those who wish the existing peace to
be the forerunner of material and social progress, can be freely and
frankly discussed.

It is true, as I have said, that Ireland is becoming more and more
practical, and that England is becoming more anxious than ever to do her
substantial justice. But still the manner of the doing will continue to
be as important as the thing which is done. Of the Irish qualities none
is stronger than the craving to be understood. If the English had only
known this secret we should have been the most easily governed people in
the world. For it is characteristic of the conduct of our most important
affairs that we care too little about the substance and too much about
the shadow. It is for this reason that I have discussed the real nature
of one phase of Irish sentiment which has been largely misunderstood,
and it is for the same reason that I propose to preface my examination
of the Irish Question with some reference to the cause and nature of the
anti-English sentiment, for the long continuance of which I can find no
other explanation than the failure of the English to see into the Irish
mind.

I am well acquainted with this sentiment because, in my practical work
in Ireland, it has ever been the main current of the stream against
which I have had to swim. Years spent in the United States had made me
familiar with its full and true significance, for there it can be
studied in an atmosphere not dominated by any present Irish
controversies or struggles. I have found this sentiment of hatred deeply
rooted in the minds of Irishmen who had themselves never known Ireland,
who had no connection, other than a sentimental one, with that country,
who were living quiet business lives in the United States, but who were
ever ready to testify with their dollars, and genuinely believed that
they only lacked opportunity to demonstrate in a more enterprising way,
their "undying hatred of the English name."[1]

With such men I have reasoned, and sometimes not in vain, upon the
injustice and unreason of their attitude. I have not attempted to
controvert the main facts of Ireland's grievances, which they frequently
told me they had gleaned from Froude and Lecky. I used to deprecate the
unqualified application of modern standards to the policies of other
days, and to protest against the injustice of punishing one set of
persons for the misdoings of another set of persons, who have long since
passed beyond the reac