thousands of Americans, who might view with equanimity the disruption of
the British Empire and the establishment of an Irish republic, regard,
not only with disapprobation, but with resentment, the growing
disposition of Irish agitators in and out of the British Parliament to
thrash out on American soil their schemes for bringing about these
results with the help of Irishmen who have assumed the duties by
acquiring the rights of American citizenship. It is not in accordance
with the American doctrine of "Home Rule" that "Home Rule" of any sort
for Ireland should be organised in New York or in Chicago by
expatriated Irishmen.

No man had a keener or more accurate sense of this than the most
eloquent and illustrious Irishman whose voice was ever heard in America.

In the autumn of 1871 Father Burke of Tallaght and San Clemente, with
whom I had formed at Rome in early manhood a friendship which ended only
with his life, came to America as the commissioned Visitor of the
Dominican Order. His mission there will live for ever in the Catholic
annals of the New World. But of one episode of that mission no man
living perhaps knows so much as I, and I make no excuse for this
allusion to it here, as it illustrates perfectly the limits between the
lawful and the unlawful in the agitation of Irish questions upon
American soil.

While Father Burke was in New York Mr. Froude came there, having been
invited to deliver before a Protestant Literary Association a series of
lectures upon the history of Ireland. My personal relations with Mr.
Froude, I should say here, and my esteem for his rare abilities, go back
to the days of the _Nemesis of Faith_, and I did not affect to disguise
from him the regret with which I learned his errand to the New World.