The fault lies with England, and in these days while an effort is being made (interrupted, it is true, by cannon) to found a better understanding between the two nations it is well that England should recognize what she has done to Ireland, and should try at least to atone for it.  The situation can be explained almost in a phrase.  We are a little country and you, a huge country, have persistently beaten us.  We are a poor country and you, the richest country in the world, have persistently robbed us.  That is the historical fact, and whatever national or political necessities are opposed in reply, it is true that you have never given Ireland any reason to love you, and you cannot claim her affection without hypocrisy or stupidity.

You think our people can only be tenacious in hate—­it is a lie.  Our historical memory is truly tenacious, but during the long and miserable tale of our relations you have never given us one generosity to remember you by, and you must not claim our affection or our devotion until you are worthy of them.  We are a good people; almost we are the only Christian people left in the world, nor has any nation shown such forbearance towards their persecutor as we have always shown to you.  No nation has forgiven its enemies as we have forgiven you, time after time down the miserable generations, the continuity of forgiveness only equalled by the continuity of your ill-treatment.  Between our two countries you have kept and protected a screen of traders and politicians who are just as truly your enemies as they are ours.  In the end they will do most harm to you for we are by this vaccinated against misery but you are not, and the “loyalists” who sell their own country for a shilling will sell another country for a penny when the opportunity comes and safety with it.

Meanwhile do not always hasten your presents to us out of a gun.  You have done it so often that your guns begin to bore us, and you have now an opportunity which may never occur again to make us your friends.  There is no bitterness in Ireland against you on account of this war, and the lack of ill-feeling amongst us is entirely due to the more than admirable behaviour of the soldiers whom you sent over here.  A peace that will last for ever can be made with Ireland if you wish to make it, but you must take her hand at once, for in a few months’ time she will not open it to you; the old, bad relations will re-commence, the rancor will be born and grow, and another memory will be stored away in Ireland’s capacious and retentive brain.

CHAPTER IX.

The volunteers.

There is much talk of the extraordinary organising powers displayed in the insurrection, but in truth there was nothing extraordinary in it.  The real essence and singularity of the rising exists in its simplicity, and, saving for the courage which carried it out, the word extraordinary is misplaced in this context.