The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2)
(1888), by William Henry Hurlbert

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Title: Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888)

Author: William Henry Hurlbert

Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14510]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN.]

IRELAND UNDER COERCION

THE DIARY OF AN AMERICAN

BY

WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT

VOL. I.

_SECOND EDITION_.

1888

"Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British Empire."
CARDINAL MANNING TO EARL GREY, 1868

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Although barely a month has elapsed since the publication of these
volumes, events of more or less general notoriety have so far confirmed
the views taken in them of the actual state and outlook of affairs in
Ireland, that I gladly comply with the request of my publisher for a
Preface to this Second Edition.

Upon one most important point--the progressive demoralisation of the
Irish people by the methods of the so-called political combinations,
which are doing the work of the Agrarian and Anti-Social Revolution in
Ireland, some passages, from a remarkable sermon delivered in August in
the Cathedral of Waterford by the Catholic bishop of that diocese, will
be found to echo almost to the letter the statement given to me in June
by a strong Protestant Home Ruler, that "the Nationalists are stripping
Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the bushmen of South Africa."

Speaking of what he had personally witnessed in one of the lanes of
Waterford, the Bishop says, in the report which I have seen of his
sermon, "the most barbarous tribes of Africa would justly feel ashamed
if they were guilty of what I saw, or approached to the guilt I
witnessed, on that occasion." As a faithful shepherd of his people, he
is not content with general denunciations of their misconduct, but goes
on to analyse the influences which are thus reducing a Christian people
to a level below that of the s