 ordinate branches scattered through the 
 country. Every true Irishman was invited 
 to enroll his name. The genius of the Rev- 
 olution had touched the Irish harp and 
 struck its strings with passionate impulses 
 of the Irish people. Between the Govern- 
 ment and the United Irishmen lay the Cath- 
 olic gentry, bishops, and clergy. They 
 saw there how they were agreed to have 
 done forever with thraldom, in order to 
 recover their valued privileges as citizens ; 
 but whether to receive their emancipation 
 
142 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 from Pitt and England, or from Wolf Tone 
 and the Revolution, was not easy for them 
 to decide. They, too, were organizing 
 themselves. They had their Catholic Com- 
 mittee, which sat in Dublin as a Second 
 Parliament, and Mr. Pitt had not only mis- 
 conceived their probable sentiments, but 
 some of them, the bishops especially, were 
 deeply shocked, and had a fresh cause to 
 shudder at the thought of an alliance with 
 the assassins of Louis XVI. If the Gov- 
 ernment would do them justice, they were 
 more inclined to stand by the Government, 
 Conciliation admitted of progress ; and, 
 while the Catholics had already recovered 
 the elective franchise in 1793, they had yet 
 to recover the right to sit in Parliament. 
 But the spirit of 1641 was awake again. 
 It was made bountifully clear that half the 
 Catholics were in league with the United 
 Irishmen. In the presence of such a spir t, 
 further concessions were necessarily ex- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 143 
 
 tended, and those gradually, as other dis- 
 contented parties demanded them under 
 the protection of the Republicans. 
 
 Such were the fruits of ten years of lib- 
 erty — a liberty which had been held by 
 Grattan as the dawn of a new era of peace 
 and prosperity. The constitution tied the 
 hands of the Government. They saw rebel- 
 lion approaching at that time, and knew 
 not how to check it. In the provinces, in 
 connection with the United Irishmen, there 
 was a body of defenders formed — defenders 
 of the rights of the peasantry. They were 
 combinations against a landlord's tyranny, 
 and a reign of terror ensued. Houses 
 were burned, villages plundered, and col- 
 lisions between the defenders and bodies 
 of soldiers were of frequent occurrence. 
 The lodges for the United Irishmen spread 
 over the whole island, and whole shiploads 
 of arms were being shipped from France 
 for their revolutionary army. 
 
144 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 Now, once more, Ireland had a real 
 chance. England had flung- her whole 
 strength into the war with France, and the 
 success of the revolutionary arms promised 
 a long and most desperate struggle. The 
 Northern Presbyterians appeared to be at 
 last heart and soul with the Catholics. 
 One hundred thousand Protestant farmers 
 living in the Ulster province had been 
 sworn into the association, all armed, all 
 reconciled, all determined to have done 
 with church, and land, and landlords, and 
 English tyranny. Two hundred thousand 
 Catholics, at least, had been enrolled in the 
 other provinces. The great towns of Dub- 
 lin and Belfast especially were enthusiastic 
 for the cause. Something ought to have 
 come at least of such a mighty preparation. 
 Then, if ever, Irish nationality ought to 
 have become effected. There was, how- 
 ever, from the first, visible in the proceed- 
 ings of the United Irishmen a conflict of 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 145 
 
 creed. Wolf Tone, who appears to have 
 been another Franklin, listened to the 
 original plan for the formation of his so- 
 ciety — a society to be formed in Dublin 
 with a secrecy something of the ceremo- 
 nial of Freemasonry. " Secrecy," it said, 
 " is expedient and necessary. It will make 
 the spirit of the nation more ardent, and 
 will confound and terrify by its agency." 
 
 This is not the stuff of which successful 
 revolutions are made. This is the stuff of 
 which most admirable and most excellent 
 leading; articles are made. Attached to 
 this paper is a private letter of Wolf 
 Tone's, containing a further account of his 
 views. He mentions the names of a few 
 of his friends who had promised to stand 
 by him. Where did I find these papers ? 
 In the English State Paper Office. Before 
 long, before it was printed, almost before 
 the ink was dry, it was in the hands of the 
 English Government. Among the men 
 
146 Froudes Lectures. 
 
 taken into their counsel, one must have 
 been a traitor. From the first dawn of the 
 conspiracy, one of his dearest friends had 
 been betraying- him, and the members of 
 the Council of the United Irishmen, united 
 in what they professed to regard as a most 
 holy cause, were from the very beginning 
 selling their secrets and lives to the English 
 Minister. Of such material have the con- 
 spiracies in that unhappy country been 
 formed. There is no more spot upon Wolf 
 Tone's honor than upon Grattan's. Among 
 the Irish there ran many veins of down- 
 right treachery. Men to whom to the last 
 were entrusted the most dangerous secrets 
 got, by treachery, the miserable profits of 
 their baseness, only stipulating that they 
 should not be brought into the courts of 
 justice. I know that one of his best friends 
 betrayed Wolf Tone. These damning evi- 
 dences of treachery would have convinced 
 him of the entire impossibility of a sue- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 147 
 
 cessful combination for the severance of 
 Ireland from England being formed out of 
 Irish material. The Government could not 
 meddle with it until it entangled itself in 
 some act of treason. Now and then some 
 one made a slip, wrote a treasonable letter, 
 or something of that kind. Papers were 
 seized, and men were tried. No one knew 
 where the information came from. 
 
 Hamilton Rowan escaped to America. 
 He distrusted the atmosphere. Wolf Tone 
 also fled to America with his wife and 
 children. Tone escaped, but went back to 
 Paris, and worked to bring about an inva- 
 sion of Ireland. The Irish only needed 
 a spark of encouragement from abroad. 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald went to the Con- 
 tinent for the same purpose, and had an 
 interview with the French Minister of 
 War. Almost before they met, a little 
 bird carried the news to Downing Street 
 Lady Edward, the celebrated Pamela, hac 
 
148 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 a house at Hamburg. There the Irishman 
 could meet, and from there communicate 
 with their friends in Ireland. But her 
 most trusted friend was coiling like a snake 
 upon her path. There came one night 
 to the minister's house in London a man 
 wrapped in a great cloak. He had secrets 
 to tell of the greatest importance concern- 
 ing a movement against the Government, 
 and his conscience would not allow him 
 to keep them. His information tallied 
 with what the Government had already 
 learned, and they saw, therefore, that they 
 might trust and use him. He went to 
 Hamburg ; he lived in Lady Edward's 
 house ; and saw and spoke with, unsuspect- 
 ed, every one who came there. He gave 
 information which led Mr. Pitt to seize let- 
 ters of the utmost importance. When all 
 was over, he had a pension from the 
 Crown. His name was — I would better 
 not mention his name. 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 149 
 
 Meanwhile, unconscious of the treason 
 which Avas undermining- them, the Irish 
 leaders worked with unabated eagerness. 
 The Government was contented to watch 
 their movements, prepared to strike at a 
 moment's notice. The Irish showed sin- 
 gular skill. An English fleet was being 
 equipped. A number of Irishmen enlisted 
 among the crew, and soon brought about a 
 mutiny among the sailors. At last a fleet 
 sailed from France, taking Tone with it. 
 It reached Ireland, but a gale of wind pre- 
 vented an immediate landing. The Eng- 
 lish were enabled to get together a force 
 sufficient to keep them in check. There 
 was no news of any rising among the peo- 
 ple, and the attempt at last proved a failure. 
 Tone himself had been against any attempt 
 in the South. 
 
 Another expedition was formed. This 
 time a Dutch fleet was to pass around Ire- 
 land. Admiral Danton, with sailors who 
 
150 Froudes Lectures. 
 
 were anxious to cover up the disgrace of 
 their former mutiny, fell in with the Dutch 
 outside of the banks, and destroyed their 
 fleet. The English now issued orders for 
 a general disarming of the Irish people. 
 The rebel leaders felt that they could 
 wait no longer. They were, of course, 
 betrayed at a meeting. Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald was away, but his hiding-place was 
 revealed, and he died in prison. The peo- 
 ple rose under inferior leaders, and acted 
 just as their impulses moved them. They 
 surprised a few ports, and cut in pieces a 
 few English soldiers. In the South, and 
 everywhere except in Ulster, the insurrec- 
 tion assumed a character that long-sighted 
 people had long seen to be certain of com- 
 ing. The union of the two creeds, Catho- 
 lic and Protestant, became impossible, and 
 it turned into a war of religions. Protes- 
 tant churches and chapels were burned, 
 and the movement became a Catholic cm- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 151 
 
 sade. However fair the prospects of the 
 United Irishmen in the beginning", it was 
 but a struggle of the Celts to recover the 
 soil and of the priests to recover Catholic 
 supremacy. Horrible things are done 
 when mobs of unprincipled men get power 
 into their hands. But mobs never succeed 
 in doing anything but mischief. 
 
 What had Grattan done? What had 
 Grattan's constitution done for his coun- 
 try? Ireland, when the American war 
 broke out, lay under a code of laws so 
 unjust as to drive an unhappy people to a 
 revolution for a remedy. The restrictions 
 on trade had been taken off, and the restric- 
 tions on the Catholics were fast passing 
 away. Had this been taken care of, all else 
 must have been righted. Grattan was led 
 away with what I call a delirium of nation- 
 ality. He insisted upon national independ- 
 ence, and what was the result ? Did any 
 peasant pav lighter rent to his landlord? 
 
152 Frondes Lectures. 
 
 Was any tenant saved from eviction? 
 Grattan said, " Make Ireland a nation, and 
 Ireland will redress her own wrongs." 
 She became a nation, and actions which 
 before were scandalous became infamous. 
 The Irish Parliament became a market in 
 which peers and commoners sold them- 
 selves. Honest Irishmen formed in asso- 
 ciations to find deliverance in arms. 
 Where one or two were gathered together, 
 one was a traitor. The fruit of all this was 
 the death or banishment of most of them, 
 and a fresh list. of massacres and horrors 
 swelled the lines of party hatred. If insur- 
 gents are not strong enough to frighten the 
 government, government must and will put 
 down the insurgents. Do you suppose the 
 Irishmen would have governed Ireland 
 very beautifully if Ireland had been left to 
 them ? Those unions only are fit to be in- 
 dependent which have strength and cour- 
 age to be their own liberators. The neces- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 153 
 
 sary qualities are not yet to be found in 
 Ireland. Political agitators have been and 
 always will be a curse to Ireland. But all 
 people have a right to justice. When the 
 light shines in upon a definite injustice, it 
 cannot long remain in existence. A good 
 government is the light of all. The Irish 
 missed the substance in grasping at the 
 shadow. 
 
 To leave the Irish Parliament, standing 
 as it was after the Rebellion, was to leave 
 one of the most corrupt institutions that the 
 world has ever seen. To hand over Ire- 
 land to such a Parliament was to leave 
 Catholics and Protestants smarting under 
 the wounds of Derry. There was no 
 serious objection to a union with England. 
 Cromwell had seen the inevitable necessity. 
 She refused then, and at last was obliged 
 to sue for what she might have had them 
 begging her to take. When the Act of 
 Union was first proposed, a shriek of patri- 
 
154 Frondes LecUires. 
 
 otism ran over the country. Before their 
 constituents the members of Parliament 
 wept floods of tears. In private, a great 
 many of them, like sensible men, gave Eng- 
 land to understand that they were more 
 reasonable. Corrupt from the hour that 
 Grattan left them, having sold their con- 
 sciences for eighteen years, they ended in 
 selling their consent to the order which 
 terminated their existence. It was a 
 scandalous end to a scandalous existence. 
 It was the end, and, for my own part, I 
 hope from my heart, the final end. I, foi 
 myself, will say for the Union what Grattan 
 said of his constitution, " Esto perpetual 
 
Froudfs Fifth Lecture. 
 
 DELIVERED OCTOBER 25, 1872. 
 
 Mr. Froude began by alluding- to a slight 
 inaccuracy he had made in his last lecture 
 in quoting from Mr. Grattan's speech. 
 This was, however, simply an error of 
 arrangement, not of fact. He went on to 
 say that forms of government should not 
 be so much kept in view as the spiritual 
 and material condition of the people. 
 Aristocracies were only bad because they 
 were more liable to be distorted by self- 
 interest. Just laws were the first requisite 
 of a good government, and it was only when 
 the government governed badly that the 
 
156 Fronde s Lect tires. 
 
 constitution should be attacked. But re- 
 verse this law, and begin political agitation 
 before you had a clear idea of what you 
 wished to destroy or to build up, and your 
 efforts were worse than useless. The Irish 
 had fallen into this mistake almost invaria- 
 bly, and scarcely had they ever got fairly 
 into the path of practical reform than 
 they had been thrown back again by foolish 
 political agitation. Just before the insur- 
 rection of '98, all of Ireland's grievances 
 were in course of redress ; but these 
 concessions were simply interpreted by the 
 Irish as meaning that England was afraid 
 of them. In 1802, the constitution that 
 succeeded the Union was fairly at work. 
 Three-quarters of a country more fertile 
 than Scotland, and as fertile as the best 
 parts of England, was almost a desolate 
 wilderness. The lands were untilled, and 
 the peasantry dwelt in miserable cabins with- 
 out windows, which they shared with their 
 
 *t 
 
Frondes Lectures. 157 
 
 pigs. Their holdings were perhaps only an 
 acre or two, cultivated with potatoes, for 
 which they gave the old ruinous rack rent. 
 And yet the people were not unhappy; 
 their only fear was lest some neighbor 
 might bid a higher rent, and the landlord 
 •should drive them away to starve in the 
 nearest ditch. The landlords were of sev- 
 eral kinds, the main classes being the great 
 magnates who lived in London, and the 
 squires and squireens, Avho gambled and 
 drank and fought duels and ruined their 
 tenants. It was remarkable, however, that 
 this last was the most popular, while the 
 improving landlord was hated intensely, 
 because, finding his land littered with pau- 
 pers, he removed them to make way for 
 thrifty and industrious Scotchmen or Eng- 
 lishmen. After all, these paupers, or ver- 
 min, as they were called, were human 
 beings. Was it wonderful that they should 
 retaliate by the murder of the improving 
 
158 Frondes Lectures. 
 
 landlord, or of the improving landlord's 
 agent or bailiff? Such was Ireland after 
 six hundred years of English rule. The 
 law had invariably been the enemy of Irish- 
 men, and they were therefore lawless. A 
 more powerful police was the next thing 
 called for. But it was of no good to reor- 
 ganize the police unless the iniquitous laws 
 that had led to crime were abolished. 
 Then, again, the religious question came 
 forward. The Established Church had 
 been set up to secure the conversion of 
 Ireland, yet four- fifths of the people were 
 Catholic, and would remain so, while of the 
 Protestants less than half acknowledged 
 this same state establishment. He (Froude) 
 did not think, however, that the religious 
 grievance of Ireland had been the greatest 
 of England's wrongs. He, for one, recog- 
 nized the immense influence for good of 
 the Catholic clergy. There was no vulgar 
 crime in Ireland, and Irishmen showed a 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 159 
 
 delicacy and modesty of character which 
 was undoubtedly due to the influence of 
 their religious teachers. But the Romish 
 Church was a very different matter. So 
 long- as the popes retained a hope of recov- 
 ering their old power, no Catholic was per- 
 mitted to be a loyal subject to a Protestant 
 prince ; and for two centuries a bitter war 
 was waged against the reformed religion. 
 Could England, therefore, allow the priests 
 to destroy their power in Ireland any more 
 than Prince Bismarck could to-day allow 
 the Jesuits to undo the German Confeder- 
 acy? The Irishman for centuries looked 
 upon his allegiance to the pope as superior 
 to his English sovereign. Far more blame 
 was due to England for her cruelty and 
 oppression to the Irish Nonconformists 
 than for her treatment of the Irish Catho- 
 lics. After the peace of Utrecht, politics 
 assumed a different complexion. 
 
 It ceased to be the avowed duty of 
 
160 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 the Catholic to never recognize the autho- 
 rity of a Protestant prince. But for the 
 United Irishmen and the Rebellion of '98 
 Catholic emancipation would have been at 
 once passed as a just and necessary law, 
 whereas it was reserved for O'Connell to 
 achieve it by a long and tedious struggle. 
 But much remained to be done after eman- 
 cipation was granted. The peasant was 
 worse off than ever. His landlord was 
 generally a Protestant, and said to him, 
 " You must vote as I do, or I will turn you 
 off my land " ; while the priest said, " You 
 must vote as I wish you, or I shall excom- 
 municate you." O'Connell, if he had 
 wished, instead of clamoring for repeal, 
 which he knew he would never get, might 
 have secured many years sooner a just land 
 law, such as Mr. Gladstone had recently 
 passed. The English reformers, such as 
 Sir Robert Peel, had, however, succeeded 
 in giving the Irish a satisfactory measure 
 
Froudes Lectures. 161 
 
 of education ; but this had been greatly 
 nullified by the influence of the priests, who 
 desired that the sheep should be separated 
 from the goats on this as well as on the 
 other side of the day of judgment. The 
 great evil of Ireland after emancipation was 
 the land tenure. The landlords for the 
 most part were impoverished and out at 
 elbows, while the peasantry multiplied ex- 
 ceedingly, owing to the encouragement of 
 both the priests and the landlords, the 
 former in order to avoid immorality, and the 
 latter because the more people there were 
 the higher rose his rents. In 1846, there 
 were 9,000,000 of people, 2,000,000 of whom 
 were beggars, and all living on the eternal 
 potato. We most of us remembered how 
 sadly all this ended. The note of warning 
 had long been sounded. Cobbett had 
 shown the folly of allowing an immense 
 population to spring up, trusting for sup- 
 port to one single precarious crop. The 
 
1 62 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 potato failed, and there came the famine. 
 The Irish bore the calamity with a patience 
 and heroism that could not be too highly 
 admired. A quarter of a million of them 
 perished of sheer hunger. As fast as it 
 could be done, supplies were sent by Eng- 
 land, and the government voted ten mil- 
 lions of money, eight of which he believed 
 had been stolen. America also forwarded 
 magnificent contributions, and from all 
 parts of the world there came help and 
 succor. At length the famine was stayed, 
 and, as usual, the blame was thrown on the 
 wrong shoulders. 
 
 Political economists upbraided the Con- 
 nemara peasant because he was not suffi- 
 ciently well up in " Matthews on Popula- 
 tion." The first result of the famine was 
 the revival of political delirium. O'Con- 
 nell preached repeal as the spring of Ire- 
 land's misery, just as he had previously 
 preached the same thing about emaneipa- 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 163 
 
 tion. Then suddenly came the report that 
 400,000 Irishmen were prepared for revolt. 
 He (Froude) had himself gone to Ireland, 
 believing that the day of judgment had 
 indeed come at last. But how miserably it 
 all ended ! A scuffle in a cabbage-garden, 
 and the appearance of the police — that was 
 all. Never before had insurrection met so 
 miserable a fate ; for it was now in Ireland 
 for the first time ridiculous. The next 
 effect of the famine was the passage of an 
 act through the Irish Parliament that the 
 Irish land should support the Irish poor. 
 This completed the ruin of the encumbered 
 Irish landed gentry, and they had now 
 faded for ever away. The 9,000,000 of the 
 Irish people had also, in consequence of .the 
 famine, dwindled down to 5,500,000, which, 
 allowing for the natural rate of increase, 
 showed an emigration of between five and 
 six millions. The famine also stimulated 
 many of the landlords to raise the condition 
 
164 Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 of their tenants, and on many Irish estates 
 now the farmers and peasantry were much 
 better off than his English fellow-subjects. 
 But the good landlords were few, and, to 
 get rid of the impoverished remainder, 
 Parliament passed the Encumbered Estates 
 Act, which enabled a creditor to demand the 
 sale of his debtor's land. The new purcha- 
 sers of the land very generally reduced the 
 number of their tenants. They were most- 
 ly prosperous business Irishmen, who had 
 little pity for their poorer countrymen. 
 Some of the purchasers, also, were land 
 speculators, who would buy an estate on a 
 promissory note, and, having cleared the 
 estate of its superfluous tenantry, would 
 again throw it into the market, and sell it at 
 a highly advanced price. The poor pea- 
 santry were told to go — to go to the devil 
 if they could find nowhere else to go to ; 
 and so they went to America. He (Froude) 
 thought that if the English government had 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 165 
 
 managed properly they might have made 
 this necessity of emigration a conciliatory 
 measure. They might have said to the 
 evicted tenant, " It is true we can't keep 
 you here at home, but in our colonies we 
 will give you each 200 acres of land, with 
 provisions out of the public funds for their 
 maintenance during the first year of occu- 
 pation." This might have cost about twice 
 as much as the Abyssinian war had in- 
 involved, or half what had been thrown 
 into the mud at Balaklava, but it would 
 have been a good money investment. It 
 was needless, however, to say that nothing 
 of the kind was done. The emigrants left 
 for America with bitterness in their hearts, 
 while the Irish peasantry at home formed 
 themselves into disloyal bands, and re- 
 dressed their wrongs by the wild justice of 
 murder. 
 
 The landlords would have had their hands 
 tied sooner than had been the case but for 
 
166 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 the cropping out again of the old folly of 
 political agitation. He (Froude) did not 
 blame the Irish for their desire for inde- 
 pendence. He admitted the'" sacred right 
 of revolution," but it was sacred only when 
 the insurgents had power to achieve it. It 
 was only when justice was denied and the 
 last hope of redress had died away that it 
 was lawful to call up the spirits of fire and 
 blood. Never had there been a more un- 
 justifiable revolt, judged from this point of 
 view, than the Fenian Rebellion. The Re- 
 bellion of 1848 had ended in a comedy, and 
 the Fenian Rebellion had ended very little 
 better. But, in spite of the Rebellion, Eng- 
 land had resolved that if the Irish rebelled 
 again they should at least have no valid 
 grievances to complain of. Mr. Gladstone 
 took the matter in hand, and began by de- 
 nouncing the " upas-tree of Protestant as- 
 cendency." This was a taunt altogether 
 unprovoked and unnecessary ; but Mr. 
 
Froude s Lectures. 167 
 
 Gladstone disestablished the Irish Church, 
 which would have been well enough had it 
 been abolished as a state establishment and 
 not as a religion. The priests then clam- 
 ored about the universal education that 
 prevailed in Ireland ; but Ireland's great 
 evil remained the same as ever — the land 
 tenure — and this had been redressed by Mr. 
 Gladstone's healing Land Act of three years 
 ago. The landlord could no longer evict 
 the humblest peasant without having to 
 pay for his cruelty. He now had to pay 
 his tenant for every stroke of work he had 
 put into it, and something besides. The 
 Irish now demanded home rule, and, it 
 might be asked, why not grant this as well? 
 He answered, because no home-rule gov- 
 ernment would have ever passed the Land 
 Act. Ah Irish Parliament would necessarily 
 be composed chiefly of landed gentlemen, 
 who in Ireland would of their own free 
 will never do justice to the Irish peasantry 
 
1 68 Frondes Lectures. 
 
 until afternoon on doomsday. Another ob- 
 jection to home rule was that Ireland was 
 not one nation, but two. Protestant ascen- 
 dency had been abolished, but he did not 
 wish now to see Catholic ascendency estab- 
 lished. He (Mr. Froude) believed that the 
 proud, high-spirited Protestants of the 
 North would never consent to be governed 
 by the mere numbers of the Catholic Irish 
 majority. Within a year England would 
 be compelled to interfere to prevent civil 
 war. He hoped, therefore, that no such 
 rash and dangerous measure would be 
 attempted. Something, however, remained 
 to be done. The landlords had changed 
 their ideas, and now knew that they must 
 make their choice between power and self- 
 indulgence. If they wished political influ- 
 ence, they must do something else than 
 merely spend their money. Eviction, too, 
 was still possible, and in these days of enor- 
 mous millonaires it might sometimes pay 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 169 
 
 to sweep a barony clear of its people, and 
 turn it into a deer forest. This should be 
 remedied, and the English Parliament was 
 now no longer the representative of a mere 
 class, and English landed gentlemen would 
 soon have to live for nobler objects than 
 self-indulgence, or they would be swept 
 away. In the good work of reform, the 
 Irish people might help their English neigh- 
 bors if, listening only, to nobler instincts 
 than nationality, they joined hands with 
 them in the cause of progress. He (Mr. 
 Froude) concluded by hoping that the sym- 
 pathy of the American Republic would be 
 given to the right side. 
 
Froudfs Reply to Father 
 Burke- 
 
 NOVEMBER, 30, 1872. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 If my object in coming to this country 
 was to draw attention to the Irish subject, 
 I may so far be said to have succeeded. 
 I have succeeded also, beyond my expec- 
 tation, in eliciting a counter-statement 
 containing the opinions of the Irish people 
 themselves on their past history, the most 
 complete, the most symmetrical, the most 
 thoroughgoing which has yet been given 
 to the world. 
 
 The successive positions taken by Father 
 Burke have been long familiar to me, some 
 
Froudes Lectures. 171 
 
 in one book and some in another. But no- 
 where have so many of them been com- 
 bined so artistically, and not till now have 
 the}^ been presented in what may be called 
 an authoritative form. Father Burke re- 
 grets that I should have obliged him to 
 reopen wounds which he would have pre- 
 ferred to have left closed. I conceive, on 
 the other hand, that a wound is never 
 healed so long as there is misunderstanding. 
 England and Ireland can approach each 
 other only on the basis of truth, and so 
 long as Irish children are fed with the 
 story which Father Burke has so eloquent- 
 ly told, so long they must regard England 
 with eyes of utter detestation until full 
 atonement be made for past wrongs. If 
 Father Burke's account is true, let England 
 know it, look it in the face, and acknow- 
 ledge it. If it be an illusion or tissue of 
 illusions, then it is equally desirable that 
 the Irish should know it, and a bridge of 
 
172 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 solid fact be laid across the gulf that 
 divides us. A subject of this kind can only 
 usefully be treated from the platform, if the 
 audience will bear «their share of the 
 burden, if they will test by reference what 
 they hear, compare evidence, and analyze 
 it. You will learn more from the books 
 to which I shall refer you than you can 
 learn from me in the time for which I will 
 address you. I shall myself venture to 
 indicate the particulars where Father 
 Burke's narration specially needs examina- 
 tion, and refer you to authorities. That an 
 Irishman's view should be different from 
 an Englishman's view is natural and 
 inevitable; but the difference must be 
 limited by facts, which are easily ascertain- 
 able. When they are not ascertainable 
 elsewhere, as, for instance, when Father 
 Burke attributes words to me which I 
 never uttered, I shall venture to speak 
 with authority. 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 173 
 
 I must throw off with a point of this kind. 
 The Father says I have come to America 
 to ask for the extraordinary verdict that 
 England has been right in the manner in 
 which she has treated Ireland for seven hun- 
 dred years. Considering that I have drawn 
 a heavier indictment against England in the 
 course of my lectures than she will prob- 
 ably thank me for ; considering that I have 
 described the history of her connection 
 with Ireland from the beginning as a scan- 
 dal and reproach to her, I must meet this 
 assertion with a simple denial. Father 
 Burke goes on to suggest that England is a 
 decaying empire, that her power is broken, 
 her arm grown feeble, the days of Macau- 
 lay's "New Zealander" not far off, that 
 England is afraid of the growing strength 
 of the Irish in the United States, the 
 8,000,000 of them who have come from the 
 Old Country, and the 14,000,000 of Irish 
 descent. It is scarcely becoming for two 
 
174 Fronde's lectures. 
 
 British subjects to be discussing in this 
 country whether Great Britain is in a state 
 of decadence. England is afraid, however, 
 and deeply afraid. She is afraid of being 
 even driven to use again those measures of 
 coercion against Ireland which have been 
 the shame of her history. 
 
 But Father Burke's figures, I confess, 
 startled me. Of the 42,000,000 of American 
 citizens, 22,000,000 were either Irish born 
 or sprung from Irish parents. Was this 
 possible? I referred to the census of 1870, 
 and I was still more confounded. The entire 
 number of immigrant foreigners who were 
 then in the United States amounted to 
 5,556,566. Of these, under two millions 
 were Irish. The entire number of children 
 born of Irish parents was under two mil- 
 lions also. From these figures, it follows, if 
 Father Burke is correct, that in these two 
 last years there must have come from Ire- 
 land no less than 6,000,000 persons, or more 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 175 
 
 than the entire population of the island, and 
 that in the same two years the Irish mothers 
 mothers must have produced not fewer 
 than 12,000,000 infants. I knew that their 
 fertility was remarkable, but I was not pre- 
 pared for such an astounding illustration 
 of it. 
 
 But Father Burke considers me unfit to 
 speak upon this subject, and for three rea- 
 sons : First. Because I despise the Irish 
 people. I despise them, do I ? Then why 
 have I made Ireland my second home? 
 Why am I here now? Am I finding my 
 undertaking such a pleasant one? I say 
 that for various reasons I have a peculiar 
 and exceptional respect and esteem for the 
 Irish people — I mean for the worthy part of 
 them, the peasantry — and I am endeavoring 
 to serve them. I say the peasantry. For 
 Irish demagogues and political agitators — 
 well, for them, yes, I confess I do feel con- 
 tempt from the bottom of my soul. I re- 
 
176 Frondes Lectures. 
 
 joice that Father Burke has disclaimed all 
 connection with them. Of all the curses 
 which have afflicted Ireland the dema- 
 gogues have been the greatest. 
 
 Once more: Father Burke says I am 
 unfit to speak of Ireland because I hate the 
 Catholic Church. I show my hatred, it 
 appears, by holding the church answera- 
 ble for the cruelties of the Duke of Alva 
 in the Netherlands, and for the massacres 
 of St. Bartholomew's Day in France. 
 Here is what the Father says on the first 
 of these matters : " Alva fought in the 
 Netherlands against an uprising against 
 the authority of the state. If the rebels 
 happened to be Protestants, there is no 
 reason to father their blood upon the 
 Catholics." I beg you to attend to this 
 passage. This is the way in which modern 
 Catholic history is composed, and you may 
 see from it what kind of lessons children 
 will be taught in the national schools ii 
 
Frondes Lectures. 177 
 
 Catholics have the control of the text-books. 
 Father Burke himself, perhaps, only repeats 
 what he himself learned. I suppose he 
 never heard of the edicts of Charles V. 
 By those edicts, which were issued at the 
 opening of the Reformation, every man 
 convicted of holding- heretical opinions was 
 to lose his head. If he was obstinate, and 
 refused to recant, he was to be burned. 
 Women were to be buried alive. Those 
 who concealed heretics were liable to the 
 same penalties as the heretics themselves. 
 The execution of the edicts was committed 
 to the Episcopal Inquisition, and under 
 them, in that one reign, the Prince of 
 Orange, who was alive at the time, and the 
 great Grotius, whose name alone is a guar- 
 antee against a suspicion of exaggeration, 
 declare that not less than fifty thousand 
 persons were put to death in cold blood. 
 I have myself expressed a doubt whether 
 these numbers could have been really so 
 
173 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 large ; but a better judge than I am, a 
 man totally untroubled with theological 
 prepossessions, the historian Gibbon, con- 
 siders the largest estimate to be nearest to 
 the truth. I don't ask you to believe me, 
 ladies and gentlemen — read Grotius; read 
 the Prince of Orange's apology ; read the 
 pages of your own Mr. Motley. And then, 
 because the Netherlands, unable to endure 
 those atrocities, rose in arms to drive the 
 Spaniards out of the country, the Duke of 
 Alva may massacre 20,000 more of them ; 
 they are only rebels. The church is inno- 
 cent of their blood. 
 
 Father Burke, in like manner, declares 
 the church to be blameless for the de- 
 struction of the French Protestants. The 
 Te Dennis that were sung at Rome when 
 the news came, he says, were for the safety 
 of the king, and not for the massacre of 
 the Huguenots. Indeed ! Then why did 
 the infallible pope issue a medal on which 
 
Frondes Lectures. 179 
 
 A 
 
 was stamped Hngonotorum j/r^r^— Slaugh- 
 ter of the Huguenots? Why was the de- 
 sign on the reverse of the medal an angel 
 with a sword smiting the Hydra of heresy ? 
 Does Father Burke know? I suppose not. 
 That the murders in Paris were but the 
 beginning of a scene of havoc, which over- 
 spread France and lasted for nearly two 
 months. Eighteen or nineteen thousand £j, >* 
 persons were killed in Paris on the 24th of ^ a*. 
 August. By the end of September, the 
 list was swollen to 70,000. Strangely in- 
 cautious, infallible pope, if he was only^ 
 
 grateful for the safety of Charles IX. ; for ^ ^ 
 what must have been the effect of the news 
 of the pope's approval on the zeal of the 
 orthodox executioners? 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, I do not hate the 
 Catholic religion; some of the best and 
 holiest men I have ever heard of have 
 lived and died in the Catholic faith. But 
 I do hate the spirit which the church dis- 
 
180 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 played in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, and I hate the spirit which would 
 throw a veil of sophistry over those atroci- 
 ties in the nineteenth. The history of the 
 illustrious men who fought and bled in that 
 long, desperate battle for liberty of con- 
 science, that very liberty to which Catho- 
 lics now appeal, is a sacred treasure left 
 in charge to all succeeding generations. 
 If we allow a legend like this of Father 
 Burke's to overspread and cloud that 
 glorious record, we shall be false to our 
 trust, and through our imbecility and cow- 
 ardice we may bequeath to future ages the 
 legac}' of another struggle. Father Burke 
 himself is for toleration — the freest and the 
 widest. I am heartily glad of it. I wish 
 I could feel that he was speaking for his 
 church as well as himself. But my mind 
 misgives me when I read the Syllabus. In 
 the same number of the New York Tablet 
 from which I take his speech, I find an 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 181 
 
 article Condemning the admission of the 
 Jews to the rights of citizens. When I 
 was last in Spain, there was no Protestant 
 church allowed in the Peninsula. I used 
 to feel that, if I had the fortune to die 
 there, I should be buried in a field like a 
 dog. If all that is now ended, it was not 
 ended by the pope and the bishops. It 
 was ended by the Revolution. Nor is it 
 very hard to be tolerant on Father Burke's 
 terms. In his reading of history, the Pro- 
 testants were the chief criminals. 
 
 If on those terms he is willing to forgive 
 and forget, I, for one, am not. Father 
 Burke knows the connection between con- 
 fession and absolution. The first is the con- 
 dition of the second. When the Catholic 
 Church admits frankly her past faults, the 
 world will as frankly forgive them. If she 
 takes refuge in evasion, if she persists in 
 throwing the blame on others who were 
 guilty of nothing except resistance to her 
 
1 82 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 tyranny, the innocent blood that sue shed 
 remains upon her hands, and all the per- 
 fumes of Arabia will not sweeten them. I 
 will assume, then, that I am fit to speak on 
 this Irish subject, and I will at once pass to 
 it. I must be brief. I shall pass from 
 point to point, and leave irrelevant matter 
 on one side. 
 
 I go to the Norman Conquest itself, and 
 Pope Adrian's Bull, which Father Burke 
 still declares to be a forgery. I need 
 hardly say that I attach no consequence to 
 the Bull itself. I suppose the Popes of 
 Rome have no more right over Ireland 
 than I have over Cuba. The popes, how- 
 ever, did at that time represent the general 
 conscience. What a pope sanctioned was 
 usually what the intelligent part of man- 
 kind held to be right. If the Normans 
 forged such a sanction to color their 
 Conquest, they committed a crime which 
 ought to be exposed. The naked facts are 
 
Fronde s Lectures. 183 
 
 these : King Henry, when he conquered 
 Ireland, produced as his authority a Bull 
 said to have been granted twenty years 
 before by Pope Adrian. It is a matter of 
 history that from the date of the Conquest 
 Peter's pence was paid regularly to Rome 
 by Ireland. Ecclesiastical suits were 
 referred to Rome. Continual application 
 was made to Rome for dispensations to 
 marry within the forbidden degrees. 
 There was close and constant communica- 
 tion from that time forward between the 
 Irish people and clergy and the Roman 
 court. Is it conceivable that, in the course 
 of all this communication, the Irish should 
 never have mentioned this forged Bull at 
 Rome, or that, if they did mention it, there 
 should have been no enquiry and exposure ? 
 To me such a supposition is utterly incon- 
 ceivable. 
 
 But the Bull, says Father Burke, is a 
 forgery on the face of it. The date upon it 
 
1 84 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 is 1 1 54. Adrian was elected Pope on the 
 3d of December, 11 54. John of Salisbury, 
 by whom the Bull was procured, did not 
 arrive in Rome to ask for it till 1 155. 
 What clearer proof could there be ? Very 
 plausible. But forgers would scarcely 
 have committed a blunder so simple. 
 Father Burke's criticism comes from hand- 
 ling tools he is imperfectly acquainted 
 with. He is evidently ignorant that the 
 English official year began on the 25th of 
 March. A paper dated February, 11 54, 
 was in reality written in February, 1 1 55. 
 The popes did not- use this style, but Eng- 
 lishmen did, and a confusion of this kind is 
 the most natural thing in the world in the 
 publication of a document by which Eng- 
 land was specially affected. 
 
 The lecturer here read extracts from Dr. 
 Theiner's book, in which a letter from a 
 subsequent pope to King Henry III. 
 is extracted from the Vatican archives, also 
 
Froude s Lectures. 185 
 
 a letter from [Donald O'Neill, calling him- 
 self King of Ulster, to the pope, speaking of 
 the Normans much as Father Burke speaks 
 of the English now ; complaining specially 
 of Pope Adrian for having, as an English- 
 man, sacrificed Ireland to his countrymen. 
 Mr. Froude also spoke at length of the 
 bishops and the oath of supremacy to King 
 Henry, various points in the history of 
 James II., Elizabeth's conduct in Ireland, 
 of the Rebellion, which he said was by far 
 the gravest matter he had to deal with, the 
 administration of the Earl of Strafford, of 
 the cowardice of the Irish, Mr. Froude 
 sa id : — Lastly, he accuses me of hav- 
 ing called the Irish cowards, and he 
 desires me to take the word back. I 
 cannot take back what I never gave. 
 Father Burke says that such words cause 
 bad blood, and that I may one day have 
 cause to remember them. That they cause 
 bad blood I have reason to know already, but 
 
1 86 Fronde s Lectures. 
 
 the words are not mine but his, and he and 
 not I must recall them. Not once, but 
 again and again, with the loudest emphasis, I 
 have spoken of the notorious and splendid 
 courage of Irishmen. What 1 said was this — 
 and I will say it over again. I was asking 
 how it was that a race whose courage was 
 above suspicion made so poor a hand of 
 rebellion, and I answered my question thus : 
 that the Irish would fight only for a cause in 
 which they really believed, and that they 
 were too shrewd to be duped by illusions 
 with which they allowed themselves to 
 play. I will add that if 500 of the present 
 Irish police, Celts and Catholics, all or 
 most of them, enlisted in the cause of order 
 and good government, would walk up to 
 and walk through the large mob which the 
 so-called patriots could collect from the 
 four provinces of Ireland ; if it be to call 
 men cowards when I say that under the 
 severest trials the Irish display the noblest 
 
Frondes Lectures. 187 
 
 qualities which do honor to humanity when 
 they are on the right side, then, and only 
 then, have I questioned the courage of 
 Irishmen. 
 
 Mr. Froude then referred somewhat in 
 detail to the facts of the Rebellion, and 
 closed his lecture as follows : Father 
 Burke's own knowledge of his subject is 
 wide and varied, but I can compare his 
 workmanship to nothing so well as to one 
 of the lives of his own Irish saints, in which 
 legend and reality are so strangely blended 
 that the true aspect of things and character 
 can no longer be discerned. I believe that 
 I have shown that this is the true state of 
 the case, though from the state of Father 
 Burke's mind upon the subject he may be 
 unaware precisely of what has happened to 
 hirn. Anyway, I hope that we may now 
 part in good-humor ; we may differ about 
 the past ; about the present, and for practi- 
 cal objects, I believe we are agreed. He 
 
1 88 Fronde's Lectures. 
 
 loves the Irish peasant, and so do I ; I have 
 been accused of having nothing practical to 
 propose for Ireland. I have something ex- 
 tremely practical ; I want to see the pea- 
 sants taken from under the power of their 
 landlords, and made answerable to no 
 authority but the law. It would not be 
 difficult to define for what offence a tenant 
 might legally be deprived of his holding. 
 He ought not to be dependent on the 
 caprice of any individual man. If Father 
 Burke and his friends will help in that way, 
 instead of agitating for a separation from 
 England, I would sooner find myself work- 
 ing with him than against him. If he will 
 forget my supposed hatred to his religion, 
 and will accept the hand which I hold out 
 to him, now that our fight is over, it is a 
 hatred, I can assure him, which, like some 
 other things, has no existence except in his 
 own imagination. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, so often referred to as an 
 authority on the invasion of Ireland by the Anglo- 
 Normans, was no other than a certain adventurer, 
 of which the period was so fruitful, whose real 
 name was Gerald de Barry. He was a Welshman 
 by birth, a sycophant by nature, full of vanity and 
 mendacity, as his own writings show, and totally 
 ignorant of the matters treated in his books. He 
 visited Ireland but twice, and then for short times ; 
 once with his brother Philip and his uncle Stephen, 
 and again in 1185, sixteen years after the landing 
 of the Normans, as tutor to Prince John, the weak 
 and ungrateful son of Henry II. Totally ignorant 
 of the language of the country, its laws, customs, 
 and traditions, he had the hardihood, to please his 
 royal patron, to write a book about it, entitled, 
 " The Conquest," etc. Like a true follower of the 
 hordes of William the Bastard, he was sanguinary. 
 
1 90 Notes. 
 
 at least in theory, for he advised the utter exter- 
 mination of the natives. His apologist and trans- 
 lator, Hooker, however, says that he did not re- 
 commend the extirpation of all the Irish, but only 
 such as refused to submit to the royal authority 
 (book ii. c. 40). How far he carried his servility 
 may be seen in his book on his native country, 
 where in chapter viii., de Illaudabilus, he suggests 
 t'his method of subjugation of the Welsh, the true 
 Britons: "The seas were to be guarded, war 
 should be carried on during the winter, divisions 
 were to be fomented among the Welsh patriots." 
 Could baseness go much further than this ? A 
 complete refutation of Barry's work on Ireland 
 was published two hundred years ago, under the 
 title of " Cambrensis Eversus," of which Ware 
 says: "This work was written by John Lynch, a 
 secular priest and titular archdeacon of Tuam, 
 was a native of Galway. He published his Cam- 
 brensis Eversus An. 1662, under the feigned 
 name of Gratianus Lucius. It was written in 
 Defence of his country against the fabulous and 
 malicious Reports made of it by Gerald Barry, 
 commonly called Cambrensis, wherein with a 
 judicious and sharp Pen he exposeth the number- 
 
Notes. 191 
 
 less Mistakes, Falshoods, and Calumnies of that 
 Writer; shewing, in confuting him, that he was 
 well qualified to undertake the subject by a great 
 compass of knowledge in the history of his coun- 
 try, and in other polite learning." 
 
 " The Norman Conquest of Ireland." — The 
 use of this phrase, though at one time in v*ogue, 
 shows the utter ignorance of Irish history in him 
 who uses it. There was neither conquest nor, in 
 the proper sense of the term, invasion by the 
 Anglo-Normans of Ireland in the time of Dermid 
 McMurrough. The only contemporary, authentic, 
 and true account, allowing for the natural bias of 
 the writer, we have of the defection of the King 
 of Leinsteris from the pen of his trusty emissary 
 and interpreter, Maurice Regan. This fragment 
 of history, composed in 1177, was first translated 
 into French, and from thence into English, by no 
 less a personage than Sir George Carew, Lord 
 President of Munster under Elizabeth, whose 
 MSS. are still preserved in the library of Trinity 
 College, Dublin. Regan's version of the affair is 
 thus told : 
 
192 Notes, 
 
 " Dermond, Kyng of Leinster, was a powerful 
 prince ; he invaded O'Neal and the Kyng of 
 Meath, compelled them to gyve hostages, and 
 constrained O'Kerrall to send hym his son for a 
 pledge into Leinster. At that tyme O'Rory, Kyng 
 of Lethcoin, whose country was woody and full of 
 boggs, had to wyfe the daughter of Melaghlin Mac- 
 Colman, Kyng of Meath, a fair and lovely lady, 
 entirely beloved of Dermond, Kyng of Leinster, 
 who also hated O'Rory for an affront which his 
 men had received at Lethnuth in his country. 
 
 " Dermond, by leters and messingers, pursued 
 her love with such fervency, as, in the end, she 
 sent him word that shee was ready to obey, and 
 yeld to his will, appointed him a tyme and place 
 where he should find her, and prayeing him to 
 come soe strongly, as that he might by force take 
 her away with him. Dermond presently assem- 
 bled his forces, and marched into the county of 
 Lethcoin ; at Trimbruin he found this lady, tooke 
 her awaye with him, spoiled the county, and re- 
 turned with victory and content into Femes. 
 
 " O'Rory, full of grief and rage, addressed hym- 
 self unto the Kyng of Connaght, complaining of 
 the wrong and scorne done unto hym by the Kyng 
 
Notes. 
 
 m 
 
 of Leinster, and intreating his aid in the revenge 
 of so grete an outrage. 
 
 " O'Conner, Kyng of Connaght, moved with 
 honour and compassion, promised him succour, 
 and presently he dispatched messingers to the 
 King of Ossory unto Melaghlin, King of Meath, to 
 Hesculph, Mac Turkell Lord of Dublin, and 
 Morrough O'Birne, wyth whome he so muche pre- 
 vailed, as they turned heads upon their Lord King 
 Dermond. 
 
 " The King of Leinster seeing hymself forsaken 
 of his kinsmen, friends, servants, and principal 
 followers, having sume more confidence in Mur- 
 rough O'Birne than in the rest, took horse, and 
 rode to speak with hym. 
 
 " King Dermond being returned to Femes, and 
 lodged in the Abbey at Femes, dedicated to the 
 Blessed Virgin Mary, commanded the abbot to 
 write a letre, which he subscribed, and to deliver 
 it to one of his monks to carry it to the Morrough 
 O'Birne, hoping thereby to perswade him to a 
 meeting. The monke being dispatched, dis- 
 charged the trust imposed upon him soe well as 
 that he delivered the letre to O'Birne. The King 
 followed the monke, and at a woodside saw Mor- 
 
194 Notes. 
 
 rough O'Birne, who, beholdinge the King, men* 
 anced him presently to depart, or else he would 
 repent it. 
 
 "The distressed King, almost destracted with 
 griefe and anger, returned to Femes, and fearing 
 to be betrayed there, and delivered by his people 
 unto the King of Connaught, resolved to abandon 
 his country, and instantly without delay he went 
 to the Horkeran, where he imbarqued hymself for 
 England, having in his company no other man of 
 marke then Awliffe O'Kinade, and about sixty 
 persons. 
 
 "With a prosperous gale he arrived at Bristoll, 
 and was lodged with all his companie in the house 
 of Robert Hardinge, at St. Augustins, where, 
 aftir some staie, he addressed his journey towards 
 France, to speak with King Henry, who then had 
 wars in that kingdom with the French King. 
 
 " When he came to the presence of King Henry, 
 he related at large unto hym that he was forced 
 to run into exile, and beseeching hym to gyve 
 hym aid, whereby he may be restorid to his in- 
 heritance, which yf it should please him in his 
 goodness to grant, he would acknowledge hym to 
 be Lorde, and serve hym faithfully during his life. 
 
Notes. 195 
 
 "This pitifull relation of the distressed king so 
 much movid King Henry to compassion as that 
 he promised him aid, and willed him to return to 
 Bristoll, there to remain until he herd furthir 
 from hym ; and with all he wrote to Robert Har- 
 ding, requiring hym to receve King Dermond and 
 his followers into his house, and to intreat them 
 with all courtesie and humanitie he could ; where- 
 of Robert failed in nothing. 
 
 " After King Dermond had remained more than a 
 month in Bristol, and seeing no hope of aid from 
 King Henry, weary of delaye, and comfortless, he 
 went to the Erie Richard, intreating succours 
 from hym, and promising, that if by his means he 
 might be re-established in his kyngdome, that he 
 would gyve hym his daughter to wife, and with 
 her the whole Kingdom of Leinster for his in- 
 heritance. 
 
 "The Erie, tickled with so fair an offer, made 
 answeare, that if he could obtain leave of the 
 King, his mastir, he would not fail to assiste hym 
 in his person, and bring sufficient aid ; but for the 
 present he desired to be excused ; for unless the 
 King would give his assent therunto, he durst not 
 entirtaine a business of that importance. 
 
ig6 Notes. 
 
 " This faire and discreet answeare so well con- 
 tented the exiled King, as he solemnly swore that 
 whensoever the Erie did bring aide unto hym, he 
 would give him his daughter in marriage, and 
 after his death, the Kingdom of Leinster. 
 
 "These conditions being agreed to on either 
 party, Dermond departed, and went to St. David's, 
 where he staid untill shipping was provided to 
 transport hym into Ireland. 
 
 "The King of Leinster finding it to be an im- 
 possibility for hym to recovir his kingdome, and 
 to prevaile in his designs, without aide out of 
 England, dispatched his trusty servant and inter- 
 preter, Maurice Regan, with letres in Wales, and 
 with authority in his name to promise all such as 
 would come to serve hym in his wars in Ireland, 
 large recompence in landes of inheritance to 
 souche as would staye in the country, and to 
 those that would returne, he would gyve them 
 good intertainment eyther in money or in cattle. 
 As soone as these promises were divulged, men 
 of all sortes, and from divers places, preparid 
 themselves to goe into Ireland, first, especially 
 Robert Fitz-Stephen, a man of good esteeme in 
 
Notes. jgy 
 
 Wales (who had lately been enlargid out of prison 
 by the mediation of Dermond), undirtooke the 
 imployment, and with hym some nine or ten 
 knights of good account. 
 
 "A.D. 1 169. — This little army, transported in 
 three ships, landed at a place called Bann, not far 
 from the town of Wexford, from whence they 
 immediately dispatched messingers unto King 
 Dermond to give him notice of their arrivall, who 
 without delay repaired unto them, and imbracing 
 them with much joy, and rendering them thanks 
 for their travile they had taken, that night they 
 encamped by the sea-side. The next day Der- 
 mond and the Englishe marched directly to Wex- 
 ford, and instantly gave an assault unto the towne, 
 in the whiche eighteen Englishe were slain, and 
 of the defendaunts only three. Nevertheless, the 
 townsmen perceavinge themselves to be unable to 
 make any long defence, demanded parle, which be- 
 ing graunted, they offered hostages to the King and 
 to sware from thence forward to be evermore his 
 loyall vassals. By the advice of the Englishe the 
 conditions were accepted, and the town of Wex- 
 ford rendered itself unto Dermond. Which done, 
 he went to Femes, as well to cure his hurt men 
 
198 Notes. 
 
 as to feast the Englishe, where they rested three 
 weeks. 
 
 "Then Dermond called to hym Robert Fitz- 
 Stephen and Maurice de Prindergast, tellinge 
 them how much they and their nation were feared 
 by the Irish ; wherefore he had a purpose to in- 
 vade the King of Ossory, his mortal enem^, and 
 to chastise hym ; but furst he required their ad- 
 vise and consent ; who answered, that they came to 
 that land to no othz'r end than to serve hym z'n his 
 warrs, and that they would not forsake hym in 
 any interprize whatsoever he would undertake." 
 
 Adrian's Bull.— It has been long a disputed 
 question among the best writers on Irish history 
 as to whether Pope Adrian did or did not issue a 
 Bull empowering Henry II. to take forcible pos- 
 session of Ireland, and to reform the ecclesiastical 
 and other abuses said to be then existing 
 therein, though the weight of evidence hitherto 
 has been in favor of the authenticity of such a 
 document. Except to antiquarians, the matter has 
 little practical interest, for Henry did not claim 
 
Notes. 199 
 
 that country as a dependency of his crown by 
 virtue of any authority other than that derived 
 from the fact that his subjects Strongbow, Fitz- 
 stephen, and others had obtained possession 
 of it, and their appearance in Ireland was the 
 result of circumstances altogether independent of 
 clerical discipline or morals. Nicholas Break- 
 speare, afterwards Pope Adrian IV., was the only 
 Englishman that ever sat on the papal throne, and 
 his national partiality might have misled him into 
 giving too credulous an ear to the plausible calum- 
 nies of the crafty Normans against a people who 
 seem, from the days of Henry to those of Froude, 
 to be the special object of English vituperation. 
 
 The Most Rev. Dr. Moran, the learned Bishop 
 of Ossory, in Ireland, is of the opinion that the 
 Bull was a forgery, and in a recent elaborate com- 
 munication gives his reasons for so believing. 
 Among other things, he says: 'Indeed, the Irish 
 nation at all times, as if instinctively, shrank from 
 accepting it as genuine, and unhesitatingly pro- 
 nounced it an Anglo-Norman forgery. We have 
 already seen how even Giraldus Cambrensis refers 
 to the doubts which had arisen regarding the Bull 
 of Pope Alexander ; but we have at hand still 
 
200 Notes. 
 
 more conclusive evidence that Adrian's Bull was 
 universally rejected by our people. There is, 
 happily, preserved in the Barberini archives, 
 Rome, a MS. of the fourteenth century, contain- 
 ing a series of official papers connected with the 
 pontificate of John XXII., and amongst them is a 
 letter from the Lord Justiciary and the Royal 
 Council of Ireland, forwarded to Rome under the 
 Royal Seal, and presented to His Holiness by 
 William of Nottingham, Canon and Precentor of 
 St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, about the year 
 1325. In this important but hitherto unnoticed 
 document, the Irish are accused of very many 
 crimes, among which is insidiously introduced 
 the rejection of the supposed Bulls: 'More- 
 over, they assert that the King of England, under 
 false pretences a7id by false Bulls, obtai?ied the domi- 
 nion of Ireland, and this opinion is commotily held by 
 them' — ' Asserentes etiam Dominum Regem 
 Angliae ex falsa suggestione et ex falsis Bullis 
 terram Hiberniae in dominium impetrasse ac com- 
 muniter hoc tenentes.' This national tradition 
 was preserved unbroken throughout the turmoil 
 of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and on 
 the revival of our historical literature in the 
 
Notes. 201 
 
 beginning of the seventeenth century was regis- 
 tered in the pages of Lynch, Stephen White> and 
 other writers. 
 
 " It will be well also, whilst forming our judg- 
 ment regarding this supposed Bull of Adrian, to 
 hold in mind the disturbed state of society, es- 
 pecially in Italy, at the time to which it refers. 
 At the present day, it would be no easy matter in- 
 deed for such a forgery to survive more than a 
 few weeks. But at the close of the twelfth cen- 
 tury it was far otherwise. Owing to the constant 
 revolutions and disturbances that then prevailed, 
 the Pontiff was oftentimes obliged to fly from 
 city to city ; frequently his papers were seized 
 and burned, and he himself detained as a hostage 
 or prisoner by his enemies. Hence it is that 
 several forged Bulls, examples of which are given 
 in Cambrensis Eversus, date from these times. 
 More than one of the grants made to the Norman 
 families are now believed to rest on such for- 
 geries; and that the Anglo-Norman adventurers 
 in Ireland were not strangers to such deeds of 
 darkness appears from the fact that a matrix 
 forging the Papal Seal of such Bulls, now pre- 
 served from the R. I. Academy, was found a few 
 
202 Notes. 
 
 years ago in the ruins of one of the earliest 
 Anglo-Norman monasteries founded by De 
 Courcy. 
 
 " The circumstances of the publication of the 
 Bull by Henry were surely not calculated to dis- 
 arm suspicion. Our opponents do not even pre- 
 tend that it was made known in Ireland till the 
 year 1175, and hence, though publicly granted 
 with solemn investiture, as John of Salisbury's 
 testimony would imply, and though its record was 
 deposited in the public archives of the kingdom, 
 this Bull, so vital to the interests of the Irish 
 Church, should have remained dormant for twenty 
 years, unnoticed in Rome, unnoticed by Henry's 
 courtiers, still more unnoticed by the Irish 
 bishops, and, I will add, unnoticed by the Conti- 
 nental sovereigns, so jealous of the power and 
 preponderance of the English monarch — for 
 such suppositions there is indeed no parallel in 
 the whole history of investitures. " 
 
 Public Records.— Much stress having been 
 laid on the importance of public records and 
 State Paper Office documents as illustrating the 
 
Notes. 203 
 
 history of Ireland, we take from the Annals of 
 Dublin, a.d. 1747, the following extract to show 
 how and in what manner these so-called precious 
 authorities were preserved and secured from 
 spoliation and interpolation : 
 
 "There is no perfect chain of records existing 
 through all the several periods of the English 
 government, occasioned partly by the decays of 
 time, partly by the negligence of officers, and the 
 bad condition of repositories in ancient days, and 
 partly from the casualties from fire. Of accidents 
 of this last kind, there is to be seen an ancient 
 memorandum enrolled in the Chancery Office, 
 anno 2 Edward II., to this effect: 'Memorandum, 
 that all the rolls of the Chance^, were, in the 
 time of Master Thomas Cantock, Chancellor of 
 Ireland, to the twenty-eighth year of King Ed- 
 ward, son to King Henry III., destroyed by an 
 accidental fire in the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin 
 Mary, near Dublin, at the time when that abbey 
 was burned down, except two rolls of the same 
 year, which were delivered to Master Waiter de 
 Thombury, by the king's writ. The loss is partly, 
 supplied by Maurice Regan, partly by Giraldus 
 Cambrensis, and the Abbot Benedict, Alan's 
 
204 Notes. 
 
 Registry, and the Black Book of Christ's Church, 
 Dublin.'" 
 
 The Famine of 1846-7-8-9. — In 1841, Ireland 
 had a population of 8,175, 125. * n 1851, according to 
 the usual rate of increase, she should have had at 
 least 9,000,000 ; but the census commissioners re- 
 ported only 6,552,385, leaving to be accounted for 
 about 2,500,000. It has been very pertinently asked, 
 What became of this vast mass of human beings? 
 Some have said they emigrated, but this is im- 
 possible. In the "Annual Report of the Chief of 
 the Bureau of Statistics," Washington, D. C, 1871, 
 we find, under the head of alien passengers arrived 
 in the United States" from foreign countries from 
 1841 to 1850 inclusive, Ireland returned as sending 
 only 162,332, and " Great Britain, not specified," 
 848,366, who are stated to have been mainly Irish. 
 Now, let us suppose that ninety per cent, of the 
 latter were natives of Ireland, this would give us 
 763,529, to which, if we add the number reported 
 as Irish, we find the total emigration of natives 
 of Ireland to the United States during that decade 
 to have been 925,861, or considerably less than 
 
Notes. 205 
 
 1,000,000. Though, as it is well known, this re- 
 public is the great attraction for all the persecuted 
 Celts, still, if we allow that 275,000 went to Eng- 
 land and her colonies during the period referred 
 to — and we think this is by far too liberal an esti- 
 mation — there are still one million three hundred 
 thousand to be accounted for. What became of 
 them ? The onty intelligent answer that can be 
 given is that they died of famine and fever on 
 their own soil, the victims of English misrule and 
 tyranny. Before Mr. Froude again lectures on 
 Ireland, will he please examine these figures? 
 
 Is Froude a Forger?— The following extracts 
 from a letter of Col. James F. Meline, author of 
 one of the ablest books of the period, " Mary 
 Queen of Scots," shows how much reliance can be 
 placed on Froude's veracit}'. That worthy him- 
 self, in his sixth lecture, declines Col. Meline's 
 proposition, on the grounds that he is at one side 
 of the Atlantic and his books and papers on the 
 other, a mere subterfuge, as our readers will see 
 for themselves : 
 
 " If Mr. Froude had been accused in merely 
 
206 Notes. 
 
 general and sweeping terms of bad faith in his 
 treatment of historical documents, he might justly 
 say that it is impossible for him to reply to the 
 vague and the indefinite, and demand something 
 specific. But that is not the case. The charges 
 made in the book to which you refer ("Mary 
 Queen of Scots, and her latest English Historian ") 
 are clear and explicit in every instance, citing 
 page and volume, chapter and verse. Wherever 
 the historian is charged with unauthorized asser- 
 tion or suppression, with interpolation, with adorn- 
 ing his ow nlanguage with inverted commas, with 
 changing expressions which do not suit him for 
 such as do, every such objectionable passage is 
 designated by italics or otherwise, and, where he 
 claims quotation, confronted with the original in 
 such manner as to leave no possible room for 
 mistake. Now, these originals are not always Eng- 
 lish State papers. Many of them are published 
 works ; some relate to French history, some to the 
 Simancas papers. A very large number of Mr. 
 Froude's historical assertions are totally without 
 support or reference, and what are charged as his 
 gravest offences — his suggestions, concealment, 
 innuendo, attributing of motives, pictorial exa£ r - 
 
Notes. 207 
 
 geration, and pretended psychological introspec- 
 tion — are all matters which utterly elude any such 
 test as he proposes. 
 
 "There are few indicted persons who specially 
 admire the indictment under which they stand 
 charged. There are, probably, still fewer who 
 would not prefer one drawn in accordance with 
 their wishes, and from which should, first of all, 
 be excluded the larger part of the accusations 
 made. Of the gravity of the charges in the book 
 in question I am perfectly well aware, and so 
 state (p. 9). 1 believe I have made them good. 
 It is not a mere attempt to show that certain 
 passages, as cited by the historian, do not agree 
 with the originals. It is an arraignment of his 
 historical method, his treatment of authorities, 
 his want of fairness, his absence of the judicial 
 sense, and what I can only designate as his in- 
 trepidity of statement. These are not matters to 
 be measured by anything in the State Paper 
 Office, and I confess my inability to understand 
 why it should be "impossible to reply in detail." 
 The work referred to contains some 300 pages. 
 The inaccuracies charged may possibly number— 
 for I have not counted them— some 400 or 500. 
 
208 Notes. 
 
 If Mr. Froude were to select from these a few- 
 say some sixty or eighty — of the most important, 
 and refute them, the book, with all its charges, 
 would be injured beyond the power of further 
 annoyance. He has, in fact, made a beginning in 
 that direction. Why should he not continue ? In 
 his eighth volume, he puts a sanguinary threat in 
 Mary Stuart's mouth, and cites as his authority a 
 letter, 'Randolph to Cecil, Oct. 5. Scotch MSS., 
 Rolls House.' He was told that there was no 
 such letter in existence, in or out of the Rolls 
 House. Claiming that there had been 'either by 
 himself or a compositor a clerical error,' he fell 
 back upon a letter of another date from the Earl 
 of Bedford. The author of the work you refer to 
 then sent to the English Record Office for a certi- 
 fied copy of the Bedford letter, which turns out 
 to be, not a Scotch, but an English MS., and falls 
 deplorably short of supporting Mr. Froude's cita- 
 tion. A part of this controversy was carried on 
 in the columns of your paper, in October, 1870, 
 and Chapter VIII. of the book referred to gives 
 it in full, together with the Bedford letter." 
 
 A remarkable instance of this "distinguished 
 historian's " weakness for perverting quotations 
 
Notes. 209 
 
 is noticed in one of our leading daily newspapers 
 in the following temperate but not less severe 
 terms: 
 
 "Another and hardly less striking case we take 
 almost at random from the third volume of Mr. 
 Froude's 'History of England.' It concerns an 
 eminent character in English history whom Mr. 
 Froude evidently and most cordially detests— 
 Cardinal Pole. It is based not upon any recondite 
 manuscript, but upon a passage taken from a well- 
 known English historical authority — Strype. Mr. 
 Froude's object in this instance is to present 
 Cardinal Pole in the light of an arrogant, vain- 
 glorious boaster. He says of him : ' He studied 
 industriously at Paris and Padua, acquiring, as he 
 believed, all knowledge which living teachers 
 could impart to him, and he was himself so well 
 satisfied with the result that at the mature age of 
 thirty-six he could describe himself to Henry as 
 one who, though a young man, had ' long been 
 conversant with old men ; had long judged the 
 eldest man that lived too young for him to learn 
 wisdom from.' 'Many ambitious youths,' Mr. 
 Froude sneeringly continues, 'have experienced 
 the same opinion of themselves ; few have ven- 
 
210 Notes. 
 
 tured on so confident an expression of it.' The 
 reference of the words here quoted by Mr. 
 Froude is to Strype, vol. u, p. 305. 
 
 " Now let us see what Strype really gives us as 
 the language of Cardinal Pole : 
 
 " ■ Your Grace [to the king] will think I speak as 
 a young man. I cannot deny but I am that young 
 man that have long judged the eldest that liveth 
 at these days too young for me to learn wisdom of 
 that have learned of all antiquity, of the most 
 antient that ever were aforetime, and of my time 
 hath had most acquaintance and most longest 
 conversation with these that have been the flower of 
 wisdom in our time, which I have sought in all places 
 and most enjoyed that wisdom of any young man 
 of my time — so that if I were a stock I must needs 
 know somewhat. 1 
 
 " Is it possible to imagine a more complete con- 
 tradiction than here exists between what Cardi- 
 nal Pole is really reported by Strype as saying 
 and the sense which Mr. Froude puts upon what 
 he claims that he is citing as the language of 
 Cardinal Pole from the pages of Strype ?" 
 
 Is it any wonder that a man guilty of such un- 
 blushing falsifications of history should decline 
 
. Notes. 2 1 1 
 
 any challenge that might be offered him as to the 
 correctness or fairness of his quotations? And 
 if a writer will be guilty of such tergiversation 
 toward his own countrymen, how much reliance 
 can be placed on his statements regarding a coun- 
 try whose nationality and religion are evidently 
 the objects of his most intense though ill-dis- 
 guised hatred ? J. E. M. 
 
__1 
 
 An American on the "Situation.' 
 
 Wendell Phillips, whose eloquent lecture on 
 O'Connell has for years delighted and instructed 
 the thinking people of almost every city and town in 
 the Eastern, Middle, and Western States, in a dis- 
 course delivered on the third of December, 1872, 
 before the elite of Boston, thus takes to pieces the 
 elaborately constructed sophisms of the " celebrat- 
 ed historian, "and exposes in all their nakedness the 
 hollow prejudices of a man who came to us with 
 professions of impartiality and fairness on his lips, 
 but with deadly and implacable malice in his heart. 
 As an American, with no Irish proclivities, and as 
 one of the American jury appealed to by Froude, 
 his opinions on the questions at issue are of 
 peculiar value. We copy his remarks from the 
 condensed report of the Boston Daily Advertiser : 
 
 " Ladies and Gentlemen : I am to offer to you 
 one or two suggestions touching Mr. Froude's lee- 
 
An American on the " Situation," 213 
 
 tures on the relations of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 He said he came here to argue his case before the 
 American people as a jury, and in my narrow way 
 I wish to use the hour you lend me to-night in 
 rendering a verdict.. It was a great privilege to 
 hear an English scholar's view of these critical 
 relations between England and Ireland; it was a 
 theme deeply interesting to every student of Eng- 
 lish literature and politics, and the interest was 
 deepened into gratitude when with generous pur- 
 pose he gave the receipts of those lectures to the 
 sufferers of our great conflagration. I was grati- 
 fied, also, at the channel which he chose for his 
 address to the American people — the lyceum. It 
 was a marked recognition of this new forum for 
 the public discussion of great national questions ; 
 it was a compliment, well deserved, to the impar- 
 tiality and intelligence of the audiences which 
 make up the great American lyceum. Of course, 
 being Froude, it was brilliant and picturesque in 
 narrative, graphic, instructive ; and if he did not 
 bring us many new facts, at least in the manner 
 in which he told the old ones he revealed the 
 mood, the temper of mind, with which England 
 looks at the question to-day, and that of itself is 
 
214 An America?! on the " Situation." 
 
 a great revelation. Home Tooke said once, when 
 Gibbon wrote his autobiography, that a man who 
 had anything to conceal ought to do anything ra- 
 ther than write his own life ; that he should beg 
 his worst enemy to write it before he trusted the 
 unconscious betrayal of what he would have been 
 but too willing to conceal. So I think in the mode, 
 in the standpoint, in the whole inspiration of these 
 fine testimonies to the relation of Great Britain 
 and Ireland we have the latest, and the most au- 
 thentic, and the most trustworthy declaration of 
 the mode in which the leading Englishmen of to- 
 day regard the Irish question. We all had reason 
 to expect a scholar's treatment, to expect that he 
 would bring order out of chaos, that the tangled 
 web of this Irish- history which had confused all 
 students and puzzled the most patient enquirer 
 would be straightened out and cleared up. For 
 one, I never expected the exact statement, the 
 close narrative, the logical sequence, or the in- 
 stinct of the historian, for I think it cannot be 
 said that Mr. Froude has ever written anything 
 that deserves the name of history. Fairly judged, 
 he is a fervid, brilliant, and earnest writer of 
 party pamphlets, and, grouping together these 
 
An American on the " Situation." 215 
 
 whole fine presentations of the Irish question, 
 after all they are so discordant, so partisan, so 
 fragmentary, so one-sided, that it only runs in 
 the line with the character of his whole literary 
 work. If he had not had occasion to name 
 frequently the O'Connells, the O'Neills, the Fitz- 
 geralds, the Geraldines, the Clairs, and the Des- 
 monds, I should hardly have known, as I listened, 
 that it was an Irish story. In my hasty way, I 
 have had occasion to study somewhat at length 
 the history of Ireland in its relations to the British 
 government, and I confess, with the exception of 
 the dates and the names, I should not have recog- 
 nized the picture which the brilliant essayist drew. 
 I remember once Mrs. Butler read for us a strik- 
 ing extract from " Marmion." I have declaimed it, 
 listened to it, sung it, and crooned it over a hun- 
 dred times, and when I heard it announced it seem- 
 ed to me it would be but a tame piece to listen to ; 
 but, when the deep studied and unequalled voice 
 and that soul that permeates all her public read- 
 ings gave me the piece anew, I thought I had 
 never seen it at all. So when I listened to this 
 history of Froude's, taking out the names and the 
 dates, I did not recognize the story. No doubt, it 
 
216 An American on the " Situation J 
 
 was fair enough to England. With rare justice, he 
 painted her as black as she deserved. That is hon- 
 estly to be said. But having given one broad, 
 liberal black pigment to the whole canvas, he took 
 it all off and brightened up the lines. As it was 
 said of Sir Joshua Reynolds that he would pro- 
 claim an artist the first of painters, and then in 
 detail deny him every quality of the artist, so 
 Froude, having told us in a sentence of marvel- 
 lous frankness, that Elizabeth was chargeable with 
 every fault that a ruler could commit, that she 
 lacked every quality of a worthy ruler, went 
 on, piece by piece, to say that in no other 
 possible way but the one she did could 
 she have met the exigencies of her reign. 
 Then, when you turn to Ireland, every statement, 
 I think, of the Englishman is false ; false in this 
 sense, that it clutched at every idle tale which 
 reflected upon Ireland, while it subjected to just 
 and merciless scrutiny every story that told 
 against England. He painted the poverty, the 
 anarchy, the demoralization, the degradation of 
 Ireland for the last three centuries, as if it stood 
 out exceptional in Europe, as if every other king- 
 dom was bright, and this was the only dark and 
 
An American on the '■ Situation" 217 
 
 disgusting spot on the Continent; whereas, he 
 knew, and would not if questioned have denied, 
 that the same poverty, the same reckless immo- 
 rality, the same incredible ignorance which he 
 attributed to the population of Ireland, was true 
 of France at that day, true of England at the same 
 period, truer still of Scotland at every date that 
 he named. And then, when he came to the public 
 men of Ireland, he painted them monsters of cor- 
 ruption, steeped in the utmost subserviency, in 
 the most entire readiness to traffic for votes and 
 principles, when he knew that, all that being 
 granted, these men were only toiling and panting 
 in their narrow capacity to lift themselves up to 
 the level of the corruption of their English bro- 
 thers. He painted every leading Irishman but 
 Grattan either as a noisy demagogue or a childish 
 sentimentalist ; and even Grattan, when he had 
 said that he was honest, he finally ended him by 
 painting him as a simpleton. I know that you 
 can pick out of his lectures here and there a just 
 sentence of acknowledgment; but I am endea- 
 voring to give the result of all the discourses — the 
 iimpression that would be left on the patient 
 listener after hearing them all. Now, it seems to 
 
2 1 8 An A merican on the * ' Situation . ' ' 
 
 me that all this indicates the partisan, the pamph- 
 leteer, the pleader of a cause, not an impartial 
 searcher after a great truth, or the generous and 
 frank acknowledgment of a great national error. 
 Some men were surprised that an Englishman 
 should bring to this country a question apparently 
 of so little interest as the relations of Ireland, but 
 it would be only a superficial thinker that would 
 be led into that mistake. The relations of Ireland 
 are the gravest, the most important feature of 
 England's political life. Eight years ago, I was 
 hissed in Cooper Institute for having said that 
 England was a second-rate power on the chess- 
 board of Europe; but to-day her journalists have 
 ceased to deny the fact, and are engaged in an 
 explanation of why she is so. And the two great 
 influences which have made her fall from a first- 
 class power is the neglect and oppression of her 
 own masses, and seven centuries of unadulterated 
 and infamous oppression of Ireland. Mr. Froude 
 told us with epigrammatic force and great truth 
 that the wickedness of nations was always pun- 
 ished ; that, no matter how long Providence 
 waited, in the end the wickedness of a race was 
 answered by the punishment of their descendants. 
 
An American on the " Situation" 219 
 
 England has held for seven centuries to the lips 
 of her sister Ireland a poisoned chalice. Its ingre- 
 dients were the deepest contempt, the most un- 
 measured oppression, injustice, such as the world 
 hardly ever saw before. As Mr. Froude said, 
 Providence to-day is holding back that same cup 
 to the lips of the mother country, which has 
 within a dozen years felt the deep punishment of 
 her long injustice to Ireland. Ten years ago, 
 when Germany pressed to the wall the small king- 
 dom of Denmark, which gave to England her 
 Princess of Wales, England longed to draw her 
 sword ; when, two years ago, Bismarck snubbed 
 her in the face of all Europe, again and again 
 insulted her, smote her actually in the face, 
 England longed to draw her sword, but she 
 knew right well that the first cannon she fired at 
 any first-rate power Ireland would stab her in 
 the back. Checkmated, she cannot move on the 
 chess-board of the great powers, and one of the 
 great causes of this sudden crippling of her 
 powers is the Irish question. I do not wonder 
 at all that the thoughtful Englishman should long 
 to explain to the world, if he can, how the steps 
 by which his country has been brought to this 
 
220 An American on the " Situation? 1 
 
 step have beem inevitable ; that by no wit of states- 
 manship, by no generosity of high-toned and 
 magnanimous honor, could she have avoided the 
 path in which she is treading. If Mr. Froude 
 could make out that proposition, if he could con- 
 vince the world through the American people 
 that England accepted the inevitable fate which 
 the geographical proximity of Ireland had en- 
 tailed upon her, it would have gone half way to 
 wipe out the clots on his country's fame. I do 
 not wonder he should make the attempt. I be- 
 lieve that, instead of England's having conquered 
 Ireland, in the true, essential statement of the 
 case as it stands to-day Ireland has conquered 
 England. She has summoned her before the bar 
 of the civilized world to judge the justice of her 
 legislation ; she has checkmated her as a power 
 on the chess-board of Europe; she has monopo- 
 lized the attention of her statesmen ; she has 
 made her own island the pivot upon which the 
 destiny of England turns ; and her last great 
 statesman and present prime minister, Mr. Glad- 
 stone, owes whatever fame he has to the suppo- 
 sition that at last he has devised a way by which 
 he can conciliate Ireland and save his own coun- 
 
An American on the " Situation." 221 
 
 try. But in all the presentations of the case, it 
 seems to me that our English friend has been a 
 partisan and r.ot a judge. Let me illustrate in 
 one or two instances what I consider the justice 
 of this charge. The population of Ireland, pre- 
 vious to 1811, is wholly matter of guess. There 
 never was a census till after this century had 
 opened. Sir William Pettie, Tynes Morrison, the 
 secretary of Lord Mountjoy, and others have 
 formed an estimate of the different periods of the 
 population of Ireland. Now, what I charge as a 
 proof of partisanship is that, whenever it served 
 his purpose to adopt a small guess in order to 
 excuse an English injustice or to bear hardly 
 down on the critical condition of the Irish, he 
 has always selected the smallest possible estimate. 
 Whenever it served his purpose, on the contrary, 
 to exaggerate the moral inefficiency of the Irish 
 people, the divided councils, the quarrelsome 
 generations, the totally inefficient race, compares 
 with some interval of English rule, he has always 
 adopted the largest guess. For instance, the 
 historian's estimate of the population of Ireland 
 made about the year 1600, the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century, by Tynes Morrison, puts it 
 
222 An American on the " Situation." 
 
 at from 500,000 to 600,000 men. Mr. Froude adopts 
 this when he wants to say that James L, in con- 
 fiscating six of the best counties in Ireland and 
 settling them on his followers, was not very harm- 
 ful, because, he says, there were very few inhabi- 
 tants in Ireland, and room enough for a great many 
 more. I do not see myself by what principle he 
 would justify a deposit in confiscating the coun- 
 ties of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex, Bristol, 
 and Worcester, turn out all the inhabitants, and 
 give the property to aliens, because there was a 
 great deal of vacant land in Nebraska ! I do not 
 see any exact moral principle. Then he brings us 
 down to 1641-49, the era when Cromwell, with 
 14,000 troops, subdued Ireland. Then it is his 
 purpose, as an advocate, to swell Ireland into 
 large proportions, and show you a great people 
 swept like a herd of stags before one single power- 
 ful English hand. Then he tells you that Sir 
 William Pettie has estimated the population of 
 Ireland in 1641 at a million and a half of human 
 beings, an estimate which Hallam calls prodigi- 
 ously vain, and it is one of the most marvellous 
 estimates in history. Here was an island, poverty- 
 stricken, scourged by war, robbed of its soil, and 
 
An American on the "Situation" 223 
 
 still it had trebled in population in about thirty- 
 eight years, when, with all our multitudinous and 
 uncounted emigration, with all our swelling pros- 
 perity, with all our industry and peace, with all 
 our fruitful lands, and no touch of war — with all 
 this, it took our country more time than that to 
 treble. It took France 166 years to treble; but 
 this poverty-stricken, war-ridden, decimated, 
 starved race trebled in a quarter the time. How- 
 ever, having put down that point, the advocate 
 goes on in order to exaggerate the trebled im- 
 morality and frightful fratricidal nature of 
 Irish life, and tells you that in the next nine 
 years this curious population, which had 
 trebled four times quicker than any nation 
 in Europe, lost 600,000 in the wars. How the 
 wars became so much more dangerous and bloody 
 and exhaustive in these nine years than in the 
 thirty-eight before nobody explains. He tells us 
 there were 900,000 men, women, and children 
 when Cromwell came to Ireland. These 900,000 
 were the old, the young, the women, the decrepit, 
 the home-keepers. Cromwell landed with 14,000 
 men, and how many did he meet? How many 
 did this population send out to meet him ? Two 
 
224 An American on the " Situation." 
 
 hundred thousand men ! Every other man in the 
 island went out. When France elevated herself 
 with gigantic energy to throw back the utter dis- 
 grace of German annihilation, how many men did 
 she put into the field? One in fifty. When Ger- 
 many, moved to the contest for the imperial dig- 
 nity of Europe, raised all her power to crush 
 France in that terrific struggle, how many did she 
 raise? One in thirty-five. When the South, in 
 her terrible conflict with us, was said to have 
 emptied everything but her game-yards into the 
 camps, how many did she send out? One in 
 twenty. But this poverty-stricken, decimated, 
 women and children population went out one in 
 four! 
 
 

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