arise from
the application of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act of 1881 to
American citizens in Ireland, had its origin not in Mr. Parnell's
preposterous idea of an Irish nationality existing in the United States,
but in the failure of the authorities of the United States to deal
promptly and firmly with the situation created for American citizens in
Ireland by the administration of Sir William Harcourt's Act.

As I have said, Sir William Harcourt's Act became law on the 2d of
March 1881, two days before the inauguration of President Garfield at
Washington. Without touching the question of the relations between Great
Britain and Ireland, and between the British Parliament and the Irish
National Land League, it was clearly incumbent upon the Secretary of
State of the United States, who entered upon his duties three days after
Sir William Harcourt's Bill went into force in Ireland, to inform
himself minutely and exactly as to the possible effects of that Bill
upon the rights and interests of American citizens travelling or
sojourning in that country. This was due not only to his own Government
and to its citizens, but to the relations which ought to exist between
his own Government and the Government of Great Britain. It was no affair
of an American Secretary of State either to impede or to further the
execution of "Coercion Acts" in Ireland against British subjects. But it
was his affair to ascertain without delay the nature and the measure of
any new and unusual perils, or "inconveniences," to which American
citizens in Ireland might be exposed in the execution there by the
British authorities of such Acts.

And it is on record, under his own hand, in a despatch to the American
Minister in London, dated May 26, 1881, that Mr. Blaine had not so much
as seen a copy of Sir William Harcourt's Coercion Act at that date,
three months after it had gone into effect; three months after many
persons claiming American citizenship had been arrested and imprisoned
under it; and two months after his own official attention had been
called by the American Minister in London, in an elaborate despatch, to
the arrest under it of one such person, a man of Irish birth, who based
his claim of American citizenship upon allegations of military service
during the Civil War, of residence and citizenship in New York, and of
the granting to him, by an American Secretary of State, of a citizen's
passport. And when he did finally take the troubl