Mr. Dunlop meets with a direct negative my statement that Sussex and Sidney carried off in their train every notable chief’s son they could lay hands on, but he gives no more than his own authority. My statement is perhaps too comprehensive, but I have given numerous instances (pp. 425-437) to show that the method certainly used by Sussex and Sidney, so far as they could, was steadily increased and extended in proportion as the English power gradually spread over one Irish region after another. The English took over the Irish system of hostages, but they developed it in a new way. The Catholic chief’s son was brought up in London as a Protestant, in English law and language and tradition, with the avowed purpose of spiritually severing him from his people, and leaving the clan without a natural leader or defender in the national conflict; their chiefs, in fact, were to be made the very instruments for dividing and subjugating their own people. In the words I quoted, it was a method which “not only rent asunder the bonds of national loyalty and of natural affection, but which forced parent and child alike to believe that in this world and in the world to come they were divided by an impassable abyss.” Surely there is no likeness in this deliberate plan to the Irish chief’s use of his hostage; it was, indeed, practised with consummate art by Turkey. In this article Mr. Dunlop proposed to prove two facts: first, that Celtic civilisation is largely a figment of my imagination; and, secondly, that far from composing one nation, the English element in Ireland was proud of its origin, and struggled incessantly to preserve itself intact from Celtic influence. One part of his plan is destructive, and the second constructive. Unfortunately the work of destruction has proved so alluring that the constructive scheme is abandoned. As to the value of the destructive work, I contend that Mr. Dunlop’s criticisms are not so historically accurate, so reasonable, or so candid, that they can serve for correction or instruction. I contend further that even on the generous assumption that the whole of Mr. Dunlop’s criticisms might happen to be valid, there would still remain untouched the main body of my evidence and the whole current of my argument. And I confidently believe that the history of Ireland will be re-written on truer lines and surer foundations than those sketched out in the _Cambridge Modern History_ and the _Quarterly Review_. But perhaps Mr. Dunlop will go farther. It would be pleasant to hear, in more detail, his views on “the Iberian element in the nation.” End of Project Gutenberg's The Old Irish World, by Alice Stopford Green