Power: Here you see the representatives of the Irish nation. We offer to send you our ambassadors. We will pass an enactment making it treason-felony for an Irishman to enter the British army. We will offer you an army of our own. We await your auxiliary

troops.'

Language like this would sound very different, if coming, in open or secret diplomacy, from a constituted authority on College Green, than if it were held by mere casual groups of Fenians. Who that reads the League Press-who that has studied and pondered upon the speeches of the leaders of the 'Irish party' (a merest section of the Irish representation, though they be)-who_that knows anything of the leading minds of the party of National Independence and wouldbe dictators of terms to the London Government, can doubt that, under circumstances favourable to them, they would so act towards 'the enemy's country,' as they are pleased to call Great Britain? Why, in the very House of Commons, the English and Scotch members have already been told by a chief Leaguer that they are simply 'foreigners '!

It is no use blinking these facts. All Europe sees them. More than one statesman may already mentally take note of them.

Many observers abroad, though sympathising with the maintenance of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland, cannot help being slightly amused by the truly Irish humour which lurks under the Home Rule claim. 'You English, Welsh, and Scots,' these Home Rulers practically say, 'give us a separate Parliament, so that we may attend to our own concerns without any intervention on your parts. But "Hands off from Ireland!" is the right thing for you. For us, the right thing is, to have at the same time a Parliament of our own, with the ulterior object of secession, and yet to be powerfully represented by 103 members in your Parliament-so that we may disturb you whenever it pleases us. In this way we serve our ends in twofold manner, until the proper moment arises for confounding you altogether!'

A Homeric laughter would arise abroad if a party avowing such objects were granted the means for obtaining them under cover of an attempt at conciliation. To learn from the enemy, is the first requisite in strategy-political as well as military.

At present, the danger in Ireland is only a sectional one. The moment Home Rule was granted, the danger would spread and become nearly a universal one all over the island. The population in Ulster, which forms the iron clasp that binds Ireland to Great Britain, would feel as if it were forsaken. The moral effect would be disastrous. Even the happy union between England, Scotland, and Wales, effected after many struggles which fortunately are consigned now to practical oblivion in the mind of the people, might be unpleasantly disturbed by the granting of Home Rule to the Sister Isle.' A sentiment of reversion to bygone times might be artificially fostered thereby—a sentiment of renewed alienation, or at least dis

6

like. Human nature is much influenced by jealousy. If Ireland were permitted to recede from the Union, why should not similar claims arise in other quarters?

What effect would all this have upon the general movement of progress in matters political, industrial, as well as intellectual? Would the raising-up again of old barriers of estrangement be conducible to progress?

As to the results which Irish self-rule would have for the commercial intercourse between the British Isles, a glance at the protectionist articles of the Land League papers, or at Mr. William Dillon's 'Dismal Science' (1882) furnishes sufficient indication. Should the Irish people' says the latter author who has full national independence already in his mind's eye-ultimately decide to give up their dream of nationhood and to enter into a more intimate union with their ancient enemy, as being at worst a necessary evil, they must also make up their minds to accept for their country the position of a draw-farm for England.' (This is in the satirical vein.) But if Ireland ever succeeds in obtaining the right of making her own laws and regulating her own tariffs, the expediency of protecting her native industries will be one of the most important questions which her legislators will have to consider.'

This is in the serious vein. From the above it may be seen what is meant in a commercial sense by drawing parallels between the English colonies and the position which Ireland ought to occupy in the opinion of those ardent agitators. Home Rule means the political and commercial diminution of England.

It also means the destruction of civic and religious liberty on the other side of the Irish Sea. A witness that certainly could not be reasonably suspected of being hostile to Irish demands, namely, the Pall Mall Gazette,' which has of late persistently fought against Coercion and advocated the Irish claims to the very verge of the Home Rule principle, wrote, on June 5, in a leader on Democracy, European and English':

When Mr. Bright watched from a window in Parliament Street the memorable reception of Garibaldi by the London populace in 1864, he said, If the people would only make a few such demonstrations for themselves, we could do something for them.' It was not long before they made demonstration enough to secure an extension of political power, and after that an unfettered power of combination for trade purposes. But this is not the end of it. Lord Palmerston and others got Garibaldi hurried out of the country as fast as they could; but they could not hustle away with him at the same time the democratic sentiment which had been at the bottom of the enthusiasm that greeted him. . . . Oddly enough, the country where the spirit of Nationality gives us most trouble, is the only portion of the realm where Garibaldi is regarded, in the language of a Catholic newspaper, as a notorious malefactor whose accumulated crimes render his memory infamous.' But then the Irish popular party, though led by a Protestant, is not only Catholic BUT PAPAL.

It comes, then, to this, that Ireland, or at least a considerable section of it, forms-as the expression abroad frequently isEngland's Vendée. In a great portion of the Vendée the old Breton stock is still distinct in nationality, and even in speech, from the French nation. Bretons consider themselves, so to say, a people apart. Their physical aspect, their whole bent of mind, is far more different from that of the French in general, than that of the average Irishman is from the Englishman. But Frenchmen would be astounded, indeed, if they were told that, in the name of liberty, they must present the sworn bigoted enemies of liberty with the weapons for destroying freedom-in other words, that they must grant Home Rule to the Bretons and other Vendéeans.

6

An Irish paper which, strangely enough, assumes the Liberal name of Catholic Progress,' wrote, about the time of Lord Cavendish's and Mr. Bourke's assassination :

The woes of Ireland are all due to one single cause-the existence of Protestantism in Ireland. The remedy could only be found in the removal of that which caused the evil, which still continues. Why were the Irish not content? Because, being Irish and Catholic, they are governed by a public opinion which is English and Protestant. Unless Ireland is governed as a Catholic nation and full scope given to the development of the Catholic Church in Ireland by appropriating to the Catholic religion the funds given to religion, a recurrence of such events as are now taking place cannot be prevented. WOULD THAT EVERY PROTESTANT MEETING-HOUSE WERE SWEPT FROM THE LAND! Then would Ireland recover herself, and outrages would be unknown; for there would be no admixture of misbelievers with her champions.

First, then, drive out the misbelievers; the necessity for atrocities will thus fall to the ground. It is the purest doctrine in the spirit of the Night of St. Bartholomew. Are sentiments like these rebuked by the speakers and writers of the League and Home Rule party? Never! Neither the men who, in the Romanist interest, slandered the late French ambassador, M. Challemel Lacour, endeavouring, by incessant attacks, to prevent his being accredited in England; nor others who are well known, personally, for being by no means believers themselves, but yet support the ultra-Papist view, have ever publicly raised their voices against doctrines like those contained in the paper that calls itself the Catholic Progress.'

Worse than this, a great many Home Rule papers have hurled torrents of abuse over all the champions of civil and religious liberty abroad-not only on Garibaldi's head, but on that of Cavour, Ricasoli, and other most moderate men, even though the parole of these latter was A Free Church in a Free State.' Brigands, robbers, lansquenets, men fit for God's wrath-such, and even more brutal, expressions, were used to designate some of the first statesmen in Europe. Can we wonder at this when at the very meeting in Cork which did honour to Mr. Parnell, the Protestant,' a chief speaker No. 631 (No. CLI. N. s.)

L

compared, amidst great applause, the right of Ireland to kick out John Bull' to the right of the Pope to kick out Victor Emmanuel'?

In a moment of impatience, Mr. Parnell once uttered, in the lobby of the House of Commons, an angry exclamation against what he called the Papist rats,' meaning men of his own party. In public, he nevertheless supports their demands when the fountainhead of human knowledge is to be poisoned by the establishment of a University on strictly Vaticanist principles. His very tenure of power depends on this truckling to a hierarchy whose Chief attributes to himself the right of political as well as of spiritual worlddominion.

6

Mr. John Stuart Mill, the most advanced land-reformer, and a man averse, from his whole character, to coercive measures, has made a forecast as to the results of Irish secession or Home Rule in reference to religious freedom, which is frequently quoted with the fullest approval in the French, German, and Italian Press. In his excellent treatise on Ireland, he regarded either an absolute or a qualified separation of the two countries as a dishonour to one, and a serious misfortune to both;' fearing, as he did, that 'for generations the two nations would be either at war, or in a chronic state of armed and precarious peace, each constantly watching a probable enemy so near at hand that in an instant they might be at each other's throat.' As to the prospects of religious freedom in case of Irish autonomy being conceded, he said: What if there were a civil war between the Protestant and Catholic Irish, or between Ulster and the other provinces ?' And he expressed a fear lest, if any kind of political separation were granted, the stronger party in Ireland should begin its career of freedom' by 'driving the whole of the weaker party beyond the seas.' He wound up with this conclusion: For these reasons it is my conviction that the separation of Ireland from Great Britain would be most undesirable for both, and that the attempt to hold them together by any form of federal union would be unsatisfactory while it lasted, and would end either in re-conquest or in complete separation.'

6

Men abroad, who care for real religious liberty and the spread of intellectual enlightenment, are convinced that England has a bounden duty of not handing over a million and a half of Irish Protestants to the tender mercy of fanaticism and intolerance. What a sad prospect, indeed, if those principles obtained the upper hand, which are represented either by the Catholic Progress; or by the 'Freeman's Journal,' which, in spite of its Protestant proprietor, is among the most fiery advocates of Vaticanism; or by Mr. Parnell's friends who have been so graphically described by himself!

England has over and over again had fair warning as to the real aim of the leaders of the League. Only a few weeks ago one of them defiantly declared that-if they (the Irish people) get Home Rule, it will depend upon how they are afterwards treated by the English, whether they will not GO FURTHER AND SEEK SEPARATE INDEPENDENCE.'

The judges in this case are, of course, to be the leaders of the League and their adherents, who, on former occasions, have often enough boasted that their unwritten law' is the law of the land, and that 'they are the real Government of Ireland.'

No concession will satisfy them. All they desire is to wring one weapon after the other from England, but not to rest until the last tie of connection is destroyed. This has been Mr. Parnell's own statement, and he may yet return or be driven back to it, in spite of that Treaty of Kilmainham,' which on both sides is declared to be non-existent. Even since he has apparently entered upon the more moderate line, he has described the continuance of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland as 'the undiscoverable task of governing one nation by the other.' Is not this a loophole as large as a barndoor for a future policy of downright Secession?

Englishmen are fond of short expressions. By using them in politics, in preference to ampler and more logical ones, they not rarely harm themselves and do the enemy's work. They speak, as if they were Leaguers themselves, of the Irish party,' even of 'Ireland,' when yet they mean the merest section of an irreconcilable, impracticable ultra-Irishism. No wonder some champions of the League talk big about the 'five millions of Irishmen who, they allege, are united like one man against England. Now, not to mention that those five million of people are composed of men, women, and children, it should not be forgotten that one million and a half of Protestants must at once be deducted, whilst the remainder, composed of about seven hundred thousand adult men, are certainly not united as a single party in their ideas.

The strength of the Empire is fully sufficient to cope with such a minority, if steadiness of purpose is combined with a feeling of justice. Agrarian reforms are as much required on this, as on the other, side of the Irish Channel. But England and Scotland are ready to wait until the claims put forward in the Sister Isle are settled. An honest sentiment of conciliation is thus certainly not wanting. In the opinion of foreign writers, municipal reforms, the establishment of local self-administration in every town, village, and county, are necessary all over the country. The spirit shown in parts of Ireland under the tuition and terrorism of the League may however make many men doubtful as to whether the present moment is a fitting time for approaching this subject. Perhaps it would be more advisable to wait for the results of the new Land Act before Irish municipal and county government questions are approached. It is to be hoped that the Land Act will have its good effect in 'dividing the ranks' of the army which is led by men aiming at disintegration and secession. If these results clearly come forth, no time need be lost in dealing with the other desirable reforms.

A word may yet be said as to Government in accordance with Irish ideas.' If this means that a popular party which is not only Catholic but Papal,' should be allowed, through a separate Parlia