THEIR HEIGHT, FORM, AND STRENGTH. 23 



were such that, to an Irishman, apostacy in religion 

 was the very first rung in youth's ambitious ladder j 

 yet some sections of the English people and the Eng- 

 lish Press are never tired of adding to this injury the 

 insult of holding up the Irish to derision and con- 

 tempt. If the Irish are behind us in any way and 

 in some respects they are vastly our superiors it is 

 because our forefathers prevented them during long 

 centuries from developing the God-given qualities 

 with which nature has endowed them." 



(11.) Mr. Gladstone, as quoted by the present 

 Duke of Devonshire,* said : " Ireland's woeful his- 

 tory for centuries emboldens some of us to treat her 

 as if she had but a limited share in the great in- 

 heritance of human right, and none at all in the 

 ordinary privilege of immunity from gross and 

 wholesale insult." 



B. Instances of those insulting libels : 

 (1) Lord Salisbury in a speech compared the Irish 

 to Hottentots, and by so doing drew from Mr. Glad- 

 stone, Lord Dalhousie, and his own supporter, the 

 Tablet, the indignant protests which we have just 

 quoted. I have looked in the files' of the Times for 

 his Lordship's very words, and could not find them ; 



* In his speech, May llth, 1886 : the date of Mr. Gladstone's 

 speech was, I believe, April 13th, 1886. 



