But the sensual idolatry of mere size is almost equally common on both sides of the Atlantic.
The banquet was given by Froude's American publishers, the Scribners, and his old acquaintance Emerson was one of the company.

Another was a popular clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, and a third was the present Ambassador of the United States in London, Mr.Whitelaw Reid.

In his speech Froude referred to the object of his visit.

He had heard at home that "one of the most prominent Fenian leaders," O'Donovan Rossa, "was making a tour in the United States, dilating upon English tyranny and the wrongs of Ireland." That Froude should cross the seas to confute O'Donovan Rossa must have struck the audience as scarcely credible, until he explained his mission, for as such he regarded it, by asserting that "the judgment of America has more weight in Ireland than twenty batteries of English cannon." When the Irish had the management of their own affairs, he continued, the result was universal misery.

They could not govern themselves in the sixteenth century; therefore they could not govern themselves in the nineteenth.