8 PREFACE. 



unfriendly word against my native land. I 

 wish I could say the same of certain " Irish- 

 men " to be found in Ireland. 



Again, I fear, some Irishmen at home and 

 abroad may neither be pleased at my republish- 

 ing those revilings and calumnies, nor thankful 

 for my refutation of them. They may remind 

 me that " he that reproacheth the scorner 

 getteth to himself shame ; v and that, as 

 Ireland has ever scowled at and defied the 

 persecution of the tyrant, she should now treat 

 his scorn with contemptuous equanimity. To 

 such of my countrymen I would say, that, if 

 such matters were between Irishmen and those 

 that "hate, them and calumniate them," 

 dignified silence might be allowable, perhaps. 

 But, as Mr. Lecky says, " the character of a 

 nation is its most precious inheritance," and 

 as the above quoted calumnies are current and 

 believed in foreign lands by people friendly, 

 or not unfriendly, to Ireland, and are repeated 

 in austere books of science, and are echoed in 

 the public lecture-halls of Europe and America, 

 I have deemed it right and proper to rebuke 

 and sweep them away; and, for so doing, I 



