But there are special reasons for dwelling upon the wrongs of Ireland. For three hundred years the Irish people themselves and their faith have been held responsible, wherever the English language is spoken, for the crimes of England. The backwardness of Irish industry, and the seeming want of energy of the people in improving their condition, are habitually imputed by statesmen and public instructors to a peculiar indolence and recklessness in the Celtic race, fostered and encouraged by what is supposed to be the necessary influence of the Catholic religion. The Irish are probably not more Celtic than the French, who assuredly are not excelled in thrift and industry by any other people. There is no country more Catholic than Belgium, nor is there anywhere a more prosperous or laborious people. Irishmen themselves, it is universally admitted, are hard workers in England, in the United States, in Canada, in Australia—wherever, in a word, the motives which incite men to labor are not taken from them; and yet the popular prejudice on this subject is so flattering to Anglo-Saxon and Protestant pride that it remains in the public mind like a superstition, which no amount of evidence can affect. In a former article we have attempted to trace some of the causes to which the poverty and misery of Ireland must be attributed, and we shall now continue the investigation. During the three centuries immediately following the Conquest the country was wasted by wars, massacres, and feuds, carried on by the two armed nations, which fiercely contended for the possession of the soil. The Anglo-Norman colony, entrenched within the Pale, and receiving constant supplies of men and money from the mother-country, formed a kind of standing army, ever ready to invade and lay waste the territories still held by the native population. The Irish people, in self-defence, and also with the hope of driving the invader from their shores, turned their whole attention to war. All the pursuits of peace were forgotten, and the island became a camp of soldiers, who, when not battling with the common enemy, turned their swords against one another. In such a state of society no progress was possible. Then came three centuries of religious wars to add more savage fierceness to the war of races. Under Elizabeth, James I., Cromwell, and William of Orange the whole country was confiscated. The Catholics were driven from their lands, hunted down, their churches and monasteries were burned or turned over to Protestants, their priests were martyred or exiled, their schools closed, their teachers banished, their nobles impoverished; and to make this state of things perpetual the Penal Code was enacted. To this point there was complete harmony between the home government and the English colony in Ireland. But England has rarely poured out her treasure or her blood for other than selfish and mercenary motives. She therefore demanded, as the price of her assistance in crushing the Irish