An example had been set by Gladstone in the Land Act, and that was the path which further legislation ought to follow.  So far there would not be much disagreement between Froude and most Irish Americans.  Rack-renting upon the tenants’ improvements was the bane of Irish agriculture, and the Act of 1870 was precisely what Froude described it, a partial antidote.  Then the lecturer reverted to ancient history, to the Annals of the Four Masters, and the Danish invasion.  The audience found it rather long, and rather dull, even though Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick were all built by the Danes.  But a foundation had to be laid, and Froude felt bound also to make it clear that he did not take the old Whig view of Government as a necessary evil, or swear by the “dismal science” of Adam Smith.

He concluded his first lecture in words which at once defined his position and challenged the whole Irish race.  “It was not tyranny,” he cried, “but negligence; it was not the intrusion of English authority, but the absence of all authority; it was that very leaving Ireland to herself which she demands so passionately that was the cause of her wretchedness.”  After that it was hopeless to expect that he would have an impartial hearing.  Every Irishman understood that the lecturer was an enemy, and was prepared not to read for instruction, but to look out for mistakes.  An article in The New York Tribune, which spoke of Froude with admiration and esteem, told him plainly enough how it would be.  “We have had historical lecturers before, but never any who essayed with such industry, learning, and eloquence to convince a nation that its sympathies for half a century at least have have been misplaced ....  The thesis which he only partly set out for the night—­that the misfortunes of Ireland are rather due to the congenital qualities of the race than to wrongs inflicted by their conquerors—­will excite earnest and perhaps bitter controversy.”  This prediction was abundantly fulfilled, and the controversy spoiled the tour.  A friendly and sympathetic journalist questioned Froude’s “wisdom in coming before our people with this course of lectures on Irish history ...  We do not care for the domestic troubles of other nations, and it is a piece of impertinence to thrust them upon our attention.  Mr. Froude knows perfectly well that England would resent, and rightfully, the least interference on our part with her Irish policy or her Irish subjects.”

In this criticism there is a large amount of common sense, and Froude would have done well to think of it before.  He was not, however, a man to be put down by clamour; he was sustained by the fervour of his convictions, and it was too late for remonstrance.  His lectures had all been carefully prepared, and he went steadily on with them.  The unusual charge of dullness, which had been made against some passages in his opening discourse, was never made again.  The lectures became a leading topic of conversation,