country were trained with the tomahawk and half the best journalism of the capital written in picture-writing, if later, by general consent, the Chief known as Pine in the Twilight, was the best living poet, or the Chief Thin Red Fox, the ablest living dramatist.  If that were realised, the English critic probably would not say anything scornful of red men; or certainly would be sorry he said it.  But the extraordinary avowal does mark what was most peculiar in the position.  This has not been the common case of misgovernment.  It is not merely that the institutions we set up were indefensible; though the curious mark of them is that they were literally indefensible; from Wood’s Halfpence to the Irish Church Establishment.  There can be no more excuse for the method used by Pitt than for the method used by Pigott.  But it differs further from ordinary misrule in the vital matter of its object.  The coercion was not imposed that the people might live quietly, but that the people might die quietly.  And then we sit in an owlish innocence of our sin, and debate whether the Irish might conceivably succeed in saving Ireland.  We, as a matter of fact, have not even failed to save Ireland.  We have simply failed to destroy her.

It is not possible to reverse this judgment or to take away a single count from it.  Is there, then, anything whatever to be said for the English in the matter?  There is:  though the English never by any chance say it.  Nor do the Irish say it; though it is in a sense a weakness as well as a defence.  One would think the Irish had reason to say anything that can be said against the English ruling class, but they have not said, indeed they have hardly discovered, one quite simple fact—­that it rules England.  They are right in asking that the Irish should have a say in the Irish government, but they are quite wrong in supposing that the English have any particular say in English government.  And I seriously believe I am not deceived by any national bias, when I say that the common Englishman would be quite incapable of the cruelties that were committed in his name.  But, most important of all, it is the historical fact that there was another England, an England consisting of common Englishmen, which not only certainly would have done better, but actually did make some considerable attempt to do better.  If anyone asks for the evidence, the answer is that the evidence has been destroyed, or at least deliberately boycotted:  but can be found in the unfashionable corners of literature; and, when found, is final.  If anyone asks for the great men of such a potential democratic England, the answer is that the great men are labelled small men, or not labelled at all; have been successfully belittled as the emancipation of which they dreamed has dwindled.  The greatest of them is now little more than a name; he is criticised to be underrated and not to be understood; but he presented all that alternative and more liberal Englishry; and was enormously popular because he presented it.  In taking him as the type of it we may tell most shortly the whole of this forgotten tale.  And, even when I begin to tell it, I find myself in the presence of that ubiquitous evil which is the subject of this book.  It is a fact, and I think it is not a coincidence, that in standing for a moment where this Englishman stood, I again find myself confronted by the German soldier.