threaten my Colonel; otherwise, do not reckon your chickens before
they are hatched."

The Anglo-Saxon preferred "politic courses" to accepting the Irish
soldier's challenge, even where all the advantage was conceded by
the Irishman to his foe and all the risks, save that of treachery (a
very necessary precaution in dealing with the English in Ireland),
cheerfully accepted by the Celt.

This advantage of the "better bodies" the Irish retained beyond all
question up to the Famine. It was upon it alone that the Wexford
peasantry relied in 1798, and with and by it alone that they again and
again, armed with but pike and scythe swept disciplined regiments of
English mercenaries in headlong rout from the field.

This physical superiority of his countrymen was frequently referred to
by O'Connell as one of the forces he relied on. With the decay of all
things Irish that has followed the Famine, these physical attributes
have declined along with so much else that was typical of the nation
and the man.

It could not to-day be fearlessly affirmed that sixty Irishmen were
more than a match for one hundred Englishmen; yet depleted as it is
by the emigration of its strongest and healthiest children, by growing
sickness and a changed and deteriorated diet the Irish race still
presents a type, superior physically, intellectually and morally to
the English. It was on Irish soldiers that the English chiefly relied
in the Boer War, and it is no exaggeration to say that could all
the Irishmen in the ranks of the British army have been withdrawn, a
purely British force would have failed to end the war and the Dutch