Says James Bryce:

To many Englishmen, the proposal to create an Irish Parliament
seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over to these
men the government of Ireland, with all the opportunities thence
arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland and to worry
England herself. It was all very well to urge that the tactics which
the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort Home
Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule had been
granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would probably
contain different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as
Mr. Parnell's nominees. The internal condition of Ireland supplied
more substantial grounds for alarm than English misrule.

Three-fourths of the people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth
Protestants, and this Protestant fourth sub-divided into bodies not
fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. Besides
the Scottish colony in Ulster, many English families have settled
here and there through the country. They went further, and made the
much bolder assumption that as such a Parliament would be chosen by
electors, most of whom were Roman Catholics, it would be under the
control of the Catholic priesthood, and hostile to Protestants. Thus
they supposed that the grant of self-government to Ireland would
mean the abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords
and the Protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies. The
fact stood out that in Ireland two hostile factions had been
contending for the last sixty years, and that the gift of
self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the
other. True, that party was the majority, and, according to the
principles of democratic government, entitled therefore to prevail.
The minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in England,
because the minority contained the landlords. It had the sympathy of
a large part of the middle class, because it contained the
Protestants. There was another anticipation, another forecast of
evils to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion. It was
the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the
complete separation of the two islands. Parnell's campaign diluted
the greed of landlords, but Ireland, politically, is yet where she
has been for