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[355]

I used to think that then we could say to letters as Henry of Navarre wrote to the Sir Philip Sidney of his realm, Crillon, “the bravest of the brave,” “We have conquered at Arques, et tu n'y etais pas, Crillon,” --“You were not there, my Crillon.” But a second thought reminds me that what claims to be literature has been always present in that battlefield, and always in the ranks of the foe.

Ireland is another touchstone which reveals to us how absurdly we masquerade in democratic trappings while we have gone to seed in Tory distrust of the people; false to every duty, which, as eldest-born of democratic institutions, we owe to the oppressed, and careless of the lesson every such movement may be made in keeping public thought, clear, keen, and fresh as to principles which are the essence of our civilization, the groundwork of all education in republics.

Sydney Smith said, “The moment Ireland is mentioned the English seem to bid adieu to common-sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants and the fatuity of idiots. . . . As long as the patient will suffer, the cruel will kick. ... If the Irish go on withholding and forbearing, and hesitating whether this is the time for discussion or that is the time, they will be laughed at another century as fools, and kicked for another century as slaves.” Byron called England's Union with Ireland “the union of the shark with his prey.” Bentham's conclusion, from a survey of five hundred years of European history, was, “Only by making the ruling few uneasy can the oppressed many obtain a particle of relief.” Edmund BurkeBurke, the noblest figure in the Parliamentary history of the last hundred years, greater than Cicero in the senate and almost Plato in the academy — Burke affirmed, a century ago, “Ireland has learned at last that justice is to be had from ”

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