That his lectures would be brilliant, impressive, and interesting, was
quite certain; but it was equally certain, I thought, that they would
do a world of mischief, by stirring up ancient issues of strife between
the Protestant and the Catholic populations of the United States.

That they would be answered angrily, indiscreetly, and in a fashion to
aggravate prejudices which ought to be appeased on both sides of the
questions involved, was much more than probable. All this accordingly I
urged upon Father Burke, begging him to find or make time in the midst
of his engrossing duties for a systematic course of lectures in reply.
What other men would surely say in heat and with virulence would be said
by him, I knew, temperately, loftily, and wisely. Three strenuous
objections he made. One was that his work as a Catholic missionary
demanded all his thought and all his time; another that he was not
historically equipped to deal with so formidable an antagonist; and a
third that America ought not to be a battle-ground of Irish contentions.
It was upon the last that he dwelt most tenaciously; nor did he give way
until he had satisfied himself, after consulting with the highest
authorities of his Church, and with two or three of the coolest and most
judicious Irish citizens of New York, that I was right in believing that
his appearance in the arena as the champion of Ireland, would lift an
inevitable controversy high above the atmosphere of unworthy passion,
and put it beyond the reach of political mischief-makers.

How nobly he did his work when he had become convinced that he ought to
do it, is now matter of history. But it is a hundredfold more needful
now than it was in 1871 and 1872, that the spirit in which he did it
should be known and published abroad. In the interval between the
delivery of two of his replies to Mr. Froude, Mr. Froude went to Boston.
A letter from Boston informed me that upon Mr. Froude's arrival there,