disdain.
Burke, though he was no more a Catholic than Froude himself, is told
that he was not a true Protestant, and did not understand his own
countrymen. Sir Ralph Abercrombie was possessed with an "evil
spirit," because he urged that rebels should not be punished by
soldiers without the sanction of the civil magistrate. His
successor, General Lake, who was responsible for pitch-caps,
receives a gentle, a very gentle, reprimand.

"The United Irishmen had affected the fashion of short hair. The
loyalists called them Croppies, and if a Croppy prisoner stood
silent when it was certain [without a trial] that he could confess
with effect, paper or linen caps smeared with pitch were forced upon
his head to bring him to his senses. Such things ought not to have
been, and such things would not have been had General Lake been
supplied with English troops, but assassins and their accomplices
will not always be delicately handled by those whose lives they have
threatened occasionally. Not a few men suffered who were innocent,
so far as no definite guilt could be proved against them. At such
times, however, those who are not actively loyal lie in the
borderland of just suspicion."* That all Irish Catholics were guilty
unless they could prove themselves to be innocent is a proposition
which cannot be openly maintained, and vitiates history if it be
tacitly assumed. Froude honestly and sincerely believed that the
Irish people were unfit for representative government. He compares the
Irish rebellion of 1798 with the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and suggests
that Ireland should have been treated like Oude. Lord Moira, known
afterwards as Lord Hastings, and Governor-General of India, is called
a traitor because he sympathised with the aspirations of his
countrymen. Lord Cornwallis is severely censured for endeavouring to
infuse a spirit of moderation into the Executive after the rebellion
had been put down. What Cornwallis thought of the means by which the
Union was carried is well known. "I long," he said in 1799 "to kick
those whom my public duty obliges me to court. My occupation is to
negociate and job with the most corrupt people under heaven. I despise
and hate myself every hour for engaging in such dirty work, and am
supported only by the reflection that without a Union the British
Empire must be dissolved." That is the real case for the Union, which
could not be better stated than Cornwallis has stated it. Carried by
corrupt mean