such are in reality their apologies
for the new constitution, may be brought under two heads. They are
intended to show, first, that the concession of parliamentary
independence to Ireland is a necessity, and, secondly, that at worst it
involves no danger.[109]

A. _Necessity for Home Rule_. That the concession of Home Rule to
Ireland is a necessity, forms the implied, if not always the asserted,
foundation of the case in favour of Gladstonian policy.

Ireland, it is argued, has for generations been discontented and
disloyal. Every sort of remedy has been tried. The rule of the ordinary
law, coercion, Protestant supremacy, Catholic relief, the
disestablishment of the Anglican Church, the maintenance of the English
land tenure and English landlordism, the introduction of a new system of
land tenure unknown to any other country in the world and more
favourable to tenants than the land law of any other State in Europe,
the removal of every grievance which could be made patent to the
Imperial Parliament, every plan or experiment which could approve itself
to the judgment of English politicians has been tried, and no scheme,
however plausible, has ended in success. Concession has proved as
useless as severity, and the existence in the Statute Book of a
permanent Coercion Act is a standing proof of failure. He who asserts
that Irish disloyalty or discontent has not declined understates the
case. It has increased. Grattan was a statesman of a more exalted type
than O'Connell, and Grattan was more zealous for connection with England
than was the Roman Catholic tribune. And though in Grattan's time the
grievances of Ireland were in every man's judgment far more intolerable
than, even on the showing of Home Rulers, are the wrongs which Ireland
now endures, the Ireland of Grattan was loyal to England. O'Connell was
a nobler leader than Parnell, and it would be absurd to suppose that any
Parnellite or Anti-Parnellite exerted a tenth of O'Connell's influence.
Yet Parnell and Parnell's followers have achieved a feat which the hero
of Catholic emancipation could never accomplish; O'Connell never
obtained for Repeal more than half the votes of Ireland's parliamentary
representatives; Parnell and his followers have rallied the vast
majority of Irish members in support of Home Rule. Meanwhile year by
year the government of England is weakened, and (though the argument
comes awkwardly from the mouth of English constitutionalists who ar