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observers, I do not share; but fairness requires the admission that it
is an opinion which a man may hold and may act upon, without incurring
the charge either of folly or of wickedness. To Nationalists, however,
these pages, as I have said, are not addressed. The persons for whom
they are intended are either Home Rulers, whether in Great Britain or in
Ireland, who _bona fide_ advocate the policy of Home Rule as a policy
good and wise in itself and for its own sake; or else Unionists, who
firmly believe that the whole State will suffer by any attempt to tear
up the Treaty of Union, but yet are unable to give for the faith that is
in them as strong grounds of reason as they would desire. To such
persons the importance of the principle (if true) which is contended for
throughout these pages must appear undeniable; it strikes at the root of
more than one half of the arguments by which Home Rulers from the time
of Mr. Butt to the days of Mr. Parnell have attempted, fairly enough,
and latterly with great success, to win over English opinion to their
cause, and it undermines the whole position occupied by Mr. Gladstone
and his English followers. They assume with undeniable truth that the
English people will not at the present moment, except under compulsion,
acquiesce in Irish independence; they further assume, and must from the
nature of the case assume, that Home Rule under one shape or another
presents a fair prospect at least of advantages not derivable from the
maintenance of the Union, and is at the very worst so much less
injurious to British interests than would be separation from Ireland, as
to offer to England a reasonable compromise between the just claims of
Englishmen to secure the prosperity of Great Britain and the greatness
of the British Empire, and the legitimate desire of Irishmen for
national independence. If the proposition which it is my object to
maintain turn out to be sound, all these assumptions fall to the ground,
together with a host of fallacies for which these assumptions form the
necessary basis. The principle, in short, which it is my object to
enforce--that Home Rule in Ireland is more dangerous to England than
Irish independence--lies at the bottom of all the rational opposition
made by Unionists to the creation of an Irish Parliament, and, together
with the arguments by which the principle is maintained, and the
conclusions to which it leads, forms the true and just and reasonable
case of E