compared with the benefit to Ireland and to England which is to be
expected from an experiment in Constitution-making. To impartial
observers it may appear that the proposed policy of 1886 threatens to
reproduce in its essence the errors and the vices of the policy of 1800.
Be this as it may, the reflection that the ill results of the Act of
Union are mainly negative suggests the conclusion that the good results
(if any) of its repeal would probably be negative also, and clears the
way for the question with which we are immediately concerned, namely,
What are the actual and undoubted evils to England of maintaining a
legislative union with Ireland?

[Sidenote: The evils of maintaining the Union]

The nature and extent of these evils has been considered in criticising
the arguments in favour of Home Rule. A bare enumeration of them
therefore may here suffice.

[Sidenote: 1. Complication of English policy.]

_First._--The Union hampers and complicates English policy, and this
even independently of the existing agitation for Home Rule. The tenacity
of England during the war with America, her triumphant energy during the
revolutionary struggle, were due to a unity of feeling on the part, at
any rate, of her governing classes, which even under the most favourable
circumstances can hardly exist in a Parliament containing, as the
Parliament of the United Kingdom always must contain, a large body of
Irish Roman Catholics. If it be urged that the presence of Roman
Catholics is due to the Catholic Emancipation Act, and not to the Act of
Union, the remark is true but irrelevant. No maintainer or assailant of
the Union is insane enough to propose the repeal of the Emancipation
Act.

[Sidenote: 2. Obstruction]

_Secondly_.--The refusal of Home Rule involves a long, tedious, and
demoralising contest with opponents will use, and from their own point
of view have a right to use, all the arts of obstruction and of
Parliamentary intrigue. The battle of the Constitution must be fought
out in Parliament, and if it is to be won, Englishmen may be compelled
to forego for a time much useful legislation, to modify the rules of
party government, and, it is possible, even the forms of the
Constitution.

[Sidenote: 3. Strict government in Ireland.]

_Thirdly_.--If the Union is to be maintained with advantage to any part
of the United Kingdom, the people of the United Kingdom must make the
most strenuous, firm, and continuous effort, la