martial law was the law of Almighty God, and that cruelty might always be perpetrated on the right side, are conspicuously displayed.  If Froude spoke of the Roman Catholic Church, he always seemed to fancy himself back in the sixteenth century, when the murder of Protestants was regarded at the Vatican as justifiable.  The Irish rebellion of 1798 was led by Protestants, like Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and free thinkers, like Wolfe Tone.  But for the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, the Catholics would have taken no part in it, and it would not have been more dangerous than the rebellion of 1848.  Such at least was Lecky’s opinion, supported by weighty arguments, and by facts which cannot be denied.  If Froude’s reputation as an historian depended upon his English in Ireland, it certainly would not stand high.  Of course he had as much right to put the English case as Father Burke had to put the Irish one.  But his responsibility was far greater, and his splendid talents might have been better employed than in reviving the mutual animosities of religion or of race.

—­ * See Froude’s English in Ireland, vol. iii. pp. 320, 321; Lecky’s History of England, vol. viii. p. 52. —­

When Lecky reviewed, with much critical asperity, the last two volumes of Froude’s English in Ireland for Macmillan’s Magazine* he referred to Home Rule as a moderate and constitutional movement.  His own History was not completed till 1890.  But when Gladstone introduced his first Home Rule Bill, in 1886, Lecky opposed it as strongly as Froude himself.  Lecky was quite logical, for the question whether the Union had been wisely or legitimately carried had very little to do with the expedience of repealing it.  Fieri non debuit, factum valet, may be common sense as well as good law.  But Froude was not unnaturally triumphant to find his old antagonist in Irish matters on his side, especially as Freeman was a Home Ruler.  Froude’s attitude was never for a moment doubtful.  He had always held that the Irish people were quite unfitted for self-government, and of all English statesmen Gladstone was the one he trusted least.  He had a theory that great orators were always wrong, even when, like Pitt and Fox, they were on opposite sides.  Gladstone he doubly repudiated as a High Churchman and a Democrat.  Yet, with more candour than consistency, he always declared that Gladstone was the English statesman who best understood the Irish Land Question, and so he plainly told the Liberal Unionists, speaking as one of themselves.  He had praised Henry viii for confiscating the Irish estates of absentees, and taunted Pitt with his unreasoning horror of an absentee tax.  He would have given the Irish people almost everything rather than allow them to do anything for themselves.  In 1880 he brought out another edition of his Irish book, with a new chapter on the crisis.  The intervening years had made no difference in his estimate of Ireland, or of Irishmen.  O’Connell, who had nothing to do with the politics of the eighteenth century, was “not sincere about repeal,” although he “forced the Whigs to give him whatever he might please to ask for,"+ and he certainly asked for that.