The newspapers have been filled with praises of Mr. Collins,
who was undoubtedly the idol of his supporters. He was, more- over, a man well suited to become a legendary figure. He was brave, and when he was conducting the campaign against our troops he had hundreds of hairbreadth escapes. Although many of the stories about him are apocryphal, he certainly con- trived many of his escapes by a wonderful boldness and cunning and by the use of various disguises. He was gay, exuberant, energetic. But when all has been said we must confess that we are dismayed by the uncritical praise of Mr. Collins's character. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a generous and likeable principle, but nil nisi laus immoclerata is another matter altogether. Mr. Collins was as largely responsible as any man for the cultivation of assassination as a policy. We very much fear that to forget or to ignore this fact is to encourage people to think lightly and easily of murder. That ghastly levity, after all, is the source of the whole trouble in Ireland.
