the more
emigration the better," we cannot doubt that he is the victim to
indifference, if not to absolute dislike. Undoubtedly, if the Irishman
did not care for his country, and if the Englishman, when planted in
Ireland, did not become equally discontented and rather more indignant
than his predecessors under English rule in Ireland, the arrangement
might be a very admirable one; but Irishmen, to the third and fourth
generation, do not forget their country, neither do they forget why they
have been compelled to leave it. A work has been published lately on the
subject of the Irish in America. It is much to be regretted, that the
very able writer did not give statistics and facts, as well as
inferences and anecdotes. A history of the Irish in America, should
include statistics which could not be disputed, and facts which could
not be denied. The facts in the work alluded to are abundant, and most
important; but they should have been prefaced by an account of the
causes which have led to emigration, and as accurate statistics as
possible of its results.

Some few English writers have had the honesty to admit that their
colonial policy has not been the most admirable; "nor should we forget,"
says the author of the _History of the United States_, "that the spirit
in which these colonies were ruled from England was one, in the main, of
intense selfishness. The answer of Seymour, an English Attorney-General
under William and Mary, or towards the close of the seventeenth century,
to the request of Virginia, for a college, when her delegate begged him
to consider that the people of Virginia had souls to be saved as well as
the people of England: Souls! damn your souls! plant tobacco!" is
scarcely an unfair exponent of that spirit.[586] Another writer says:
"Historians, in treating of the American rebellion, have confined their
arguments too exclusively to the question of internal taxation, and the
right or policy of exercising this prerogative. The true source of the
rebellion lay deeper--in our traditional colonial policy."[587] One more
quotation must suffice: "The legal rights of those colonies have been
perpetually violated. Those which were strong enough were driven to
separation; those which adhered to us in that great contest, or which we
have subsequently acquired or founded, are either denied constitutions,
or, if the local authorities oppose the will of the Imperial Parliament,
find their constitutions changed, susp