difficulty of persuading the British people of the justice and
expediency of conceding a full measure of National autonomy to Ireland
was to be found in the deep and almost universal ignorance in Great
Britain regarding Irish affairs present and past--an ignorance which has
enabled every unscrupulous opponent of Irish demands to appeal with more
or less success to inherited and anti-Irish prejudice as his chief
bulwark against reform. It was this conviction that led Mr. Parnell and
his leading colleagues, after the defeat of the first Home Rule Bill in
1886, to establish an agency in England for the express purpose of
removing the ignorance and combating its effects, and no advocate of
Irish claims in England or Scotland has failed to find traces down to
this day of the good effects of the propaganda thus set on foot, the
discontinuance of which was one of the lamentable results of the
dissensions in the Irish National Party between 1890 and 1900.

This book carries on the work of combating British ignorance of Irish
affairs and the effects of that ignorance in a manner which seems to me
singularly effective. The writer is no mere rhetorician or dealer in
generalities. On the contrary, he deals in particular facts and gives
his authorities. Nothing is more striking than the care he has
obviously taken to ascertain the details of the subjects with which he
has concerned himself and the inexorable logic of his method. It is
perfectly safe to say that he neglected few sources of information which
promised any valuable results, and that he has condensed into a few
pages the more vital points of many volumes. It is not necessary to say
anything of his style except that the cultured reader will most
appreciate and enjoy it.

I shall not anticipate what the author has to say except in respect of
one particular matter to which it seems to me expedient that particular