This simple argument, that because three millions of Irishmen, or for that matter three millions of Englishmen, wish for a thing, they are therefore absolutely entitled to have it, is not often put forward in its naked simplicity, but is constantly presented under various rhetorical disguises, such for example as the assertion that Irishmen have a right to manage their own affairs, that Ireland only wants to be left to herself, and the like; and impresses both the imagination and the conscience of the masses. There is a good deal to be said about the truth of the alleged fact on which the argument is based, namely the wish of the Irish people. It might be worth while to note that the "people" in this case meant only a majority of the electors, whose wish is notoriously opposed to the ardent desire of a respectable minority; and it might be well to suggest that the constitutional pedantry which refuses to "go behind an electoral return," i.e., to see things as they are, is not the same thing as either good sense or statesmanship. But for the present purpose it is better to admit that the majority of the inhabitants of Ireland would, if a fair vote were taken, express their wish for Home Rule, as they might, probably, under similar conditions express their wish for separation. The argument in hand, however, even when its basis is conceded, allows, according to the different meanings which it may bear, of different answers. If taken in its most obvious sense, as asserting the absolute right of a majority among Irish electors to any concession with regard to Ireland which they are pleased to claim, it may be met by another formula of equal cogency or of equal weakness. "The vast majority of the United Kingdom, including by the way a million or more of the inhabitants of Ireland, have expressed their will to maintain the Union. Popular government means government in accordance with the will of the majority, and therefore according to all the principles of popular government the majority of the United Kingdom have a right to maintain the Union. Their wish is decisive, and ought to terminate the whole agitation in favour of Home Rule." To any sensible person who has passed beyond the age of early manhood (for youths may without blame treat politics as a form of logic) neither of these formulas can present a sound ground from which to defend or impugn legislation which involves the welfare of millions. The contradiction however between two formulas each of which if propounded alone would command the assent of a democratic audience is noteworthy. This contradiction brings into prominence the consideration that the principle that the will of the majority should be sovereign cannot, whether true or false in itself, be invoked to determine a dispute turning upon the enquiry which of two bodies is the body the majority of which has a right to sovereignty. The majority of the citizens of the United States were opposed to Secession, the majority of the citizens of the Southern States were in favour of Secession; the attempt to determine which side had right on its side by an appeal to the "sovereignty of the majority" involved in this case, as it must in every case, a petitio principii, for the very question at issue was which of two majorities ought, as regarded the matter in hand, to be considered the majority.

It would however be doing injustice to the argument from the will of the people to dispose of it by dwelling upon the logical inconsistencies inevitably involved in every attempt to determine a question of practical politics by the application to it of à priori dogmatism. Formulas such as "the sovereignty of the people" often contain much solid truth hidden under an inaccurate and a too absolute form of expression. The assertion that the wish of the Irish people is decisive as to the form of constitution to be maintained in Ireland covers two genuine and in themselves rational convictions. The first is, that a body of human beings who feel themselves, in consequence of their inhabiting a common country, of their sharing a common history and the like, inspired with a feeling of common nationality, have, if not a right, at lowest a strong claim to be governed as a separate nation. This is the doctrine of nationality which, be it noted, though often confused with, is at bottom different from, the dogma of the supremacy of the majority. That the doctrine of nationality is, when reasonably put, conformable with obvious principles of utility may be readily admitted; but it is a doctrine which can only be accepted with considerable qualifications. Its validity was denied both theoretically and practically, and, in the judgment of most English democrats, not to say of most European Liberals, denied justly and righteously by the Northern States of America, when the Southern States claimed the benefit of its application. The argument moreover from the principle of nationality in reference to the present controversy proves too much. If the Irish people are a nation, this may give them a right to independence, but it can never in itself give them a moral claim to dictate the particular terms of union with England. The second conviction which underlies the argument from the will of the people is of far more serious import than any reasoning drawn from even so respectable a formula as the doctrine of nationality. The dogma that the will of the people must be obeyed often expresses the rational belief that under all polities, and especially under the system of popular government, institutions derive their life, and laws their constraining power, not from the will of the law-giver, or from the strength of the army, but from their correspondence with the permanent wishes and habits of the people. Home Rule, to put this matter in its strongest form, means, it may be said, the application to Ireland of the very principle on which the English constitution rests—that a people must be ruled in accordance with their own permanent ideas of right and of justice, and that unless this be done, law, because it commands no loyalty, ensures no obedience. The whole history of the connection between the two islands which make up the United Kingdom is a warning of the wretchedness, the calamities, the wickedness and the ruin which follow upon the attempt to violate this fundamental principle not only of popular, but of all good and just government. Home Rule may appear to be an innovation. It is in this point of view simply a return to the essential ideas of English constitutionalism, it is an attempt to escape from the false path which has been pursued for centuries, and to return to the broad highway of government in accordance with popular sympathy. At this point, however, the argument from the will of the people merges in the much stronger and more serious train of reasoning derived from the teaching of history.

The argument from Irish history.—Appeals to the lessons of the past are at times in the mouths of Home Rulers, as also of their opponents, a noxious revival of ancient passions, or (it may be) nothing better than the use of an unreal form of rhetoric; yet a supporter of Home Rule may use the argument from Irish history in a way which is at once legitimate and telling.

On one point alone (it may be urged) all men of whatever party, or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are agreed—the history of the country is a record of incessant failure on the part of the Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude and Lecky are at one. As to the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do differ; that England, whether from her own fault or from the fault of the Irish people, or from the perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland of achieving the elementary results of good government, is as certain as any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in turn, and no scheme has succeeded, or has even (it may be suggested) produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant supremacy while it lasted did not lead even to Protestant contentment, and the one successful act of resistance to English dominion was effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so reckless and savage, that it caused if it did not justify the destruction of the Parliament, and the carrying of the Union. The Act of Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on the face of it (though the appearance it must be admitted was delusive) to be a copy of the law which turned England and Scotland into a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and has at last placed England and Ireland further apart morally than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation instead of producing loyalty brought forth the cry for repeal. The repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the attempted rebellion of 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional methods are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted with moderation. No doubt in each case the failure of good measures admits, like every calamity either in private or in public life, of explanation, and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law when extended to Ireland did not produce even the good effects, such as they are, which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without having recourse to any theory of race, and without attributing to Irishmen either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship—and all statesmanship it should be remembered is imperfect—has failed of obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland, because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the action of the Courts are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers. This fact, a Home Ruler may add, is for this purpose all the more instructive, if it be granted that the errors of British policy do not arise from injustice or ill-will to Irishmen. The inference, he insists, to be drawn from the lesson of history is, that it is impossible for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to understand or to provide for Irish needs. The law is hated and cannot be executed in Ireland because, as we are told on high authority, it comes before the Irish people in a foreign garb. The law is detested, in short, not because it is unjust, but because it is English. The reason why judges soldiers or policemen strive in vain to cope with lawlessness is, that they are in fact trying to enforce not so much the rule of justice as the supremacy of England. The Austrian administration in Lombardy was never deemed to be bad—it was very possibly better than any which the Italian kingdom can supply; the Austrian rule was hated not because the Austrians were bad rulers, but because they were foreigners. In Ireland, as in Lombardy, permanent discontent is caused by the outraged sentiment of nationality. Meet this sentiment, argues the friend of Home Rule, by the concession to Ireland of an independent Parliament. The law which comes from Ireland's own legislature will be obeyed because it is her own law, and will be enforced throughout Ireland by Irish officials supported by the sympathy of the Irish population. Let Ireland manage her own affairs, and England will be freed from a task which she ought never to have taken up because she cannot perform it, and you will lay upon Ireland duties which she can perform but which she has never yet been either allowed or compelled to take up. Irishmen for the first time will feel the full responsibility, because for the first time they have received the full power, of self-government. The argument, in short, on the Home Rule view stands thus: the miseries of Ireland flow historically from political causes, and are to be met by political changes. At the bottom of Irish disorder lies the sentiment of Irish nationality. The change, therefore, that is needed is such a concession to that sentiment as is involved in giving Ireland an Irish legislature. This is the reform by which the result of curing Irish discontent can be achieved, and it is a reform not incompatible with the interests of Great Britain.

This is (in my judgment) a fair statement of the historical argument relied upon by the advocates of Home Rule, though, of course, it allows of infinite variety as to its form of expression. It is a line of reasoning which rests on premisses many of which (as any candid critic must admit) contain a large amount of truth. It is logically by far the strongest of the Home Rule arguments. It is one, moreover, in which authorities who on other points differ from each other are in agreement. Mr. Parnell asserts with emphasis that Ireland is a "nation," and apparently holds that the passing of a good law by the Parliament of the United Kingdom is less desirable than the existence of an Irish Parliament, even should that Parliament delay good legislation. Mr. Gladstone attributes the inefficacity of laws passed by the Imperial Parliament to their coming before Irishmen in a "foreign garb," and an author who is not in any way a supporter of the Liberal leader does not apparently on this point disagree with Mr. Gladstone. "If there was a hope that anything which we could give would make the Irish contented and loyal subjects of the British Empire, no sacrifice would be too great for such an object. But there is no such hope. The land tenure is not the real grievance: it is merely the pretext. The real grievance is our presence in Ireland at all. If there was a hope that by buying up the soil and distributing it among the tenantry we could make them, if not loyal, yet orderly and prosperous, even so the experiment would be worth trying; but, again, there is no such hope. The Land Bill of 1870 gave the tenants a proprietary right in their holdings. They have borrowed money on the security of that right at ruinous interest, and the poorest of them are already sinking under their debts to the local banker or tradesman. If we make them proprietors to-morrow, their farms in a few years will be sold or mortgaged. We shall have destroyed one set of landlords to create another who will not be more merciful."^[8]

The only way of meeting the historical argument, containing as it does admitted truth, and supported as it is by high authorities, is to survey the broad phenomena of Irish history, and see what are the inferences which they warrant.^[9] Whoever wishes to derive instruction from the melancholy history of the kingdom of Ireland must, as has already been intimated, rid himself from the delusions caused in the domain of history by personification. He must dismiss the notion that England and Ireland are persons to be charged with individual and continuous responsibility for the crimes or follies of past ages. He must check the natural but misguiding tendency of the human mind to imagine that in national affairs when anything goes wrong you can always, or indeed generally, lay your finger upon some definite assignable wrong-doer, that is, upon some man or some men who can be held responsible for political calamities or errors, as a murderer may be held guilty of murder, or a robber of theft. A calm critic should also reflect on the profound truth of the dictum (attributed by the way to an Irishman) that "history is at best but an old almanack," and, while not entertaining any great hope that antiquarian research can afford much direct guidance as to the proper mode of arranging the future relations between England and Ireland, remember that the most salutary function of the study of the past is to tone down those historical animosities which derive their bitterness from the ignorant habit of trying the actors in bygone scenes by moral laws to which they are not justly amenable. The moral function of an historian is to diminish the hatreds which divide nation from nation and class from class; such as at the present moment do more to prevent real unity between the inhabitants of the two islands making up the United Kingdom than do unjust laws or vicious institutions. To a student who regards with philosophic calmness a topic which has mainly been dealt with by politicians or agitators, it easily becomes apparent that the crimes or failures of England, no less than the vices or miseries of England, have to a great extent flowed from causes too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of rulers or of subjects.

One fact thrusts itself upon the attention of any serious student England and Ireland have from the commencement of their ill-starred connection been countries standing on different levels or at different stages of civilization; they have moreover been countries impelled by the force of circumstances towards a different development. Englishmen forget, or (more strictly speaking) have never understood, how exceptional has been the path pursued by English civilization; they do not realise to themselves that the gradual transformation of an aristocratic and feudal society into a modern industrial State which still retains the forms, and in many points of view the spirit of feudalism is a process which, although owing to the most special circumstances it has been accomplished with success in England, has hardly a parallel in any other European country. Ireland on the other hand has, despite the deviations from her natural course caused by her connection with a powerful nation, tended to follow the lines of progress pursued by continental countries, and notably by France. A foreign critic like De Beaumont finds it far easier than could any Englishman to enter into the condition of Ireland, and this not only because he is as a foreigner delivered from the animosities or partialities which must in one way or another warp every English judgment, but mainly because the phenomena which puzzle an Englishman, as for example the passion of Irish peasants for the possession of land,[10] are from his own experience familiar and appear natural to a Frenchman. What to the mind of a foreign observer needs explanation is the social condition of England rather than of Ireland. He at any rate can see at a glance that the relation between the two countries has planted and maintained in Ireland an aristocracy, aristocratic institutions, and above all an aristocratic land law, foreign to the traditions and opposed to the interests of the mass of the people. Let an observer for a moment take up the point of view natural to a continental critic, and admit, in the language of De Beaumont, that the primary radical and permanent cause of Irish misery has been the maintenance in Ireland by England of a "bad aristocracy,"^[10] or, to put the same thing more generally, and it may be more fairly that the vice of the connection between the two countries has consisted in its being a relation of peoples standing at different stages of civilization and tending towards different courses of development. Here you find the original source of a thousand ills, and hence especially have originated four potent causes of the condition of things which now tries the patience and overtaxes the resources of English statesmanship.

First,—The English constitution has both from its form and from its spirit caused in past times, and even at the present day causes as much evil to Ireland as it has conferred, or does confer, benefit upon England.^[11]

The assailants of popular government point to the misrule of Ireland as a proof that the Parliamentary system is radically vicious. They do not prove their point, because the calamities of Ireland afford no evidence whatever that England, which has been more prosperous for a greater length of time than any other nation in Europe, has essentially suffered from the power of the English Parliament. What these critics do prove is that a representative assembly is a bad form of government for any nation or class whom it does not represent, and they establish to demonstration that a parliamentary despotism may well be a worse government for a dependency than a royal despotism. This is so for two reasons. The rule of Parliament has meant in England government by parties; and whatever be the merits of party spirit in a free, self-governed country, its calamitous defects, when applied to the administration of a dependency, are patent. Down to 1782 Ireland was avowedly subject to the despotism or sovereignty of the British Parliament, and at every turn the interest of the country was sacrificed to the exigencies of English politics Between 1782 to 1800 the nominal independence of Ireland placed a check on the power of the English Parliament, yet in substance the English executive, controlled as it was by the Parliament at Westminster, remained the ultimate sovereign of the kingdom of Ireland. If Pitt could have carried the King and the English Parliament with him, he would, in spite of any opposition at Dublin by the adherents of Ascendancy, have emancipated the Catholics, just as, when backed by the King and the English Parliament, he did, in the face of strenuous opposition in Ireland, pass the Act of Union. And even at the present day the most plausible charge which can be brought against the working of the Act of Union is that Ireland under it fails to obtain the full benefit of the British constitution, and that in spite of her hundred representatives she is not for practical purposes represented at Westminster in the same sense as is Middlesex or Midlothian. A Parliament again is less capable than a King of compensating for the evils of tyranny by the benefit of good administration, and here we come across a matter hardly to be understood by any one who has not with some care compared the action and the spirit of English and of continental administrative systems. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that even now we have in the United Kingdom nothing like what foreigners mean by an administration. We know nothing of that official hierarchy which on the Continent represents the authority of the State.^[12] Englishmen are accustomed to consider that institutions under which the business of the country is carried on by unconnected local bodies, such as the magistrates in quarter session, or the corporations of boroughs, controlled in the last resort only by the law courts, ought to be the subject of unqualified admiration. Foreign observers might, even as regards England itself, have something to set off against the merits of a system which is, if the apparent contradiction of terms may be excused, no system at all, and might point out that in continental countries the administration may often be the intelligent guide and protector of the weak and needy. The system complimented by the name of self-government, even if as beneficial for England as Englishmen are inclined without absolute proof to believe, is absolutely unsuitable for a country harassed by religious and social feuds, where the owners of land are not and cannot be the trusted guides of the people. An impartial official is a better ruler than a hostile or distrusted landowner, and any one who bears in mind the benefits conferred by the humanity and justice of Turgot on a single province of France may, without being any friend of despotism, hold that in the last century Ireland suffered greatly from a scheme of government which did not allow of administration such as Turgot's. In some respects the virtues of Englishmen have been singularly unfavourable to their success in conciliating the goodwill of Ireland. It will always remain a paradox that the nation which has built up the British Empire (with vast help, it may be added, from Ireland) has combined extraordinary talent for legislation with a singular incapacity for consolidating subject races or nations into one State. The explanation of the paradox lies in the aristocratic sentiment which has moulded the institutions of England. An aristocracy respects the rights of individuals, but an aristocracy identifies right with privilege, and is based on the belief in the inequality of men and of classes. Privilege is the keynote of English constitutionalism; the respect for privileges has preserved English freedom, but it has made England slower than any other civilized country to adopt ideas of equality. This love of privilege has vitiated the English administration in Ireland in more ways than one. The whole administration of the country rested avowedly down to 1829, and unavowedly to a later period, on the inequality of Catholics and Protestants, and Protestant supremacy itself meant (except during the short rule of Cromwell)^[13] not Protestant equality, but Anglican privilege. The spirit which divided Ireland into hostile factions prevented Englishmen who dwelt in England from treating as equals Englishmen who settled in Ulster. When the Volunteers claimed Irish independence, and the American colonists renounced connection with the mother country, similar effects were produced by the same cause. In each case English colonists revolted against England's sovereignty, because it meant the privilege of Englishmen who dwelt in Great Britain to curtail the rights and hamper the trade of Englishmen who dwelt abroad. For the iniquitous restrictions on the trade of Ireland, which are morally by far the most blameworthy of the wrongs inflicted by England upon Irishmen, were not precisely the acts of deliberate selfishness which they seem to modern critics. The grievance under which Ireland suffered was in character the same as the grievances in respect of trade inflicted on the American colonies. Yet but for the insane attempt to subject the colonists to direct taxation by the English Parliament the War of Independence might have been long deferred. Even the sufferers from a vicious commercial policy did not see its essential iniquity, and it is hardly a subject for wonder that a generation of Englishmen who supposed themselves to gain greatly by controlling or extinguishing the colonial or the Irish trade should not have recognised the full iniquity of a policy which in itself hardly seemed intolerable to many of those colonists who endured the wrong. Still less can we be surprised that Englishmen a century ago, amid a world where the idea of human equality was not as yet recognised, should have failed to perceive what many Englishmen it may be suspected will hardly admit at present, that to most men equality, i.e. the treatment of all subjects by their government on similar principles, seems a form of justice, and that the multitude will tolerate restrictions on their freedom far more easily than offences against their sense of equality. No one will care to deny that French Governments have at all periods been far more despotic than the Government of England; but few persons who have given the matter a thought can deny that France has shown a power quite unknown to Englishmen of attaching to herself by affection countries which she has annexed by force. Strasburg was stolen from Germany, yet Strasburg soon became French in heart. Belgium and the Rhine Provinces would gladly have remained parts of the Napoleonic Empire. Savoy annexed in 1859 showed no disposition to separate from France in 1870. The explanation of these facts is not far to seek. When France annexes a country she may govern it well or ill, but she governs it on the same principles as the rest of the French dominions. Englishmen found it for centuries impossible to govern Englishmen in Ireland or Englishmen in Massachusetts exactly as if they were Englishmen in Middlesex. It is not uninstructive that every French Assembly since the Revolution has included Deputies from the colonies; no colony has ever sent a member to the Parliament at Westminster.

The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for the fundamental disorganisation of society. The issue of a revolutionary struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionised state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power which by securing the safety, at last gains the attachment, of the people. The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at last produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have established some modus vivendi favourable to individual freedom, or whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less uncertain is, that Ireland if left absolutely to herself would have arrived like every other country at some lasting settlement of her difficulties. To the establishment of such a reign of order the British connection has been fatal; revolution has been suppressed at the price of permanent disorganisation, the descendants of colonists and natives have not coalesced into a nation, and a country which has never known independence has never borne the burdens or learnt the lessons of national responsibility. Disastrous as this result has been, it is impossible to say who it was that at any given point was to blame for it. Had France been attached to and dependent upon a powerful neighbour, this sovereign state must have checked the cruelties and the injustice of the Reign of Terror. But the forcible extinction of Jacobinism by an external power would, we can hardly doubt, have arrested the progress and been fatal to the prosperity of France. Ireland, in short, which under English rule has lacked good administration, has by the same rule been inevitably prevented from attempting the cure of deeply rooted evils by the violent though occasionally successful remedy of revolution.

The monstrosity of imposing Anglican Protestantism upon a people who had not reached the stage of development which is essential for even the understanding of Protestant dogma, and who if left to themselves would have adhered to Catholicism, conceals from us the strength of the pleas to be urged in excuse of a policy which to critics of the nineteenth century seems at least as absurd as it was iniquitous. Till towards the close of the seventeenth century all the best and wisest men of the most civilised nations in Europe, believed that the religion of a country was the concern of the Government, and that a king who neglected to enforce the "truth"—that is, his own theological beliefs—failed in his obligations to his subjects and incurred the displeasure of Heaven. From this point of view the policy of the Tudors must appear to us as natural as to themselves it appeared wise and praiseworthy. That the people of England should have been ripe for Protestantism at a time when the people of Ireland had hardly risen to the level of Roman Catholicism was to each country a grievous misfortune. That English Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should in common with the whole Christian world have believed that the toleration of religious error was a sin, and should have acted on the belief, was a cause of immense calamities. But inevitable ignorance is not the same thing as wickedness.^[14]

Fourthly,—To the same source as religious persecution are due the whole crop of difficulties connected with the tenure of land.

When James I. determined that the old Brehon law was to be abolished, and an appeal to the law of England to be brought within the reach of every Irishman, he and his ministers meant to introduce a beneficial reform. They hoped that out of the old tribal customs a regular system of landowning according to the English tenure would be developed. In forcing on this change, English statesmen felt convinced not only that they were reformers, but that they were promoters of justice. To a generation trained under the teaching of lawyers like Coke, and accustomed to regard the tenure which prevailed in England as good in itself, it must have appeared that to pass from the irregular dominion of uncertain customs to the rule of clear, definite law, was little less than a transition from anarchy and injustice to a condition of order and equity. They acted in precisely the spirit of their descendants, who are absolutely assured that the extension of English maxims of government throughout India must be a blessing to the population of the country, and shape their Egyptian policy upon their unwavering faith in the benefits which European control must of necessity confer on Egyptian fellahs. If, however, it is probable that King James meant well to his Irish subjects, it is absolutely certain that his policy worked gross wrong. His scheme only provided for the more powerful members of the tribes, and took no account of the inferior members, each of whom in their degree had an undeniable if somewhat indefinite interest in the tribal land. Sir John Davis, who carried out the plan, seems to have thought that he had gone quite far enough in erecting the sub-chiefs into freeholders. It never occurred to him that the humblest member of the tribe should, if strict justice were done, have received his allotment out of the common territory; and the result of his settlement accordingly was that the tribal land was cut up into a number of large freehold estates which were given to the most important personages among the native Irish, and the bulk of the people were reduced to the condition of tenants at will.^[15] An intended reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve Ireland. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity.

Bad administration, religious persecution, above all a thoroughly vicious system of land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it at any rate a plausible assertion that all the land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice over,^[16] are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of the Irish people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts passed both before and since the Act of Union give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless, and as it would appear almost irrepressible, resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic question for a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. Judges, constables and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad effects, executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs, and jurymen or witnesses meet with the execration, and often with the fate, of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the judgment of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions, from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free:

"Quand vous en êtes arrivés à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie de rigueurs tous vos efforts pour rétablir l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés; vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaires, proclamerez des comtés entiers en état de suspicion légale, violerez le principe de la liberté individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions captiales."^[17]

No advocate of Home Rule can find a clearer statement of the condition of things with which on his view the Imperial Parliament is morally incompetent to deal than in these words of De Beaumont's; but before we hastily draw any inference from an undoubted fact, let us examine into the exact nature of the fact. The opposition of Irish opinion to the law of the land is undoubted, but the opposition is not now, and if we appeal (as under the present argument we are appealing) to the teaching of history never has been general opposition to law, or even general opposition to English law. The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere; the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences, atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian questions. For more than a century there has existed an hereditary conspiracy against the rights of the landowners. The White Boys of 1760, the Steel Boys of 1772, the Right Boys of 1785, the Rockites of a few years later, the Thrashers of 1806, the White Boys who re-appear in 1811, 1815, 1820, the Terralts of 1831, the White Feet of 1833, the Black Feet of 1837;^[18] later Ribbon men under different names, the Boycotters or the assassins who have added a terrible sanction to the commands of the Land League or of the National League, have each and all been, in most cases avowedly and in every case in fact, the vindicators or asserters of the just or unjust popular aversion to the rights of landlords given by the law and enforced by the courts of the land. It would be folly to assert that all popular opposition to the law in Ireland had been connected with agrarian questions. But if we look either to the experience of past generations, or to the transactions passing before our eyes, we can hardly be mistaken in holding that the main causes of disaffection have been either questions connected with religion, or rather with the position of Roman Catholics, or disputes connected with the possession of land.

The feeling of nationality has played a very subordinate part in fomenting or keeping alive Irish discontent. The Repeal agitation, in spite of O'Connell's legitimate influence, collapsed. No one can read Sir Gavan Duffy's most interesting account of the Young Ireland movement without perceiving that just because it was strictly a nationalist movement it took very little hold upon the people. The Home Rule movement never showed great strength till it became avowedly a Land League, of which the ultimate result should be, by whatever means, to make the tenants of Ireland owners of their land. To this add that in the judgment of foreign critics, and of thinkers like Mill, the popular protest against the maintenance in Ireland of a tenure combining the evils both of large estates and of minute subdivision of farms is founded upon justice. De Beaumont at any rate teaches that to transform Irish tenants into peasant proprietors would be the salvation of the country:—

"J'aurais mille autres raisons pour appuyer cette opinion; je m'arrête cependant. Un lecteur anglais trouvera mes arguments incomplets. Tout autre qu'un Anglais les jugera peut-être surabondants."^[19]

This opinion may be well-founded or ill-founded; but no wise statesman will reject it without the maturest consideration.

History, then, if fairly interrogated, gives this result: Historical causes have generated in Ireland a condition of opinion which in all matters regarding the land impedes that enforcement of law which is the primary duty of every civilized government.

From this fact Home Rulers draw the inference that the law is hated because it is foreign, and that England should surrender to Irishmen the effort to enforce legal rights, since this duty is one which can be performed by a native and cannot be performed by any English or foreign authority.

This conclusion is clearly not supported by the premises. If the source of popular discontent be agrarian, then the right course is to amend the land laws while improving the administrative system, and enforcing justice between man and man.

A Home Ruler may, however, if hard driven, say that my interpretation of history is erroneous, and that a hatred to English law, and to all things English, and not a special dislike to the land law, is the sentiment which prevails over every other feeling of the Irish people. It is difficult to me to see how this view can be seriously maintained. Let us grant however for a moment that Home Rulers are right, and that millions of Irishmen are inspired with the passion of nationality. Even on this supposition the Home Rule doctrine stands in a bad way. If the demand of the Irish people be like that of the Italian people—a demand for recognised nationality—then the demand must be satisfied, if at all, not by Home Rule, but by independence. The most eminent among English Home Rulers believes that the law is hated in Ireland because it comes before the Irish people in a foreign garb. Mr. Froude in substance agrees in this matter with Mr. Gladstone, since he holds that "the real grievance is our presence in Ireland at all." But the eminent statesman and the distinguished historian draw a different inference from the same premises. Mr. Gladstone infers that Ireland can be satisfied by semi-independence. Mr. Froude infers that if we are to meet Irish wishes we must let Ireland be free. Mr. Froude's logic will be to most persons far more intelligible than the logic of the Liberal leader. Here, at any rate, we come to the true issue suggested by the phenomena of Irish history. Is Irish discontent due in the main to agrarian or to political causes? On the answer to this enquiry depends, as far as the argument we have in hand goes, the line of right policy in Ireland. But neither answer favours the contention of Home Rulers.^[20]

The argument from Irish history gives rise to, or, more properly speaking, contains in itself two further distinct lines of reasoning in favour of Home Rule, each of which supplements the other. The first of these aims at showing that to leave Ireland to herself is the only method by which to restore order throughout the country. This I have termed "the argument from the good effects of self-government," the other deduces from the necessity for Coercion Acts the conclusion that England cannot maintain order in Ireland: this I have termed "the argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts." These two lines of reasoning are simply an amplification of points suggested by the Home Rule argument from Irish history, and are of necessity therefore open to the same criticisms to which that argument is obnoxious. They have, however, each a certain value of their own, and have made an impression on the English public: they can each also be met by more or less special replies. The argument, therefore, from the good effects of self-government and the argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts each deserve separate statement and consideration.