land
than twenty batteries of English cannon." When the Irish had the
management of their own affairs, he continued, the result was
universal misery. They could not govern themselves in the sixteenth
century; therefore they could not govern themselves in the
nineteenth. If American opinion would only tell the Irish that they
had no longer any grievances which legislation could redress, the
Irish would believe it, and all would be well.

Though courteously treated as a representative Englishman, Froude had
of course no official position, and he hoped that as a private
individual his voice might be heard. But, while there were thousands
of native Americans who had no love for their Irish fellow-citizens,
there were very few indeed who cared to take up England's case
against Ireland. The Democratic party were inclined to sympathise
with Home Rule as being a mild form of Secession, and the Republican
party did not see why Ireland should be refused the qualified
independence enjoyed by every State of the Union. In these
unfavourable circumstances Froude delivered his first lecture. He
made a good point when he described the Irish peasant in Munster or
Connaught looking to America as his natural protector. "There is not
a lad," he exclaimed, "in an Irish national school who does not pore
over the maps of the States which hang on the walls, gaze on them
with admiration and hope, and count the years till he too shall set
his foot in those famous cities which float before his imagination
like the gardens of Aladdin." Nevertheless he asked his hearers and
readers to take it from him that Ireland had no longer any good
ground of complaint against the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Independence she could not have, and that not because the interests
of Great Britain forbade it, which would have been an intelligible
argument, but because she was unfit for it herself.

"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 England, appealed to heaven
and earth against the wrongs which England has inflicted on her, she
has ever invited others to help her, and has never herself made an
effective fight for her own rights .... A majority of hustings votes
might be found for a separation. The majority would be less
considerable if instead of a voting-paper they were called to handle
a rifle."

To tell Irishmen that they