Once Irish, Always Irish

There was not very long ago a great Spanish Prime Minister whose family, of old descent, had been famous in Ireland, and although many generations had passed since their settlement in Spain, and he himself had never set foot on Irish soil, he still retained so much of ancestral feeling against the State which had forced his people into exile that he positively refused, even for diplomatic purposes, to learn English. I tell the story as it was told to me, and was certainly believed at the time, only as an illustration of my theory, that the genuine Irishman remains at heart an Irishman still.