"The persecution of the Catholics in Ireland had no parallel
in the history of the Church save perhaps those of the early
Christians in the Catacombs of Rome. Edicts were sent
forth before which those of Nero might be said to pale into
insignificance--the Edicts of Elizabeth and Cromwell, for
example."

Yet these words came from a man who was doubtless familiar with the
histories of Spain, Portugal, France and the Netherlands; and who is a
leader of a party which had not long before expressed the opinion that
Catholics have no reason to be ashamed of the Inquisition, which was
a coercive and corporally punitive force which had effected its ends
splendidly!

One of the many popular delusions under which English people labour
with regard to Ireland is that all the population of the country at
the present day are Celts, and that this is the key to the whole Irish
question. Thus a review of Father Tyrrell's autobiography recently
appeared in an English journal in which the reviewer said: "Probably
no Englishmen could have written such a book; it needs a Latin like
Rousseau, or a Celt like Tyrrell to lay bare his soul in this way."
No doubt these words were written in perfectly good faith; but if
the writer had cared to make any enquiry he could have found out in a
moment that the Tyrrell family were thoroughly English and that none
of them had gone to Ireland before the nineteenth century. The fact
is that the inhabitants of Ireland, like the inhabitants of all other
countries in Western Europe, are of mixed origin. The Celts were
themselves immigrants, who conquered and enslaved a pre-existing race
called the Firbolgs; then came the Scandinavian invasion; and then