of the type commemorated by the late Colonel Prentiss of Louisville, in
a story which he used to tell of a tipsy giant in butternut garments,
armed with a long rifle, who came upon him in his office on a certain
Fourth of July demanding the loan of a dollar on the ground that he felt
"so confoundedly patriotic!"

The Colonel judiciously handed the man a dollar, and then asked, "Pray,
how do you feel when you feel confoundedly patriotic?"

"I feel," responded the man gravely, "as if I should like to kill
somebody or steal something."

It is "patriotism" of this sort which the Papal Decree was issued to
expel from within the pale of the Catholic Church. And it is really, in
the last analysis of the facts of the case, to the suppression of
"patriotism" of this sort that many well-intentioned, but certainly not
well-informed, "sympathisers" with what they suppose to be the cause of
Ireland, object, in my own country and in Great Britain, when they
denounce as "Coercion" the imprisonment of members of Parliament and
other rhetorical persons who go about encouraging or compelling ignorant
people to support "boycotting" and the "Plan of Campaign."

Yet it would seem to be sufficiently obvious that "patriotism" of this
sort, once full-blown and flourishing on the soil of Ireland, must tend
to propagate itself far beyond the confines of that island, and to
diversify with its blood-red flowers and its explosive fruits the social
order of countries in which it has not yet been found necessary for the
Head of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the fundamental principles of
Law and of Liberty.