ersonal dangers with the calmest unconcern. Perhaps the strongest
feature in his character was prudence, never acting until
every circumstance, every consideration, was maturely weighed;
refraining if he saw a doubt, but when once decided, going through
with his purpose, whatever obstacles opposed. His integrity was
most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no
motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred,
being able to bias his decision. He was, indeed, in every sense
of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man. His temper was
naturally irritable and high toned; but reflection and resolution
had obtained a firm and habitual ascendency over it."

In conclusion, the plain truth is that all parallels, analogies, and
similitudes between the French Revolution, or any part or phase of it,
and our affairs in Ireland are moonshine. For the practical politician
his problem is always individual. For his purposes history never
repeats itself. Human nature, doubtless, has a weakness for a
precedent; it is a weakness to be respected. But there is no
such thing as an essential reproduction of social and political
combinations of circumstance. To talk about Robespierre in connection
with Ireland is just as idle as it was in Robespierre to harangue
about Lycurgus and Brutus in Paris. To compare the two is to place
Ireland under a preposterous magnifying-glass of monstrous dimension.
Nor is disparity of scale the only difference, vital as that is. In
no one of the leading characteristics of a community in a state of
ferment, save the odium that surrounds the landlords, and that not
universal, does Ireland to-day really resemble the France of a
hundred years ago. Manners, ideas, beliefs, traditions, crumbling
institutions, rising aspirations, the ordering of castes and classes,
the rivalry of creeds, the relations with the governing power--all
constitute elements of such radical divergence as to make comparison
between modern Ireland and revolutionary France for any more serious
purpose than giving a conventional and familiar point to a sentence,
entirely worthless.

It is pure dilettantism, again, to seek the moral of Irish commotions
in the insurrection of La Vendee. That, as somebody has said, was like
a rising of the ancient Gauls at the voice of the Druids, and led by
their great chiefs. It will be time enough to compare La Vendee
with Ireland when the p