his
earnest advocacy was to Froude a recompense beyond all price.

The first volume of Froude's English in Ireland in the Eighteenth
Century, to which Carlyle refers, had been published at home while
the author was lecturing on the Irish question to the people of the
United States. Like the lectures, on a more thorough and
comprehensive scale, it is a bold indictment of the Irish nation.
Froude could not write without a purpose, nor forget that he was an
Englishman and a Protestant. Before he had finished a single chapter
of his new book he had stated in uncompromising language his opinion
of the Irish race. "Passionate in everything--passionate in their
patriotism, passionate in their religion, passionately courageous,
passionately loyal and affectionate--they are without the manliness
which would give strength and solidity to the sentimental part of
their dispositions; while the surface and show is so seductive and
winning that only experience of its instability can resist its
charm."* Such summary judgments are seldom accurate. Every one must
be acquainted with individual Irishmen who do not correspond with
Froude's general description. Nor does Froude always take into
account the shrewdness, the humour, the genius for politics, which
have distinguished Irishmen throughout the world. Impressed with
this view of the Irish character, he held that forbearance in
dealing with Irish rebellions was misplaced, that Irishmen respected
only an authority with which they durst not trifle, and that
universal confiscation should have followed the defeat of Shan
O'Neill.

--
* Vol. i, pp. 21, 22,
--

These, however, were preliminary matters. When he came to the
eighteenth century Froude had to consider details, and here his
prejudice against Catholicism led him astray. In the reign of George
II. acts of lawless violence were not uncommon on this side of the
Channel, and Richardson's Clarissa was read with a credulity which
showed that abduction could be committed without being followed by
punishment. In parts of Ireland it was not an infrequent offence,
and Froude collected some abominable cases, which he described in
his picturesque way.* As examples of disregard for humanity, and
contempt for law, he was fully justified in citing them. But he
endeavoured to throw responsibility for these outrages on the Roman
Catholic Church. "Young gentlemen," he says, "of the Catholic
persuasion were in the habit of recovering equivale