, as Lincoln regarded
John Brown's raid; because they are. But he will clear his _mind_ from
cant about capitalism; he will have no doubt of what is the truth about
Trusts and Trade Combines and the concentration of capital; and it is
the truth that they endure under one of the ironic silences of heaven,
over the pageants and the passing triumphs of hell.

But the name of Lincoln has a more immediate reference to the
international matters I am considering here. His name has been much
invoked by English politicians and journalists in connection with the
quarrel with Ireland. And if we study the matter, we shall hardly admire
the tact and sagacity of those journalists and politicians.

History is an eternal tangle of cross-purposes; and we could not take a
clearer case, or rather a more complicated case, of such a tangle, than
the facts lying behind a political parallel recently mentioned by many
politicians. I mean the parallel between the movement for Irish
independence and the attempted secession of the Southern Confederacy in
America. Superficially any one might say that the comparison is natural
enough; and that there is much in common between the quarrel of the
North and South in Ireland and the quarrel of the North and South in
America. In both cases the South was on the whole agricultural, the
North on the whole industrial. True, the parallel exaggerates the
position of Belfast; to complete it we must suppose the whole Federal
system to have consisted of Pittsburg. In both the side that was more
successful was felt by many to be less attractive. In both the same
political terms were used, such as the term 'Union' and 'Unionism.' An
ordinary Englishman comes to America, knowing these main lines of
American history, and knowing that the American knows the similar main
lines of Irish history. He knows that there are strong champions of
Ireland in America; possibly he also knows that there are very genuine
champions of England in America. By every possible historical analogy,
he would naturally expect to find the pro-Irish in the South and the
pro-English in the North. As a matter of fact, he finds almost exactly
the opposite. He finds Boston governed by Irishmen, and Nashville
containing people more pro-English than Englishmen. He finds Virginians
not only of British blood, like George Washington, but of British
opinions almost worthy of George the Third.

But I do not say this, as will be seen in a moment, as a cr