ve them the land, they were
Imperialists whilst Napoleon was their security against a restoration
which to them meant confiscation of land purchased or seized during the
Revolution. The country population of France heard with indifference of
the fall of Louis Philippe, and possibly approved the proclamation of
the second Republic. But the communism of 1848 roused every landowner
against Paris. The peasant proprietors filled the benches of the
National Assembly with Conservatives or Reactionists who would save them
from plunder; fear became for once the cause of courage, and dread of
loss of property sent thousands of peasant proprietors to Paris, that
they might crush by force of arms the socialist insurrection of June.
Perjury, fraud, and cruelty disgraced the _coup d'etat_ of 1851. But, as
Liberals now see, the second Empire, hateful though it was to every man
who loved freedom or cared for integrity, did not owe the permanence of
its power to cunning or to violence. It was the dread of the Red Spectre
which drove the landowners of France into Imperialism; they may have
liked parliamentary liberty, it was a pleasant luxury, but they loved
their land and property, it was their life-blood, and by Socialism their
land and property was they believed menaced.

As to the Coercion Act, no sensible man, be he Radical or Tory, need
trouble himself. The Criminal Law and Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887, is
neither a disgrace to England nor an injury to Ireland. Its permanence,
which is the cause of its mildness, is its merit. Well would it have
been had the Act been extended to the whole United Kingdom. Local laws
are open to some of the same objections as temporary laws. The
enactment contains some improvements in our criminal procedure. There is
no more idle superstition than the belief that criminal procedure does
not, like other human arrangements, require change. If incendiarism
should become an element in the conduct of trade disputes, if dynamite
is to be recognised as a legitimate arm in political conflicts, the
criminal law of the United Kingdom will, we may be sure, need and
receive several alterations and improvements.

By far the strongest portion of the Gladstonian argument is the stress
that can be laid on the demoralisation of Parliament, produced partly,
though not wholly, by the Irish vote. This is a consideration which, as
far as it goes, tells in favour of Home Rule. It is, however, a
consideration of which the