me to practical politics, he always seemed to be "moving
about in worlds not realised." His statement that national education
in Ireland was the best that existed in any part of the Empire
almost takes one's breath away, and the idea that no Irish
legislature would have passed the Land Act is a strange fantasy
indeed. Whether an Irish Parliament could be trusted to deal fairly
by the landlords is an open question. That it would fail to consider
the interests of the tenants is unthinkable. Froude was on much
firmer ground when he employed the case of Protestant Ulster, the
Ulster of the Plantation, as an argument against Home Rule. Those
Protestants would, he said, fight rather than submit to a Catholic
majority, and England could not assent to shooting them down. There
is only one real answer to this objection, and that is that
Protestant Ulster would do nothing of the kind. A logical method of
reconciling contradictory prophecies has never been found. In 1872
Home Rule had no support in England, and even in Ireland the
electors were pretty equally divided. Froude did not lay hold of the
American mind, as he might have done, by showing the inapplicability
of the Federal System which suits the United States to the
circumstances of the United Kingdom.

The impression made by Froude upon his audiences in New York is
graphically described by an American reporter.

"Mr. Froude improved very much in delivery and manner during this
course of lectures .... In his earlier lectures his ways were
awkward, his speech was too rapid, and he did not know what in world
to do with his hands. It was quite to see him run them under his
coat tails, spread them across his shirt front, stick them in his
breeches pockets, twirl them in the arm-holes his vest, or hold them
behind his back. He has now found out how to dispose of them in a
more or less natural way. His delivery is less rapid, his voice
better modulated, and his enunciation more distinct .... One of his
most effective peculiarities, in inviting the attention of his
hearers, is the exceeding earnestness of the manner of his address.
This earnestness is not like that of rant. It is the result of his
own strong conviction and his desire to impress others." That is a
fair and unprejudiced estimate of Froude as he appeared to a trained
observer who took neither side in the dispute. Many Irishmen shook
hands with him, and thanked him for his plain speaking. Bret Harte
told him that