This fiction of a strange race has become a kind of special philosophy which is dragged into interpret the most ordinary actions of the Irish. For example, the march of the soldiery upset the balance of the excitable Irish farmer, and he neglected his land —a fact which in another country would need no race explanation.
Through the story of that war, whose end was to transfer the soil of Ireland, five-sixths of it, to lords of another race and religion, the old inhabitants of two thousand years possession are made to appear as the Irish factions, their vice is patent, while English crimes are accidental, inadvertent, or high spirited.
If we want to know why the Irish people lost faith in the Stuarts who had betrayed and outraged them at every turn, we are referred to the simple habits of a strange and childish race, The Celt wants to see a sovereign regularly in order to adore him :
A principle must be set forth by a person, and the more attractive the person the stronger the hold of the principle. As we watch the strong ceaseless current of Irish life such theories are swept beyond our sight. The Irish poet told his people another tale :
It is the coming of King James that took Ireland from us
With his one shoe English and his one shoe Irish
He would neither strike a blow nor would he come to terms,
And that has left, so long as they shall exist, misfortune upon the Gaels.
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