To tell Irishmen that they could obtain liberty by fighting for it, and would never get it in any other way, was not likely to conciliate them, or to promote the cause of peace. Froude's appeal to American opinion, however, was more practical.
"The Irishman requires to be ruled, but ruled as all men ought to be, by the laws of right and wrong, laws which shall defend the weak from the strong and the poor from the rich. When the poor peasant is secured the reward of his own labour, and is no longer driven to the blunderbuss to save himself and his family from legalised robbery, if he prove incorrigible then, I will give him up. But the experiment remains to be made."
An example had been set by Gladstone in the Land Act, and that was the path which further legislation ought to follow. So far there would not be much disagreement between Froude and most Irish Americans. Rack-renting upon the tenants' improvements was the bane of Irish agriculture, and the Act of 1870 was precisely what Froude described it, a partial antidote. Then the lecturer reverted to ancient history, to the Annals of the Four Masters, and the Danish invasion. The audience found it rather long, and rather dull, even though Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick were all built by the Danes. But a foundation had to be laid, and Froude felt bound also to make it clear that he did not take the old Whig view of Government as a necessary evil, or swear by the "dismal science" of Adam Smith.
He concluded his first lecture in words which at once defined his position and challenged the whole Irish race. "It was not tyranny," he cried, "but negligence; it was not the intrusion of English authority, but the absence of all authority; it was that very leaving Ireland to herself which she demands so passionately that was the cause of her wretchedness." After that it was hopeless to expect that he would have an impartial hearing. Every Irishman understood that the lecturer was an enemy, and was prepared not to read for instruction, but to look out for mistakes. An article in The New York Tribune, which spoke of Froude with admiration and esteem, told him plainly enough how it would be. "We have had historical lecturers before, but never any who essayed with such industry, learning, and eloquence to convince a nation that its sympathies for half a century at least have have been misplaced …. The thesis which he only partly set out for the night—that the misfortunes of Ireland are rather due to the congenital qualities of the race than to wrongs inflicted by their conquerors—will excite earnest and perhaps bitter controversy." This prediction was abundantly fulfilled, and the controversy spoiled the tour. A friendly and sympathetic journalist questioned Froude's "wisdom in coming before our people with this course of lectures on Irish history … We do not care for the domestic troubles of other nations, and it is a piece of impertinence to thrust them upon our attention. Mr. Froude knows perfectly well that England would resent, and rightfully, the least interference on our part with her Irish policy or her Irish subjects."
In this criticism there is a large amount of common sense, and Froude would have done well to think of it before. He was not, however, a man to be put down by clamour; he was sustained by the fervour of his convictions, and it was too late for remonstrance. His lectures had all been carefully prepared, and he went steadily on with them. The unusual charge of dullness, which had been made against some passages in his opening discourse, was never made again. The lectures became a leading topic of conversation, and a subject of fierce attack. Without fear, and in defiance of his critics, he dashed into the reign of Henry VIII., "the English Blue Beard, whom I have been accused of attempting to whitewash." "I have no particular veneration for kings," he said. "The English Liturgy speaks of them officially as most religious and gracious. They have been, I suppose, as religious and gracious as other men, neither more nor less. The chief difference is that we know more of kings than we know of other men." Henry had a short way with absentees. He took away their Irish estates, "and gave them to others who would reside and attend to their work. It would have been confiscation doubtless," beyond the power of American Congress, though not of a British Parliament. "If in later times there had been more such confiscations, Ireland would not have been the worse for it." Here, then, Froude was on the side of the Irish. Here, as always, he was under the influence of Carlyle. His ideal form of government was an enlightened despotism, with a ruler drawn after the pattern of children's story-books, who would punish the wicked and reward the good. Froude never consciously defended injustice, or tampered with the truth. His faults were of the opposite kind. He could not help speaking out the whole truth as it appeared to him, without regard for time, place, or expediency. If he could have defended England without attacking Ireland, all would have been well, but he could not do it. For his defence of England, stated simply, was that Ireland had always been, and still remained, incapable of managing her own affairs. "Free nations, gentlemen, are not made by playing at insurrection. If Ireland desires to be a nation, she must learn not merely to shout for liberty, but to fight for it" against a bigger nation with a standing army in which many Irishmen were enlisted. The Irish are a sensitive as well as a generous race; and they feel taunts as much as more substantial wrongs. When the first British statesman of his time, not a Roman Catholic, nor, as the Irish would have said, a Catholic at all, had denounced the upas, or poison, tree of Protestant ascendency, and had cut off its two principal branches, Froude wasted his breath in telling the American Irish, or the American people, that Gladstone did not know what he was talking about. The Irish Church Act, the Irish Land Act, the release of the Fenians, appealed to them as honest measures of justice and conciliation. There was nothing conciliatory in Froude's language, and they did not think it just. From the purely historical point of view he had much to say for himself, as, for instance:
"The Papal cause in Europe in the sixteenth century, take it for all in all, was the cause of stake and gibbet, inquisition, dungeons, and political tyranny. It did not lose its character because in Ireland it assumed the accidental form of the defence of the freedom of opinion."
Perhaps not. Ireland, for good or for evil, was connected with England, and when England was at war with the Pope she was at war with him in Ireland as elsewhere. The argument, however, is double- edged. The Papal cause being no longer, for various reasons, the cause of stake and gibbet, how could there be the same ground for restricting freedom of opinion in Ireland, for passing Coercion Acts, for refusing Home Rule? As Froude himself said, "Popery now has its teeth drawn. It can bark, but it can no longer bite." "The Irish generally," he went on, "were rather superstitious than religious." These. are delicate distinctions. "The Bishop of Peterborough must understand," said John Bright on a famous occasion, "that I believe in holy earth as little as he believes in holy water." Elizabeth's Irish policy was to take advantage of local factions, and to maintain English supremacy by setting them against each other. "The result was hideous. The forty-five glorious years of Elizabeth were to Ireland years of unremitting wretchedness." Nobody could complain that Froude spared the English Government. If he had been writing history, or rather when he was writing it, the mutual treachery of the Irish could not be passed over. "Alas and shame for Ireland," said Froude in New York. "Not then only, but many times before and after, the same plan [offer of pardon to murderous traitors] was tried, and was never known to fail. Brother brought in the dripping head of brother, son of father, comrade of comrade. I pardon none, said an English commander, until they have imbued their hands in blood." The revival of such horrors on a public platform could serve no useful purpose. They could not be pleaded as an apology for England, and they inflamed, instead of soothing, the animosities which Froude professed himself anxious to allay. Yet he never lost sight of justice. On Elizabeth he had no mercy. He made her responsible for the slaughter of men, women, and children by her officers, for first neglecting her duties as ruler, and then putting down rebellion by assassination. The plantation of Ulster by 'James I., and the accompanying forfeiture of Catholic estates, he defended on the ground that only the idle rich were dispossessed. This is of course socialism pure and simple. James I.'s own excuse was that Tyrone and Tyrconnell, who owned the greater part of Ulster between them, had been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot. If they were, the loss of their lands was a very mild penalty indeed.
On the rebellion of 1641, which led to Cromwell's terrible retribution, Froude touched lightly. Although the number of Protestants who perished in the massacre has been exaggerated, the attempts of Catholic historians to deny it, or explain it away, are futile. Sir William Petty's figure of 38,000 is as well authenticated as any. Froude of course justifies Cromwell for putting, eight years afterwards, the garrisons of Drogheda and Wexford to the sword. His characteristic intrepidity was never more fully shown than in these appeals to American opinion against the Irish race and creed. Unfortunately the practical result of them was the reverse of what he intended. He preached the gospel of force. Thus he expressed it in reply to Cromwell's critics: "I say frankly, that I believe the control of human things in this world is given to the strong, and those who cannot hold their own ground with all advantage on their side must bear the Consequences of their weakness." The Holy Inquisition, might have used this language in Italy or in Spain. Any tyrant might use it at any time. It was denied in anticipation by an older and higher authority than Carlyle in the words "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." There is a better morality, if indeed there be a worse, than reverence for big battalions.
Sceptre and crown
Must topple down,
And in the earth be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade;
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.