The country was pillaged by absent landlords, and "the mere hint of an absentee tax was sufficient to throw the younger Pitt into convulsions." The Irish Protestant Bishops provoked the savage satire of Swift, who doubted not that excellent men had been appointed, and only deplored that they should be personated by scoundrels who had murdered them on Hounslow Heath.
These lectures stung the Irish to the quick, and gave much embarrassment to Froude's American friends.

The Irish found a powerful champion in Father Burke, the Dominican friar, who had been a popular preacher at Rome, and with an audience of his own Catholic countrymen was irresistible.

Burke was not a well informed man, and his knowledge of history was derived from Catholic handbooks.

But the occasion did not call for dry facts.

Froude had not been passionless, and what the Irish wanted in reply was the rhetorical eloquence which to the Father was second nature.