say that if this be "Coercion" from the
British or the Irish point of view, I am well content to be an American
citizen. Ours is essentially a government not of emotions, but of
statutes, and most Americans, I think, will agree with me that the sage
was right who declared it to be better to live where nothing is lawful
than where all things are lawful.

The "Coercion" which I have found established in Ireland, and which I
recognise in the title of this book, is the "Coercion," not of a
government, but of a combination to make a particular government
impossible. It is a "Coercion" applied not to men who break a public
law, or offend against any recognised code of morals, but to men who
refuse to be bound in their personal relations and their business
transactions by the will of other men, their equals only, clothed with
no legal authority over them. It is a "Coercion" administered not by
public and responsible functionaries, but by secret tribunals. Its
sanctions are not the law and honest public opinion, but the base
instinct of personal cowardice, and the instinct, not less base, of
personal greed. Whether anything more than a steady, firm administration
of the law is needed to abolish this "Coercion" is a matter as to which
authorities differ. I should be glad to believe with Colonel Saunderson
that "the Leaguers would not hold up the 'land-grabber' to execration,
and denounce him as they do, unless they knew in fact that the moment
the law is made supreme in Ireland the tenants would become just as
amenable to it as any other subjects of the Queen." But some recent
events suggest a doubt whether these "other subjects of the Queen" are
as amenable to the law as my own countrymen are.

That the Church to which the great majority of the Irish people have for
so many ages, and through so many tribulations, borne steadfast
allegiance, has been shaken in its hold upon the conscience of Ireland
by the machinery of this odious and ignoble "Coercion," appears to me to
be unquestionable. That the head of that Church, being compelled by
evidence to believe this, has found it necessary to intervene for the
restoration of the just spiritual authority of the Church over the Irish
people all the world now knows--nor can I think that his intervention
has come a day or an hour too soon, to arrest the progress in Ireland of
a social disease which threatens, not the political interests of the
empire of which Ireland is a part alone, b