The essential legitimation of conquest is precisely this conviction of our own superiority....

Nations which do not hold this belief, because incapable of such sincerity towards themselves, should not attempt to conquer others." The late Lord Salisbury was grasping at such a justification when he likened the Irish to Hottentots; it would be a justification of a kind if it chanced to be validated by the facts.

But it does not.

There is so much genuine humour in the comparison that, for my part, I am unable to take offence at it.

I look at the lathe painted to look like iron, and I set over against him Parnell.