Well, good-bye.

I hardly know when I look over these pages whether to wish you to get them or not.
"Yours notwithstanding, "J.A.F." Ireland had been devastated, far more than decimated, by the famine, and was simmering with insurrection, like the Continent of Europe.
The Corn Laws had gone, and the Whigs were back in office, but they could do nothing with Ireland.

To Froude it appeared as if the disturbed state of the country were an emblem of distracted Churches and outworn creeds.

Religion seemed to him hopelessly damaged, and he asked himself whether morality would not follow religion.

If the Christian sanction were lost, would the difference between right and wrong survive?
His own state of mind was thoroughly wretched.