That the Irish either were or are a people remarkable for making bulls
or blunders, is an imputation utterly unfounded, and in every sense
untrue. The source of this error on the part of our neighbors is,
however, readily traced. The language of our people has been for
centuries, and is up to the present day, in a transition state. The
English tongue is gradually superseding the Irish. In my own native
place, for instance, there is not by any means so much Irish spoken now,
as there was about twenty or five-and-twenty years ago. This fact, then,
will easily account for the ridicule which is, and I fear ever will be,
unjustly heaped upon those who are found to use a language which they do
not properly understand. In the early periods of communication between
the countries, when they stood in a hostile relation to each other, and
even long afterwards, it was not surprising that "the wild Irishman" who
expressed himself with difficulty, and often impressed the idiom of his
own language upon one with which he was not familiar, should incur,
in the opinion of those who were strongly prejudiced against him, the
character of making the bulls and blunders attributed to him. Such
was the fact, and such the origin of this national slander upon his
intellect,--a slander which, like every other, originates from the
prejudice of those who were unacquainted with the quickness and
clearness of thought that in general characterizes the language of our
people. At this moment there is no man acquainted with the inhabitants
of the two countries, who does not know, that where the English
is vernacular in Ireland, it is spoken with far more purity, and
grammatical precision than is to be heard beyond the Channel. Those,
then, who are in the habit of defending what are termed our bulls, or of
apologizing for them, do us injustice; and Miss Edgeworth herself, when
writing an essay upon the subject, wrote an essay upon that which does
not, and never did exist. These observations, then, easily account for