Reflections and Comments, 1865-1895

Edwin Lawrence Godkin

Jan. 1895 · New York Scribner 1895.

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Mr. Froude's attempt to secure from the American public a favorable judgment on the dealings of England with Ireland has had one good result--though we fear only one--in leading to a little closer examination of the real state of American opinion about Irish grievances than it has yet received. He will go back to England with the knowledge--which he evidently did not possess when he came here--that the great body of intelligent Americans care very little about the history of "the six hundred years of wrong," and know even less than they care, and could not be induced, except by a land-grant, or a bounty, or a drawback, to acquaint themselves with it; that those of them who have ever tried to form an opinion on the Anglo-Irish controversy have hardly ever got farther than a loose notion that England had most likely behaved like a bully all through, but that her victim was beyond all question an obstreperous and irreclaimable ruffian, whose ill-treatment must be severely condemned by the moralist, but over whom no sensible man can be expected to weep or sympathize.