of State Legislatures--which have no responsibility for our foreign
relations--or the sycophancy of public men. If it were proved to
demonstration that Home Rule would be the salvation of Ireland, no
American citizen would have any more right to take an active part in
furthering it than to take an active part in dethroning the Czar of all
the Russias. The lesson which Washington administered to Citizen Genet,
when that meddlesome minister of the French Republic undertook to "boom"
the rights of men by issuing letters of marque at Charleston, has
governed the foreign relations of the United States ever since, and it
is as binding upon every private citizen as upon every public servant of
the Republic.

I must ask my readers, therefore, to bear it constantly in mind that all
my observations and comments have been made from an American, not from a
British or an Irish point of view. How or by whom Ireland shall be
governed concerns me only in so far as the government of Ireland may
affect the character and the tendencies of the Irish people, and
thereby, through the close, intimate, and increasing connection between
the Irish people and the people of the United States, may tend to affect
the future of my country. This being my point of view, it will be
apparent, I think, that I have at least laboured under no temptation to
see things otherwise than as they were, or to state things otherwise
than as I saw them.

With Arthur Young, who more clearly than any other man of his time saw
the end from the beginning of the fatuous and featherheaded French
Revolution of 1789, I have always been inclined to think "the
application of theory to methods of government a surprising imbecility
in the human mind:" and it will be found that in this book I have done
little more than set down, as fully and clearly as I could, what I