Irish history is at best a dismal subject.  And those who ought to be historians are too often politicians; regarding themselves as advocates and not as judges they deliberately omit incidents which tell against their views, and enlarge on others, frequently without even examining the evidence in support of them.  Then in arriving at the truth about any matter connected with Ireland there is the additional difficulty arising from the custom, almost universal amongst Irishmen, of talking in superlatives.  The exaggerated expressions, both of praise and blame, which are constantly employed, at first puzzle a stranger coming to Ireland from another country; he soon, however, gets to realize that they are mere forms of speech, and are no more intended to be taken seriously than similar phrases are when used by an Oriental.  They are therefore harmless.  But it becomes a more serious matter when learned men employ inflated language in addressing ignorant and excitable audiences.  Thus Bishop Gaughran, when recently preaching to a crowded congregation in Dublin a sermon which was reported in full in the Roman Catholic papers, said:—­

“The persecution of the Catholics in Ireland had no parallel in the history of the Church save perhaps those of the early Christians in the Catacombs of Rome.  Edicts were sent forth before which those of Nero might be said to pale into insignificance—­the Edicts of Elizabeth and Cromwell, for example.”

Yet these words came from a man who was doubtless familiar with the histories of Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands; and who is a leader of a party which had not long before expressed the opinion that Catholics have no reason to be ashamed of the Inquisition, which was a coercive and corporally punitive force which had effected its ends splendidly!

One of the many popular delusions under which English people labour with regard to Ireland is that all the population of the country at the present day are Celts, and that this is the key to the whole Irish question.  Thus a review of Father Tyrrell’s autobiography recently appeared in an English journal in which the reviewer said:  “Probably no Englishmen could have written such a book; it needs a Latin like Rousseau, or a Celt like Tyrrell to lay bare his soul in this way.”  No doubt these words were written in perfectly good faith; but if the writer had cared to make any enquiry he could have found out in a moment that the Tyrrell family were thoroughly English and that none of them had gone to Ireland before the nineteenth century.  The fact is that the inhabitants of Ireland, like the inhabitants of all other countries in Western Europe, are of mixed origin.  The Celts were themselves immigrants, who conquered and enslaved a pre-existing race called the Firbolgs; then came the Scandinavian invasion; and then wave after wave of immigration from England and Scotland, so that Sir J. Davies, writing three hundred years ago—­that was, before the Cromwellian settlement and the arrival of the French refugees who had escaped from the persecution of Louis XIV—­said that if the people of Ireland were numbered those descended of English race would be found more in number than the ancient natives.