He was to vindicate the Protestant cause in Ireland, and to his own satisfaction he vindicated it.

If I may apply a phrase coined many years afterwards, Froude assumed that Irish Catholics had taken a double dose of original sin.

He always found in them enough vice to account for any persecution of which they might be the victims.

Just as he could not write of Kerry without imputing failure and instability to O'Connell, so he could not write about Ireland without traducing the leaders of Irish opinion.

They might be Protestants themselves; but they had Catholics for their followers, and that was enough.