INTRODUCTION.

MY DEAR O'BRIEN,

You have done good work in drawing attention to the relations between England and Ireland during the last century. So far as I am aware, there is no history of that period, and Englishmen are perhaps less familiar with it than with any other period of Irish history. Each generation of Englishmen have comforted themselves with the reflection that they were righteous men, though their ancestors governed Ireland infamously. No Englishman justifies the government of Ireland in the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth century, and even the Englishman of

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the latter part of the nineteenth century condemns the government of the men of the earlier part. But the truth is, no generation of Englishmen can plume themselves on their administration of Irish affairs. Ignorance and ineptitude are the characteristics of the English rulers of Ireland of every generation; yet Englishmen talk of Irish ingratitude and sneer at Irish grievances.

'What

does Ireland now want?" Pitt asked Grattan, in 1794, and "What does Ireland now want?" is the stock question of English statesmen of the twentieth century. Englishmen constantly forget that they are the original wrong-doers, and that they have never acted so as to obliterate the memory of their misdeeds. Englishmen love national independence, but they cannot conceive how

other people should have this feeling too. A little girl was asked in a London school the other day what was the date of the Conquest of Ireland, and she answered, The Conquest of Ireland began in 1169, and it is going on still." All English attempts to reconcile the Irish people to the English connection have failed. The reason for this is not far to seek. Your narrative alone makes it abundantly clear. When the Union was carried, and when a new era opened in the government of Ireland, England had a long score of misdeeds to wipe out; and how did she set to work? Were I to draw an indictment against English rule in Ireland I think I should confine myself to the nineteenth century. At a time of war and conquest you expect rough work, though it never must be

forgotten that the foreign invader is the original wrong-doer, and that whatever excuse may be offered for the excesses of a people rightly struggling to be free, no excuse can be offered for the foreign trespasser who comes to rob and destroy. But the qualities of the conqueror can best be judged when his conduct is tested by the work of ruling the conquered people. And how do the English rulers of Ireland in the nineteenth century stand the test ? Englishmen are shocked when other nations do not take them at their word. An Englishman thinks that his promise should be accepted without suspicion, that the whole world ought to rely on the benevolence and wisdom of John Bull.

But what is the story which Irishmen have to tell of the benevolence and