Yet he could attract disciples, because, however wayward his doctrines, he could be a genuine enthusiast. Froude's enthusiasm is fitful, and suggests despondency as the definitive result. He gives the worst turn to Carlyle's doctrine of the identity of might and right. Carlyle started with a profound sympathy for the aims of the revolutionists; he was a man of the people, with their democratic instinct, if radically opposed to some democratic theories. The worshipper of Cromwell could still gain the sympathies of Irish Nationalists, because they had a common hatred for misgovernment. No Irishman, on the other hand, could fail to be offended by Froude's English in Ireland. It is vigorously written, and may be read as a continuous exposure of English misrule. But it is the most unpleasant of Froude's books, because of the strange tendency to take an offensive ground. The penal laws, he declares, made little scandal in England because they succeeded. They have been denounced in Ireland because they failed; and he deliberately holds that a rigid and consistent suppression of Catholicism would have been the right policy for England. Froude can never speak of persecution without a wish to find apologies for the persecutor. There
