Some degree of unification, as well as a central Parliament, has at last been obtained by two wars, the first of which brought Germany to the verge of disruption and cost it its Federal Austrian provinces. But so far from this being a satisfactory solution, it at most serves as a stop-gap in a time of transition. The many wheels within wheels' often clash visibly and audibly, whilst a domineering individuality frequently enough sets at defiance the very resolutions of the Reichstag. Were the contest only between him and that national Parliament, matters would soon arrive at a crisis in which his irresponsible way of government might come to grief. But the moral influence of the Reichstag is diminished by the existence of the many minor Legislatures. Ay, the great Imperial Chancellor himself, when resolutely faced by the Representatives of the Nation, suddenly takes refuge, with much craftiness-as he did in the memorablesitting of June 12-behind the home-ruling dynasties; declaring them to be the real prop of German Government!

Does not this convey a lesson to the friends of the Parliamentary principle in this country-a lesson, not in favour of, but against, Home Rule? How, if, at some future time, an ambitious statesman or monarch in England, during an epoch of relaxed energy in the public sentiment, were to aim at undermining the strength of Parliamentary Government by pitting Legislature against Legislature?

Let Irish Home Rulers, therefore, not try misleading English Liberals by pointing to Germany! Why, if the truly progressive party of that country had its way, it would not loosen, it would rather strengthen, the bonds of unity on the principle of representatative government by the Reichstag. German friends of freedom look upon the system of State Legislatures under a number of useless local governments as an inherited evil, to be got rid of under favourable circumstances--not as a thing of beauty and of joy for ever. They do not hold to the notion that a section of the Empire-say, for instance, some benighted Priest's corner' in Westphalia or Upper Bavaria—has a natural right of organising itself into a centre of resistance against the current of progress and enlightenment. The reactionary forces in Germany, the forces hostile to nationality and freedom, only go by such an idea.

If any moral is to be drawn from Germany, it is one that tells against the claim of Irish Ultramontanes and Leaguers.

Equally inapplicable is the vaunted reference of Home Rulers to Austria-Hungary.

For seven hundred years England has held Ireland. Seven hundred years is a good long while. Originally, the title of the English connection with Ireland has no doubt arisen from conquest but so has the title of the English to their settlement in Britain. All Europe is full of similar ancient settlements from which a prescriptive right has been formed. If the state of things which has thus grown up were to be undone everywhere, this whole part of the

world would be thrown into indescribable confusion and endless bloodshed. Spain, France, Switzerland, Hungary herself, would have to be disintegrated-for those countries, too, have been territorially and politically constituted, such as they are now, by forcible action.

What right of existence would, for instance, the ruling race in Hungary, the Magyars, have according to the views of the Irish party'?

Very different from the manner in which English rule was established in Ireland has been the establishment of the merely dynastic title of the House of Habsburg in the lands of the Crown of St. Stephen.' German arms, no doubt, rescued Hungary from Turkish dominion and from prolonged internal anarchy. Finally, the Parliament of Hungary acknowledged the 'Archdukes in Austria' as the country's new dynasty under a Constitution of her own. No connection whatever with the German Empire, of which the Austrian Archduchy formed a part, was thereby established. It was simply this, that the same Prince who held sway in some provinces of the German Empire, and who bore the title of Kaiser in that Empire, if he happened to be so elected, was also a King in Hungary-but on quite a separate title. Constitutionally, Hungary always remained outside the German connection. It was an independent country, with clearly defined frontiers, and with a representation composed of Lords and Commons, whom not the slightest political tie bound either to the German Empire, or to the Bund which after the Napoleonic wars replaced it. Hungary was therefore, of course, not represented in the old Reichstag of Germany, or in the Diet at Frankfort, or in the German Parliament of 1848–9.

The Archdukes, and later Kaisers, of Austria were Kings in Hungary in about the same way as the Kings of England, down to the accession of Queen Victoria, were Prince-Electors in Hanover. Hanover was not, on that account, an integral part of England—as little as England was an integral part of Hanover. On the face of it, the relations between Ireland and England have, from the beginning, been wholly different from those which made Austrian Archdukes Kings of Hungary on the mere dynastic principle of a so-called 'personal union,' or 'the golden link of the Crown.'

Austria on this side of the March and Leitha has still a separate Constitution from that of Hungary. If, in spite of the enormous differences of history, of nationality, of speech, and of political traditions, Austria and Hungary have now, nevertheless, a few things in common in army matters and in financial affairs; and if, for that purpose, delegates of the Parliaments of the two separate countries now and then meet to treat on these subjects from case to case:' this only proves that, for the sake of mutual protection against various patent dangers, a closer cohesion, in the sense of more unity, has been found desirable, after all. A tendency just the reverse of that which the Irish party' aims at, is consequently to be noted here. Whatever' common institutions' exist between Austria and Hungary,

point to a more recent centripetal movement, to a movement of combination, about the prudence or advisability of which there may often be a difference of opinion, but which at any rate is very remarkable when we remember the historical division between German Austrians and Magyars. In the case of the Irish party,' on the contrary, a centrifugal tendency, a desire to break up the legally existing Union -even to the extent of absolute secession, if possible-is the chief characteristic. All this is the less to be compared to the AustrianHungarian arrangement because between England and Ireland there is no difference of speech, as there is between the nations on this and the other side of the river March.

Let anyone look at a Hungarian post-card and an Austrian one: and he will see at once the gulf which separates the respective nationalities. The Hungarian post-card will show him an inscription in a tongue neither German, nor even Aryan; for the Magyar race has affinity with the Turk. Now, is there any such distinction, as regards speech, between the inhabitants of the United Kingdom on this and the other side of the St. George's Channel?

Do not the immense mass of the Irish speak English as well as (and from the point of view of eloquence, most of them will say, much better than) the inhabitants of Great Britain? Does not frequent intermarriage, as well as a common literature and continuous intercourse, naturally bind these various English-speaking populations together, from London to Liverpool and Limerick, from Manchester to Glasgow and Dublin?

The chief race in Hungary is the Magyar nation, round which various Slav and Rouman populations are grouped, whilst Germans are settled in the towns, and all along the Danube. The country which contains these inhabitants of multifarious speech, has its own strongly marked historical and political character. On the other side of the river which forms the ancient boundary, the German race prevails in Austria, with a few Slav and Italian admixtures. There is no such palpable distinction between the English and Irish. They use the same Anglo-Saxon language, barring a few outlying districts where Erse is yet spoken-as Cornish once was in Cornwall. In the English tongue the whole literature of Ireland is at present written. Welshmen have still a living literature in their Kymraeg; and it does not prevent them from being heartily loyal to the English connection. There is still a slight, poor remnant of Gaelic popular literature in the Highlands of Scotland; and it does. not prevent the people who use it from being true and firm upholders of the common country.

In Ireland no such vestige of separate nationality' in the form of a different language exists in current literature. Scarcely any Irish member of Parliament knows the old tongue- the language,' as the small section of people who yet cling to it fondly call the vanishing dialect. Yet Nationality, forsooth, is to be the cry! What a deceptive way of treating the disputes between a section of the inhabi

tants of English-speaking Ireland and English-speaking Great Britain!

But then, we are told, Ireland, though she speaks English, is Keltic at bottom, whilst England is Teutonic; and this constitutes the difference in nationality.

Another fallacy, to be sure-as any one knows who is conversant with the origins (for we cannot call it the origin) of the Irish race.' The basis of that race is certainly far from being Keltic. It is Iberian; not to mention darker race-elements of pre-historical character. Kelts were only superposed. Between Iberians and Kelts, however, Teutonic in-comers appear already on Irish soil more than two thousand years ago—a fact with which the student of Greek and Roman writers is well acquainted, and which penetrates even through the mist of ancient Irish history and its tales about the golden-haired, blue-eyed Fianna, or Fenians. After that, Germanic Northmen held sway for many centuries in Ireland, from Dublin to Waterford and Limerick. These Norwegians and Danes, or Eastmen, have left their trace all over the country in place-names, in the designations of bays, creeks, islands, as well as in personal names, and in the build, the physiognomy, the colour of the hair, and the eyes of large portions of the Irish population. The Bourkes, the Neils, the McIvors (son of Ivor, or Ifar), and a great many other names, point back to the long-continued Norwegian and Danish rule, which at last only fell in consequence of internecine wars between these two Germanic races.

Still, scarcely had Norse rule been overthrown, than English rule came in. The Scandinavian kingdom of Dublin was replaced by an English one. From Anlaf to Roderick, nearly three centuries and a half of Norse dominion had elapsed in Ireland-that is, from the middle of the ninth century until the end of the twelfth. Then the English connection was established, which is now about seven hundred years old. More than a thousand years of Teutonic connection, under one form or another, is thus to be marked down for Dublin.

Within the seven centuries of English rule, Ulster has in a large measure become further Germanised. Again, in spite of the many failures of English policy-which are traceable, not to the English people as such, but to an aristocratic system that has heavily weighed, and partly still weighs, upon the English people itself this one great result has been achieved: that there is now community of speech between two islands whose close geographical contiguity renders them interdependent upon each other.

Should all these historical results go for nothing as regards the maintenance of political union? If community of speech has at last been reached, is it not reasonable to hope that, with the combined application of justice and firmness, there will, in the end, also grow up, in Ireland, a feeling of reconciliation and of satisfaction in reference to the Union-in the same way as has happened in Scotland,

which for a time also passed through a turmoil of struggles against the English connection, and which yet is bound now in happy union to the people on this side of the Tweed?

From an unexpected quarter we have heard a voice, it is true, to this effect, that England, Wales, and Scotland are bound together by the hand of Nature, but that Britain and Ireland are parted asunder by the hand of Nature.'

How the very forefathers of the English people, who came over the stormy German Ocean, in their rudely constructed keels, for the 'Making of England,' would have laughed outright at the notion ! They had a tough struggle in changing Britain into what it is now. Before their task was completed, they fell, in an evil day, under the Norman yoke or else, the island character of Ireland would certainly as little have formed an impediment to them, or impressed them with the notion of a special political sacro-sanctity, as did the island character of Britain itself. Many centuries before the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians came over to Britain, Germanic populations had been settled in Ireland. This we know for a certainty from classic authors. It is a merely fortuitous circumstance that no junction was effected even then between the two British Isles..

The junction was however accomplished, centuries later. And now a nation which has colonies and dependencies all over the globe, is to be gravely impressed with the mysterious fact of the hand of Nature' having parted asunder two islands which are at a distance from each other of two hours' steam!

The very Finns of Irish myth, who bridged over the narrow strip of water between Ireland and what is now called Scotland by means of a Giant's Causeway, could not be frightened by the hand of Nature.' In this age of steam and electricity it is, we suppose, no use terrifying English people by a political bogey evolved from the water, between either Portpatrick and Belfast, or Holyhead and Dublin.

Even Sicily-though, historically speaking, that island has so often played a separate and separatist part-is now simply an integral portion of the Italian kingdom. No reasonable statesman thinks of granting it autonomy. Its inhabitants, too, have arisen from a medley of races: Siculians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Italians, Goths, Normans, Saracens, Spaniards, French, and what not. Its popular speech, albeit Italian, stands widely apart both from the other dialects of the mainland and from the written tongue-which is not the case with the English speech in Ireland. Autonomous tendencies have for a long time past been strong within Sicily. Even since the formation of the Italian kingdom, which was begun on Sicilian soil under the leadership of Garibaldi, centrifugal tendencies have now and then reappeared. That very fact steels Italian statesmen against any attempts at a return to Sicilian autonomy, Home Rule, or whatever it may be called.

No 631 (NO. CLI. N. s.)

K