In this book before me, he speaks of the Catholic Church as an old serpent whose poisonous fangs have been drawn from her; and she now is a Witch of Endor, mumbling curses to-day because she can not burn at the stake and shed blood as of old. He most invariably charges the Church and makes her responsible for the French Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day; for the persecutions before those days that originated from the revolution in the Netherlands, of the Duke of Alva against Philip the Second; for every murder that has been committed and fouler butchery, he says, by the virus of a most intense prejudice; that the Catholic Church lies at the bottom of them all, and is responsible for them. The very gentlemen that welcomed and surrounded him when he came to New York, gave him plainly to understand, where the Catholic religion is involved - where a favorite theory is to be worked out--where a favorite view is to be proved-that they do not consider him a reliable, trustworthy witness, or where his prejudices are concerned as a historian. Yet I again declare. not that I believe this gentleman to be capable of lying- I believe he is incapable-but wherever prejudice comes in, such as he has, he distorts the most well-known facts for his own purposes. gentleman wishes to exalt Queen Elizabeth by blackening Mary Queen of Scots; in doing this, he has been convicted by a citizen of Brooklyn of putting his own words as if they were the words of ancient chronicles and ancient laws, deeds and documents, and the taunt has been flung at him, "that Mr. Froude has never grasped the meaning of inverted commas." Henry the Eighth, of blessed memory, (renewed laughter) has been painted by this historian a most estimable man, as chaste and holy as a monk-bless your soul! (Great laughter.) A man that never robbed any body, who every day was burning with zeal for the public good. As to putting away his wife and taking the young and beautiful Anne Boleyn to his embrace, that was a chaste anxiety for the public good. (Renewed laughter.) All the atrocities of this monster in human form melt away under Mr. Froude's eye, and Henry the Eighth rises before us in such a form that even the Protestants in England, when they heard him described by Mr. Froude, said: “Oh! you have mistaken your man, sir!"

This

HENRY VIII.

One fact will show you how this gentleman treats history. When King Henry the Eighth declared war against the Church, and when all England was convulsed by his tyranny-one day hanging a Catholic because he would not deny the supremacy of the Pope; the next day hanging a Protestant, because he denied the Real Presence--any body that differed from Henry was sure to be sent to the scaffold. It was a sure and expeditious way of silencing all argument.

During this time, when the monasteries were beginning to be pillaged, the Catholic clergy of England, especially those who remained faithful to the Pope, were the most odious to the tyrant. And such was the slavish acquiescence of the English people that they began to hate their clergy in order to please their King. Well! at this time, a certain man, whose name was Hunn, was lodged a prisoner in the tower, and hanged by the neck. There was a coroner's inquest held upon him, and the twelve blackguards, I can call them nothing else, in order to express their hatred for the Church, and to please the powers which were, found a verdict against the Chancellor of the Bishop of London, a most excellent priest, whom every body knew to be such. When the Bishop heard of this verdict, he applied to the Prime Minister to have the verdict quashed. He brought the matter before the House of Lords, in order that the character of his Chancellor might be fully vindicated. The King's Attorney-General took cognizance of it by a solemn decree, and the verdict of the coroner's inquest was set aside, and the twelve men declared to be twelve perjurers. (Applause.) Now listen to Mr. Froude's version of that story. He says: "The clergy of the time were reduced to such a dreadful state that actually a coroner's inquest returned a verdict of willful murder against the Chancellor of the Bishop of London, and the Bishop was obliged to apply to Cardinal Woolsey to have a special jury to try him-because, if he took any twelve men in London, they would have found him guilty." Leaving the reader under the impression that this priest, this Chancellor, was a monster of iniquity, and the priests of the time were as bad as Leaving the impression that a man was guilty of the mur.

he.

1

der who was as innocent as Abel, and that, if put for trial before twelve of his countrymen, they would have found him guilty on the evidence. This is the version he puts upon it; he knowing the facts as well as I know them.

FROUDE'S FIRST LECTURE CONSIDERED.

Well, now, my friends, I come to consider the subject of his first lecture. Indeed, I must say I never practically experienced the difficulty of hunting a Will-o'-the-Wisp in a marsh (laughter) until I came to follow this learned gentleman in his first lecture. I say nothing disrespectful of him at all, but simply say he covered so much ground, at such unequal distances, that it was impossible to follow him. He began by remarking how Mr. Rufus King wrote such and such a letter about certain Irishmen, and said that the Catholics of Ireland sympathized with England, while the Protestants of Ireland were breast high for America in the old struggle between this country and Great Britain. All these questions which belong to late days, I will leave aside for the close of these lectures. When I come to speak of the men and things of our own day, then I shall have great pleasure in taking up Mr. Froude's assertion. But coming home to the great question of Ireland, what does this gentleman tell us? For seven hundred years Ireland was invaded by the Anglo-Normans. The first thing, apparently, that he wishes to do, is to justify this invasion, and establish this principle that the Normans were right in coming to Ireland. He began by describing a terrible picture of the state of Ireland before the invasion. 'They were cutting each other's throats, and the whole land was covered with bloodshed; there was in Ireland neither religion, morality, or government; therefore, the Pope found it necessary to send the Normans to Ireland, as you would send a policeman into a saloon where the people were killing one another." This is his justification: That in Ireland, seven hundred years ago, just before the Norman invasion, there was neither religion, morality, nor government. Let us see if he is right. (Applause.)

The first proof that he gives that there was no government in Ireland is a most insidious statement. He says: "How could

there be any government in a country where every family maintained itself according to its own ideas of right and wrong, acknowledging no authority?" Now, if this be true-i - in our sense of the word "family"-certainly Ireland was in a most deplorable state- every family governing itself according to its own notions, and acknowledging no authority. What does he mean by the words every family?" Speaking to Americans in the nineteenth century, it means every household in the land. We speak of family as composed of father, mother, and three or four children, gathered around the domestic hearth; this is our idea of the family. I freely admit, if every family in Ireland were governed by their own ideas-admitting of no authority over them-he has established his case in one thing against Ireland. But what is the meaning of the words " every family ?" As every Irishman who hears me to-night knows, it means the "sept" or the tribe that had the same name. They owned two or three counties and a large extent of territory. The men of the same name were called the men of the same family. The MacMurraghs of Leinster, the O'Tooles of Wicklow, the O'Byrnes in Kildare, the O'Conors of Connaught, the O'Neills and the O'Donnells of Ulster. The family meant a nation. Two or three counties were governed by one chieftain, and represented by one man of the sept. It is quite true that each family governed itself in its own independence, and acknowledged no superior. (Cheers.) There were five great families in Ireland: The O'Conors in Connaught, the O'Neills in Ulster, the McLaughlins in Meath, the O'Briens in Munster, and the MacMurraghs in Leinster. And under these five great heads there were miner septs and smaller families, each counting from five or six hundred to perhaps a thousand fighting men, but all acknowledging in the different provinces their sovereignty to these five great royal houses. These five houses again elected their monarch, or supreme ruler, called the Ardrigh, who dwelt in Tara. (Applause.) Now, I ask you, if family meant the whole sept, or tribe, or army in the field, defending their families having their regular constituted authority and head-is it fair to say that the country was in anarchy because every family governed themselves according to their own notions? Is it fair

for this gentleman to try to hoodwink and deceive the American jury, to which he has made his appeal, by describing the Irish family, which meant a sept, or tribe, as a family of the nineteenth century, which means only the head of the house, with the mother and the children?

A GRAND DISCOVERY.

Again, he says: "In this deplorable state the people lived, like the New Zealanders of to-day in under-ground caves." And then he boldly says, "that I, myself, opened up in Ireland one of these under-ground houses of the Irish people." Now, mark! This gentleman lived in Ireland a few years ago, and he discovered a rath in Kerry. In it he found some remains of mussel-shells and bones. At the time of the discovery he had the most learnned archæologist in Ireland with him, and they put together their heads about it. Mr. Froude has written in this very book that what these places were intended for, or the uses they were applied to, baffled all conjecture-no one can tell. Then, "if it baffled all conjecture, and he did not know what to make of it "if it so puzzled him then, that no man could declare what they were for, what right has he to come out to America and say they were the ordinary dwellings of the Irish people?

ANCIENT IRISH CONSTITUTION.

In order to understand the Norman invasion, I must ask you to consider first, my friends, the ancient Irish Constitution which governed the land. Ireland was governed by "septs" or families. The land, from time immemorial, was in the possession of these families or tribes; each tribe elected its own chieftain, and to him it paid the most devoted obedience and allegiance, so that the fidelity of the Irish clansman to his chief was proverbial. The chief, during his lifetime, convoked an assembly of the tribe again, and they elected from among the princes of his family the best and the strongest man to be his successor, and they called him the Taniste. The object of this was, that the successor of the king might be known, and at the king's death, or the prince's death, there might be no riot or