Such is our desire, but when we read the clotted nonsense of persons like Mr Fletcher we can only repeat: _Que messieurs les assassins commencent_! For the purpose of this inquiry it is inevitable that some brief account should be rendered of the past relations between England and Ireland.
The reader need not shrink back in alarm; it is not proposed to lead him by the reluctant nose through the whole maze and morass of Irish history.

The past is of value to political realists only in that residue of it which survives, namely, the wisdom which it ought to have taught us.

Englishmen are invited to consider the history of Ireland solely from that point of view.

They are prayed to purge themselves altogether of pity, indignation, and remorse; these are emotions far too beneficent to waste on things outside the ambit of our own immediate life.

If they are wise they will come to Irish history as to a school, and they will learn one lesson that runs through it like the refrain of a ballad.