Ireland was his one splendid prejudice. In _The Open Secret of Ireland_ he wrote: “We came, we, the invaders,”--an allusion to his Norse ancestry--“to dominate and remained to serve. For Ireland has signed us with the oil and chrism of her human sacrament, and even though we should deny the faith with our lips, she would hold our hearts to the end.” He had a radiant pride in the indomitable spirit of his country that, many times conquered, was always unconquered. “A people such as this is not to be exterminated. An ideal (that of National Autonomy) is not to be destroyed. Imitate in Ireland” (he counsels England) “your own wisdom in dealing with the Colonies, and the same policy will bear the same harvest. For justice given the Colonies gave you friendship, as for injustice stubbornly upheld, they had given you hatred. The analogy with Ireland is complete so far as the cards have been played. The same human elements are there, the same pride, the same anger, the same willingness to forget. Why then should the augury fail?” In his pamphlet on _Home Rule Finance_ he says: “The Irish problem that is now knocking so peremptorily at the door of Westminster is a problem with a past, history is of its very essence and substance; the wave that breaks in suave music on the beach of to-day, has behind it the unspent impulse of fierce storms and vast upheavals. It is not wise, it is not even safe to handle the reorganisation of the political fabric of Ireland in the same ‘practical’ fashion that you would handle the reconstruction of an Oil Company. There is in liberty a certain tonic inspiration, there is in the national idea a deep fountain of courage and energy not to be figured out in dots and decimals; and unless you can call these psychological forces into action your Home Rule Bill will be only ink, paper and disappointment. In one word Home Rule must be a moral as well as a material liquidation of the past.” His pride in Ireland forbade the insult of futile sympathy. “Tears, as we read in Wordsworth, to human suffering are due. If there be anyone with tears at command, he may shed them, with great fitness and no profit at all, over the long martyrdom of Ireland. But let him, at least if he values facts, think twice before he goes on to apply to her that other line which speaks of human hopes defeated and overthrown. No other people in the world has held so staunchly to its inner vision; none other has, with such fiery patience, repelled the hostility of circumstances, and in the end reshaped them after the desire of her heart. Hats off to success, gentlemen! Your modern god may well be troubled at the sight of this enigmatic Ireland which at once despises him and tumbles his faithfullest worshippers in the sand of their own amphitheatre. Yet, so it is. The confederate general, seeing victory suddenly snatched from his hands and not for the first time, by Meagher’s Brigade, exclaimed