overnment has good
points, but it has weak points, and the Irish make you feel them. You
pay too much attention to Irish clamour. I have been partly living in
England for twenty-two years, and I have seen your Gladstone 'finally'
contenting the Irish three or four times. Now, if he understood the
subject at all, he ought to know that for the reason I have stated
satisfaction is impossible. No use healing and dressing a wound which
is constantly re-opened. No use in dressing a sore which is
deliberately irritated. Rome will keep England going. With your Home
Rule Bills, your Irish Church Bills, your successive Land Bills, how
much have you done? How far have you succeeded in pacifying Ireland?
Are you any nearer success now than ever you were? On the other hand,
does not appetite grow with what it feeds on? The more you give, the
more they want. They are far more discontented than they were before
the passage of the three Land Bills, by each of which your Gladstone,
your amusing Gladstone, declared he would pacify and content the
Irish. And now your Gladstone is at it again. Funny fellow! He is like
the Auctioneer with his Last time, for the Last time, for the very
Last time, for the very _very_ Last time. And the grave English nation
allows itself to be made a sport. It is mocked, derided, by a number
of lawyers' clerks and nonentities from third-rate Irish towns. It is
bullied by a handful of professional politicians, paid by your
American enemies, and governed by the flabby-looking priests you see
skulking about the Irish railway stations and parks and pleasure
resorts. As I said before, England must be master, as the captain is
of his crew, as the tutor of his class, as the colonel of his
regiment; or she will go down, and down, and down, until she has no
place nor influence among the nations. And she will deserve none, for
she knew not how to rule.

"England is at present like a ship's captain, who in his futile
endeavours to please one of his crew first neglects the management of
the ship, and, then (if she grants Home Rule) allows the discontented
person to steer the course. And all to please one silly old man, who
should long ago have retired from public life. What man at eighty-four
would be reckoned competent to manage a complicated business
enterprise such as a bank, or an insurance business, or a big
manufacturing affair, or a newspaper office? Yet you allow Gladstone
to manage an Empire! Where, I ask is the