Perhaps not.  Ireland, for good or for evil, was connected with England, and when England was at war with the Pope she was at war with him in Ireland as elsewhere.  The argument, however, is double-edged.  The Papal cause being no longer, for various reasons, the cause of stake and gibbet, how could there be the same ground for restricting freedom of opinion in Ireland, for passing Coercion Acts, for refusing Home Rule?  As Froude himself said, “Popery now has its teeth drawn.  It can bark, but it can no longer bite.”  “The Irish generally,” he went on, “were rather superstitious than religious.”  These. are delicate distinctions.  “The Bishop of Peterborough must understand,” said John Bright on a famous occasion, “that I believe in holy earth as little as he believes in holy water.”  Elizabeth’s Irish policy was to take advantage of local factions, and to maintain English supremacy by setting them against each other.  “The result was hideous.  The forty-five glorious years of Elizabeth were to Ireland years of unremitting wretchedness.”  Nobody could complain that Froude spared the English Government.  If he had been writing history, or rather when he was writing it, the mutual treachery of the Irish could not be passed over.  “Alas and shame for Ireland,” said Froude in New York.  “Not then only, but many times before and after, the same plan [offer of pardon to murderous traitors] was tried, and was never known to fail.  Brother brought in the dripping head of brother, son of father, comrade of comrade.  I pardon none, said an English commander, until they have imbued their hands in blood.”  The revival of such horrors on a public platform could serve no useful purpose.  They could not be pleaded as an apology for England, and they inflamed, instead of soothing, the animosities which Froude professed himself anxious to allay.  Yet he never lost sight of justice.  On Elizabeth he had no mercy.  He made her responsible for the slaughter of men, women, and children by her officers, for first neglecting her duties as ruler, and then putting down rebellion by assassination.  The plantation of Ulster by ’James I., and the accompanying forfeiture of Catholic estates, he defended on the ground that only the idle rich were dispossessed.  This is of course socialism pure and simple.  James I.’s own excuse was that Tyrone and Tyrconnell, who owned the greater part of Ulster between them, had been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot.  If they were, the loss of their lands was a very mild penalty indeed.

On the rebellion of 1641, which led to Cromwell’s terrible retribution, Froude touched lightly.  Although the number of Protestants who perished in the massacre has been exaggerated, the attempts of Catholic historians to deny it, or explain it away, are futile.  Sir William Petty’s figure of 38,000 is as well authenticated as any.  Froude of course justifies Cromwell for putting, eight years afterwards, the garrisons of Drogheda and Wexford to the sword.  His characteristic intrepidity was