"
"This is something gained. The state of Ireland--not the present state
merely, but the habitual state--is hitherto the most unqualified
instance of signal failure which the practical genius of the English
people has exhibited. We have had the Irish all to ourselves for five
hundred years. No one has shared with us the privilege of governing
them, nor the responsibilities consequent on that privilege. No one has
exercised the smallest authority over them save by our permission. They
have been as completely delivered into our hands as children into those
of their parents and instructors. No one has ever had the power to
thwart our wise and benevolent purposes; and now, at the expiration of
nearly one-third of the time which has elapsed since the Christian era,
the country contains eight millions, on their own showing, of persecuted
innocents, whom it is the sole occupation of every English mind to
injure and disparage; on ours (if some of our loudest spokesmen are to
be taken as our representatives) of lazy, lawless savages, whose want of
industry and energy keeps them ever on the verge of starvation; whose
want of respect for life and property makes it unsafe for civilized
beings to dwell among them.
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