dance with the opinions of Parliamentary
representatives of Scotland. Towards this reform in the practice which
need not change anything in the law of our constitution, Mr. Bright has
already pointed the way, and Mr. Bright's moral intuitions have more
than once given him a power denied to our other statesmen of prophetic
insight into the future of English policy. Meanwhile those who urge the
maintenance of the Union have a right to insist upon the possibilities
which it contains of reconciling the strength of the Empire with due
regard to the local interests and local sentiment of Ireland.

[Sidenote: And carry out just reforms.]

The Union, lastly, whilst it increases the power of the whole United
Kingdom, provides the means of carrying out, and of carrying out with
due regard to justice, any reform, innovation, or if you please
revolution, required for the prosperity of the Irish people. The duty,
it has been laid down, of an English Minister is to effect by his policy
all those changes in Ireland which a revolution would effect by force.
The maxim comes from a strange quarter, but the doctrine of Disraeli
sums up on this matter the teaching of Mill and De Beaumont, and it is
absolutely sound if you add to it the implied condition that an English
Minister, whilst aiming at the ends of a wise revolutionist, must pay a
respect to the demands of justice not always evinced by the
revolutionary spirit. But to put in force a policy of just revolution,
nothing is so necessary as the combination of resistless power with
infinite wealth. This is exactly what the government of the United
Kingdom can, and no Irish government could, supply. Mr. Gladstone and
his followers fully admit this, and the Land Purchase Bill was the sign
of their conviction that the policy of Home Rule itself needs for its
success and justification the power to draw upon the wealth of the
United Kingdom. Let the United Kingdom, it is said in effect, pay fifty
millions, that without any injustice to Irish landlords Irish tenants
may be turned into landowners, and may then enjoy the blessings of Home
Rule, freed from all temptation to use legislative power for purposes of
confiscation. The advice may in one sense be sound, but prudence
suggests that if the fifty millions are to be expended, it were best
first to settle the agrarian feud, and then to see whether the demand
for Home Rule would not die a natural death. French peasants were
Jacobins until the