been quelled in blood. It sounds rhetorical to say so, but it was not
quelled in peasoup or tisane. While it lasted the fighting was very
determined, and it is easily, I think, the most considerable of Irish
rebellions.

The country was not with it, for be it remembered that a whole army of
Irishmen, possibly three hundred thousand of our race, are fighting with
England instead of against her. In Dublin alone there is scarcely a poor
home in which a father, a brother, or a son is not serving in one of the
many fronts which England is defending. Had the country risen, and
fought as stubbornly as the Volunteers did, no troops could have beaten
them--well that is a wild statement, the heavy guns could always beat
them--but from whatever angle Irish people consider this affair it must
appear to them tragic and lamentable beyond expression, but not mean
and not unheroic.

It was hard enough that our men in the English armies should be slain
for causes which no amount of explanation will ever render less foreign
to us, or even intelligible; but that our men who were left should be
killed in Ireland fighting against the same England that their brothers
are fighting for ties the question into such knots of contradiction as
we may give up trying to unravel. We can only think--this has
happened--and let it unhappen itself as best it may.

We say that the time always finds the man, and by it we mean: that when
a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for
the yoke which all others shrink from. It is not always nor often the
great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens--it is usually the
good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness
and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves to mutton chops and the