There is one remarkable break in the unanimity of British
opinion about this war. Every Irishman is emphatically upon the side of France. What with his Catholicism, his Celtic blood, and his history, the genuine Irishman feels himself a younger brother of the Frenchman, and instinctively detests the sceptical, rigid, and unsympathetic Teuton, who is, nevertheless, to rule the world. An immense crowd in Dublin on Wednesday serenaded the French Consul-General, and though the demonstration is attributed to Fenians, it expressed the true feeling of all Catholic Irishmen. The police seem to have been annoyed, but the "Fenians" had as much right to express their opinion on a subject of that kind as the English middle-class, who are dead against Napoleon, or the London working-men, who impartially proclaim that "Napoleon is a fiend and William of Prussia a fool."
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