John Morley: “English visitors trooped over to Ireland, and brought back stories of rapacious landlords, violent police, and famishing…”

My desire is thoroughly to shake up all the materials of the question.

If the idea was the direct gift of heaven, the policy was due to the sagacity and mother-wit of the great ecclesiastical statesmen.

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

What I endeavoured to show was that King George III., without changing his opinion of the justice of his war against the colonies, was obliged to give it up on account of a change of public opinion, and was not open to blame for so doing.