The famine, all human opinion imagined, and all human judgment was bound
to conclude, was a mortal wound, coming in as the ally of the vile
persecution I have named. It has turned out the very contrary. From it
there springs indirectly the dispersion, and that power which comes from
unity in dispersion, of Irish Catholicism.

Who, looking at the huge financial power that dominated Europe, and
England in particular, during the youth of our own generation, could
have dreamt that in any corner of Europe, least of all in the poorest
and most ruined corner of Christendom, an effective resistance could be
raised?

Behind the enemies of Ireland, furnishing them with all their modern
strength, was that base and secret master of modern things, the usurer.
He it was far more than the gentry of the island who demanded toll, and,
through the mortgages on the Irish estates, had determined to drain
Ireland as he has drained and rendered desert so much else. Is it not a
miracle that he has failed?

Ireland is a nation risen from the dead; and to raise one man from the
dead is surely miraculous enough to convince one of the power of a great
spirit. This miracle, as I am prepared to believe, is the last and the
greatest of St. Patrick's.

When I was last in Ireland, I bought in the town of Wexford a coloured
picture of St. Patrick which greatly pleased me. Most of it was green in
colour, and St. Patrick wore a mitre and had a crosier in his hand. He
was turning into the sea a number of nasty reptiles: snakes and toads
and the rest. I bought this picture because it seemed to me as modern a