John Morley: “Opinion in the country was at last rising against disintegration.”

There lay Ireland,—squalid, dismal, sullen, dull, expectant, sunk deep in hostile intent.

What I wish to insist upon is, not that that system was good, but that the statesman who undertook to overthrow it, should have had something to put in its place.

Is it natural effervescence, or is it deadly fermentation?

But they were barren of any institutions by which the country could be governed and kept in prosperity for the future.”(166) This is a statement of the case that biographer and historian alike should ponder.