‘They never can wish for a fitter moment. England has her hands full, and can scarcely spare a man to repress rebellion in Ireland.’
‘The Irish have not any organisation among them. Remember, your Eminence, that they have been held like a people in slavery: the gentry discredited, the priests insulted. The first efforts of such a race cannot have the force of union or combination. They must needs be desultory and partisan, and if they cannot obtain aid from others, they will speedily be repressed.’
‘What sort of aid?’
‘Arms and money; they have neither. Of men there is no want. Men of military knowledge and skill will also be required; but more even than these, they need the force that foreign sympathy would impart to their cause. Carrol, who knows the country well, says that the bare assurance that Rome looked on the coming struggle with interest would be better than ten thousand soldiers in their ranks. Divided, as they are, by seas from all the world, they need the encouragement of this sympathy to assure them of success.’
‘They are brave, are they not?’
‘Their courage has never been surpassed.’
‘And true and faithful to each other?’ ‘A fidelity that cannot be shaken.’
‘Have they no jealousies or petty rivalries to divide them?’
‘None—or next to none. The deadly hatred to the Saxon buries all discords between them.’
‘What want they more than this, then, to achieve independence? Surely no army that England can spare could meet a people thus united?’