oncerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may
affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and
thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between
the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect
the future of my country. This being my point of view, it will be
apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to
see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise
than as I saw them.

With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw
the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French
Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think "the
application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility
in the human mind:" and it will be found that in this book I have done
little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I
actually saw and heard in Ireland. My method has been as simple as my
object. During each day as occasion served, and always at night, I made
stenographic notes of whatever had attracted my attention or engaged my
interest. As I had no case to make for or against any political party or
any theory of government in Ireland, I took things great and small, and
people high and low, as they came, putting myself in contact by
preference, wherever I could, with those classes of the Irish people of
whom we see least in America, and concerning myself, as to my notes,
only that they should be made under the vivid immediate impress of
whatever they were to record. These notes I have subsequently written
out in the spirit in which I made them, in all cases taking what pains
I could to verify statements of facts, and in many cases, where it
seemed desirable or necessary, submitting the proofs of the pages as
finally printed to the persons whom, after myself, they most concerned.

I have been more annoyed by the delay than by the trouble thus entailed
upon me; but I shall be satisfied if those who may take the pains to
read the book shall as nearly as possible see what I saw, and hear what
I heard.

I have no wish to impress my own conclusions upon others who may be
better able than I am accurately to interpret the facts from which these
conclusions have been drawn. Such as they are, I have put them into a
few pages at the end of the book.

It will be found that I have touched only incidentally upon the subject
of Home Rule for Ireland. Until