nation has forgiven its enemies as we have forgiven you, time after time
down the miserable generations, the continuity of forgiveness only
equalled by the continuity of your ill-treatment. Between our two
countries you have kept and protected a screen of traders and
politicians who are just as truly your enemies as they are ours. In the
end they will do most harm to you for we are by this vaccinated against
misery but you are not, and the "loyalists" who sell their own country
for a shilling will sell another country for a penny when the
opportunity comes and safety with it.

Meanwhile do not always hasten your presents to us out of a gun. You
have done it so often that your guns begin to bore us, and you have now
an opportunity which may never occur again to make us your friends.
There is no bitterness in Ireland against you on account of this war,
and the lack of ill-feeling amongst us is entirely due to the more than
admirable behaviour of the soldiers whom you sent over here. A peace
that will last for ever can be made with Ireland if you wish to make it,
but you must take her hand at once, for in a few months' time she will
not open it to you; the old, bad relations will re-commence, the rancor
will be born and grow, and another memory will be stored away in
Ireland's capacious and retentive brain.




CHAPTER IX.

THE VOLUNTEERS.