National apologies have become a feature of political life around the world. Believing that they have a positive therapeutic effect on those who have been wronged, and claiming that the national conscience (if one can be said to exist) will be cleansed only when the sins of the past are confessed and contrition expressed, an array of apologies have been offered. On behalf of the United States, President Bill Clinton said sorry to the Afro-American community for the slave trade. Speaking for the English people, Prime Minister Tony Blair said sorry to the Irish for failing to relieve the nineteenth-century…