i wonder will we ever have good times together again, now that this aunt of mine and this uncle of yours have come? why shouldnt we? said neal.oh, i dont know.but your uncle seems to be one of the people who make a great clatter about liberty and equality and the rights of man.and you know aunt estelle belonged to the old aristocracy in france.they wanted to guillotine her in the terror.i dont think she will love republicans.i suppose not, said neal, gravely.but that wont prevent our being friends, neal? una, my father is always talking about the struggle thats coming in ireland.i dont know much about politics.i think i hate the whole thing.but if there is trouble i suppose that i shall be on one side and you on the other.dont look so sad, neal.then, as his spirits grew depressed, hers seemed to rise buoyantly.she raised her voice so that she could be heard in the bow of the boat.mr.donald ward! mr.donald ward! your nephew, neal, is telling me that when we have a reign of terror in ireland you will make him cut off my head.please promise me you wont.donald rested on his oar and gazed at the girl as she sat smiling at him in the stern of the boat.young lady, he said, dont trouble yourself.we didnt hurt woman or girl in america.no woman shall die a violent death in ireland at the hands of the people.and no man, either? cried una.say it again, mr.donald ward.say and no man, either.cant we settle everything without killing men? men are different, said donald.its right for men to die fighting, or die on the scaffold if need be.a silence followed donald wards words.in 1798 talk of death in battle or death on a scaffold moved even the youngest and most careless to serious thought.the world was full then of the kind of ideas for which men are well content to die, for the sake of which also they did not hesitate to shed blood.the americans had set mankind a headline to copy in their declaration of independence.the french wrote liberty with huge red flourishes which set the heart of europe beating high.italians were proclaiming a foreign army the liberators of their country, while jacobins growled fiercely against the pope.kosciusko, in poland, organised a futile revolution, and fell in the cause of national freedom.even phlegmatic englishmen caught the spirit of the times, hated intensely or worshipped enthusiastically that liberty which some saw as an imperial goddess for the sake of whose bare limbs and pale, noble face death might be gladly met; while others beheld in her a bloodspattered strumpet whirling in abandoned dance round gallowsaltars which reeked with human sacrifice.ireland in those days was intellectually and spiritually alive.men were quick to feel the influence of worldwide ideas, and in ireland the love of liberty glowed brightly; nowhere more brightly than among the farmers and lower middle classes of the northeastern counties.the position was a strange one.the landed gentry, who themselves, a few years before, claimed and won from england the independence of their parliament, grew frightened and drew back from the path of reform on which alone lay security for what they had got.the wealthier merchants and manufacturers, satisfied with the trade freedom which brought them prosperity, were averse to further change.the presbyterians and the lower classes generally were eager to press forward.they had conceived the idea of a real irish nation, of gael and gall united, of churchman, roman catholic and dissenter working together for their countrys good under a free constitution.but it soon became apparent that the reforms they demanded would not be won by peaceful means.the natural terror of the classes whose ascendancy or prosperity seemed to be threatened, the bribes and cajoleries of british statesmen, turned the hearts of those who ought to have been leaders from ireland to england.the relentless logic, the clearsighted grasp of the inevitable trend of events, and the restless energy of men like wolfe tone, changed a party of constitutional reformers into a society of determined revolutionaries.threats of repression were answered by the formation of secret societies.acts of tyranny, condoned or approved by terrorstricken magistrates, were silently endured by men filled with a grim hope that the day of reckoning was near at hand.farseeing english statesmen hoped to fish out of the troubled waters an act of national surrender from the irish parliament, and were not illpleased to see the sky grow darker.everyone else, every irishman, looked with dread at the gathering storm