en, in the case of
the legislator, responsibility to the voters, in the case of both,
a measure of enlightenment and honour. What the legislatures of the
worst States show is not merely the need for the existence of a
sound public opinion, for such a public opinion exists, but the
need for methods by which it can be brought into efficient action
upon representatives who, if they are left to themselves, and are
not individually persons with a sense of honour and a character to
lose, will be at least as bad in public life as they could be in
private. The greatness of the scale on which they act, and of the
material interests they control, will do little to inspire them.
New York and Pennsylvania are by far the largest and wealthiest
States in the Union. Their legislatures are confessedly the
worst.'[131]

The passage is the more impressive just because it is not written with a
view to Ireland. No one doubts that the people of the United States,
both in morality and in talent, equal if they do not excel the people of
any other country in the world. But the warmest eulogist of America
seeks throughout his work for the explanation of the fact which is
really past dispute, that the political morality of the United States
sinks below the general morality of the nation.[132] There is not the
least reason why under a vicious constitution the government at Dublin
should not reflect or exaggerate the vices, rather than represent the
noble qualities and the gifts, of the Irish people.

But the doctrine of trust takes another and more general form. You may
place confidence, it is alleged, in the goodness of human nature, and
should believe that the concession of Home Rule, just because it meets
the wishes of the Irish people, will take away every source of
discontent, and thereby remove any difficulty in making even an
imperfect constitution work well.

To this the answer may fairly be made, which I have made in the
preceding pages, that Home Rule does not meet the wish of the most
important part of the Irish people, but in truth arouses their
abhorrence, and that even Home Rulers care much less than Gladstonians
suppose about constitutional changes. To give a man a vote for a
Parliament at Dublin when he is demanding an acre or two of land, comes
very near giving him a stone when he asks for bread. But I assume for a
moment that the Irishmen, who express no great e