The bad habits, if any, which they contract in their travels, must be attributed to their own depravity, not to the languages. For as the bee extracts honey, and the spider poison, from a flower, so the knowledge of a language may produce good or evil, according to the character of the linguist.
Does the knowledge of a foreign language make a man a traitor to his country? Are the Welsh rebels to the King of England, because they speak Welsh?* Are the Bretons in France, and the Cantabrians of the Basque Provinces in Spain,* rebellious subjects, because they do not use the language of their respective kings? And if Irish be the common language of the Irish, are they to be charged with compassing or contriving the murder of their king? And yet I can see no other pretence for the violent attempts to abolish it.
The Irish language, certainly, has no peculiar aptitude for treasonable machinations, nor is it devoid of characteristic excellencies: surpassing in gravity the Spanish, in elegance the Italian, in colloquial charm the French, it equals, if it does not surpass, the German itself in inspiring terror.
abridged
* In 1536, Henry VIII had made English the sole language of government and the courts in Wales, a regulation that survived until 1993, but he did not attempt to stamp out Welsh altogether in English-governed lands. On the Welsh and their language, see The Wise Man of Pencader.
* The peoples of Cantabria, centred on the city of Santander on Spain’s northern coast, and of the Basque country, centred on neighbouring Bilbao to the east.