be better stated than Cornwallis has stated it.  Carried by corrupt means as it was, it might have met with gradual acquiescence if only it had been accompanied, as Pitt meant to accompany it, by Catholic emancipation.  On this point Froude goes all lengths with George iii., whose hatred of Catholicism was not greater than his own.  In the development of his theory, he was courageous and consistent.  He struck at great names, denouncing “the persevering disloyalty of the Liberal party, in both Houses of the English Legislature,” including Fox, Sheridan, Tierney, Holland, the Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk, who dared to propose a policy of conciliation with Ireland, as Burke had proposed it with the American colonies.  Even Pitt does not come up to Froude’s standard, for Pitt removed Lord Camden, and sent out Lord Cornwallis.

—­ * English in Ireland, iii. 336. —­

It is no disqualification for an historian to hold definite views, which, if he holds them, it must surely be his duty to express.  The fault of The English in Ireland is to overstate the case, to make it appear that there was no ground for rebellion in 1798, and no objection to union in 1800.  The whole book is written on the supposition that the Irish are an inferior race and Catholicism an inferior religion.  So far as religion was concerned, Lecky did not disagree with Froude.  But either because he was an Irishman, or because he had a judicial mind, he could see the necessity of understanding what Irish Catholics aimed at before passing judgment upon them.  Froude could never get out of his mind the approval of treason and assassination to which in the sixteenth century the Vatican was committed.  It may be fascinating polemics to taunt the Church of Rome with being “always the same.”  But as a matter of fact the Church is not the same.  It improves with the general march of the progress that it condemns.  Froude fairly and honourably quotes a crucial instance.  Pitt “sought the opinion of the Universities of France and Spain on the charge generally alleged against Catholics that their allegiance to their sovereign was subordinate to their allegiance to the Pope; that they held that heretics might lawfully be put to death, and that no faith was to be kept with them.  The Universities had unanimously disavowed doctrines which they declared at once inhuman and unchristian, and on the strength of the disavowal the British Parliament repealed the Penal Acts of William for England and Scotland, restored to the Catholics the free use of their chapels, and readmitted them to the magistracy.”  Toleration was extended to Ireland by giving the franchise to Catholics, and complete emancipation might have followed but for the interference of the king, which involved the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam.