It is true, as I have said, that Ireland is becoming more and more practical, and that England is becoming more anxious than ever to do her substantial justice.  But still the manner of the doing will continue to be as important as the thing which is done.  Of the Irish qualities none is stronger than the craving to be understood.  If the English had only known this secret we should have been the most easily governed people in the world.  For it is characteristic of the conduct of our most important affairs that we care too little about the substance and too much about the shadow.  It is for this reason that I have discussed the real nature of one phase of Irish sentiment which has been largely misunderstood, and it is for the same reason that I propose to preface my examination of the Irish Question with some reference to the cause and nature of the anti-English sentiment, for the long continuance of which I can find no other explanation than the failure of the English to see into the Irish mind.

I am well acquainted with this sentiment because, in my practical work in Ireland, it has ever been the main current of the stream against which I have had to swim.  Years spent in the United States had made me familiar with its full and true significance, for there it can be studied in an atmosphere not dominated by any present Irish controversies or struggles.  I have found this sentiment of hatred deeply rooted in the minds of Irishmen who had themselves never known Ireland, who had no connection, other than a sentimental one, with that country, who were living quiet business lives in the United States, but who were ever ready to testify with their dollars, and genuinely believed that they only lacked opportunity to demonstrate in a more enterprising way, their “undying hatred of the English name."[1]

With such men I have reasoned, and sometimes not in vain, upon the injustice and unreason of their attitude.  I have not attempted to controvert the main facts of Ireland’s grievances, which they frequently told me they had gleaned from Froude and Lecky.  I used to deprecate the unqualified application of modern standards to the policies of other days, and to protest against the injustice of punishing one set of persons for the misdoings of another set of persons, who have long since passed beyond the reach of any earthly tribunal.  I have given them my reasons for believing that, even if such a course were morally admissible, the wit of man could not devise any means of inflicting a blow upon England which would not react injuriously with tenfold force upon Ireland.  I have gone on to show that the sentiment itself, largely the accident of untoward circumstances, is alien to the character and temperament of the Irish people.  In short, I have urged that the policy of revenge is un-Christian and unintelligent, and, that, as the Irish people are neither irreligious nor stupid, it is un-Irish.  I well remember taking up this position in conversation with some very advanced Irish-Americans in the Far West and the reply which one of them made.  “Wal,” said my half-persuaded friend, “mebbe you’re right.  I have two sons, whom I have raised in the expectation that they will one day strike a blow for old Ireland.  Mebbe they won’t.  I’m too old to change.”