pamphlet." Even were not Irish history exceptional, I confess myself
perplexed to understand how history and politics can be severed. An
author may certainly write a perfectly colourless history, but he must
state the opinions of different parties, and the acts consequent on
those opinions, even should he do so without any observation of his own.
I never for a moment entertained the intention of writing such a
history, though I freely confess I have exercised considerable
self-restraint as to the expression of my own opinion when writing some
portions of the present work. You might as well attempt to write an
ecclesiastical history without the slightest reference to different
religious opinions, as attempt to write the history of any nation, and,
above all, of Ireland, without special and distinct reference to the
present and past political opinions of the different sections of which
the nation is composed. Such suggestions are only worthy of those who,
when facts are painful, try to avert the wound they cause by turning on
the framer of the weapon which has driven these facts a little deeper
than usual into their intellectual conception; or of those uneducated,
or low-minded, even if educated persons, who consider that a woman
cannot write a history, and would confine her literary efforts to
sensation novels and childish tales. I am thankful, and I hope I am not
unduly proud, that men of the highest intellectual culture, both in
England and Ireland, on the Continent of Europe, and in America, have
pronounced a very different judgment on the present work, and on the
desire of the writer to raise her countrywomen to higher mental efforts
than are required by the almost exclusive perusal of works of fiction.
If women may excel as painters and sculptors, why may not a woman
attempt to excel as an historian? Men of cultivated intellect, far from
wishing to depreciate such efforts, will be the first to encourage them
with more than ordinary warmth; the opinions of other persons, whatever
may be their position, are of little value.