could obtain liberty by fighting for it,
and would never get it in any other way, was not likely to conciliate
them, or to promote the cause of peace. Froude's appeal to American
opinion, however, was more practical.

"The Irishman requires to be ruled, but ruled as all men ought to be,
by the laws of right and wrong, laws which shall defend the weak from
the strong and the poor from the rich. When the poor peasant is
secured the reward of his own labour, and is no longer driven to the
blunderbuss to save himself and his family from legalised robbery, if
he prove incorrigible then, I will give him up. But the experiment
remains to be made."

An example had been set by Gladstone in the Land Act, and that was
the path which further legislation ought to follow. So far there
would not be much disagreement between Froude and most Irish
Americans. Rack-renting upon the tenants' improvements was the bane
of Irish agriculture, and the Act of 1870 was precisely what Froude
described it, a partial antidote. Then the lecturer reverted to
ancient history, to the Annals of the Four Masters, and the Danish
invasion. The audience found it rather long, and rather dull, even
though Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick were all built
by the Danes. But a foundation had to be laid, and Froude felt bound
also to make it clear that he did not take the old Whig view of
Government as a necessary evil, or swear by the "dismal science" of
Adam Smith.

He concluded his first lecture in words which at once defined his
position and challenged the whole Irish race. "It was not tyranny,"
he cried, "but negligence; it was not the intrusion of English
authority, but the absence of all authority; it was that very leaving
Ireland to herself which she demands so passionately that was the
cause of her wretchedness." After that it was hopeless to expect that
he would have an impartial hearing. Every Irishman understood that
the lecturer was an enemy, and was prepared not to read for
instruction, but to look out for mistakes. An article in The New York
Tribune, which spoke of Froude with admiration and esteem, told him
plainly enough how it would be. "We have had historical lecturers
before, but never any who essayed with such industry, learning, and
eloquence to convince a nation that its sympathies for half a century
at least have have been misplaced .... The thesis which he only
partly set out for the night--that the misfortunes of Ireland