There can be no doubt that it is put forward in all sincerity by a majority of Englishmen. But this does not prove that it rests on any sound foundation. It only proves once more that they are incapable of understanding anything about the Irish temperament.[4] This reasoning is merely the classic sophistry. They mistake the effect for the cause, and are blind to the fact that those vices they so bitterly reproach the Irish with, are the inevitable result of three centuries of bad administration and England’s own work. Wherever it has been liberated from the English yoke, has not, on the contrary, the Irish race displayed abundant energy, activity, genius? Do not the Irish hold the first rank in the United States, in Canada, in Southern America, in Australia, wherever emigration has carried them. In England even are they not at the head of all liberal professions, letters, the daily press, the bar, science? Those who have seen and closely studied that nation, crushed under its secular burden, ground under the heel of the conqueror, cannot but feel surprised at the bare fact that it survives; and this fact alone presupposes the most admirable gifts. One could even question whether, deprived of the Irish Celt element, for leaven, for chiefs, for counsellors, in letters, and in assemblies, the heavy Anglo-Saxon race could ever have founded its flourishing colonies. These prosper, one may say, in direct proportion to the number of Irish that come to them, even as the mother island slowly decays in direct proportion to the number of her children that are driven from her shores. Why should such slanderous explanations be sought for a fact sufficiently explained by history? The great misfortune of Ireland is not to be a nation less richly gifted than its conqueror, but only to be too small a nation, established in an open island. The Irish have been neither more vicious, nor more fanatical, nor more slothful than the English; they have been less numerous, less well armed; and John Bull, according to his deplorable custom, has taken advantage of their weakness for bullying them, for levying heavy toll on them, for bleeding them to death without mercy. He has taken their land, their freedom, their industry, and still wrests from them the product of their labour. And, to crown all, he dares to call them to account for their misery as for a crime—this misery, which is his own work, with all its wretched following of vices and degradation. Before such a sight as this involuntary indignation must be felt. One wishes to say to the English—