e, whose name is only less
abhorred by Irish Nationalists than Cromwell's own. Americans did not
think nationality a delirium, and their ideal of statesmanship was not
represented by Lord Clare.

The fifth and last of Froude's American lectures was reprinted in
Short Studies with the title of "Ireland since the Union."* It has a
closer bearing upon current politics than the others, and it runs
counter to American as well as to Irish sentiment. "Suppose in any
community two-thirds who are cowards vote one way, and the remaining
third will not only vote, but fight the other way." The argument has
often been used against woman's suffrage. One obvious answer is that
women, like men, would vote on different sides. In a community where
two-thirds of the adult male population were cowards problems of
government would doubtless assume a secondary importance, and that
there are limits to the power of majorities no sane Constitutionalist
denies.

--
* Vol. ii. pp, 515-598.
--

Short of making Carlyle Dictator of the Universe, Froude suggested
no alternative to the ballot-box of civilised life. This last
lecture, however, is chiefly remarkable for the rare tribute which
it pays to the services of the Catholic priesthood. Father Burke
himself must have been melted when he read, "Ireland is one of the
poorest countries in Europe. There is less theft, less cheating,
less house-breaking, less robbery of all sorts, than in any country
of the same size in the world. In the wild district where I lived we
slept with unlocked door and open windows, with as much security as
if we had been--I will not say in London or New York, I should be
sorry to try the experiment in either place: I will say as if we had
been among the saints in Paradise. In the sixteenth century the
Irish were notoriously regardless of what is technically morality.
For the last hundred years at least impurity has been almost unknown
in Ireland. And this absence of vulgar crime, and this exceptional
delicacy and modesty of character, are due alike, to their ever-
lasting honour, to the influence of the Catholic clergy." That is
the testimony of an opponent, and it is emphatic testimony indeed.
To O'Connell Froude is again conspicuously unjust, and his remark
that "a few attacks on handfuls of the police, or the blowing in of
the walls of an English prison . . . will not overturn an Empire" is
open to the observation that they disestablished a Church. When
Froude ca