It was after his return to London that Lowell was in the thickest of the contention which began not long after his appointment to the post of American minister and continued through more than half of his term, as long, that is, as the period of acute disturbance of the relations between England and Ireland. Other international questions arose during his term of service, but none that called for the exercise of so much sound diplomatic discretion, or gave rise to so much angry criticism. Lowell’s judgment regarding Irish affairs was not the result merely of what he now saw and heard in London. No American who had followed public questions at home could escape the formation of some opinion respecting the Irish character and the relation in which Ireland stood to England, and through her emigrants to America. In 1848, when Smith O’Brien, Meagher, and other Irish leaders were agitating for reform through insurrection, Lowell commented on the situation in one of his editorial articles in the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_. He had no faith in the measures which these leaders proposed; he thought the only radical cure for the evils of Ireland lay in peasant proprietorship and education. “The only permanent safeguard,” he writes, “against famine is to give the people a deeper interest in the soil they cultivate and the crops they raise. It is the constant sense of insecurity that has made the Irish the shiftless and prodigal people which they are represented to be by all travellers. Education will be of no avail unless at the same time something be given them on which they can bring it to a practical bearing. Take away English opposition and the present insurrection is directed against--what? We confess ourselves at a loss for an answer. The only insurrection which has done Ireland any real service was the one headed by Father Mathew. The true office of the Irish Washington would be to head a rebellion against thriftlessness, superstition, and dirt. The sooner the barricades are thrown up against these the better. Ireland is in want of a revolution which shall render troops less necessary rather than more so.”