crown.

External signs of difference between English and Irish there are many;
nimble apprehension, fluent utterance, genial demeanour, the attraction
of the flashing Celtic face, distinguish an Irish from an English group,
but characteristics like this do not prove any original or consistent
power of thought. They rather perhaps indicate the absence of it. It is
not on qualities like these, cemented even by strong feelings of home
sentiment, that we can expect to see the foundation of a new Nationality
happily laid. With one exception there is not a single idea, which an
orator could present to an Irish crowd, that could not be urged with
equal chance of sympathy upon an English crowd. Personal liberty, the
principles of no taxation without representation, of trial by jury,
freedom of conscience, sympathy with the prosperity of the greatest
number, all these are English ideas and must be illustrated, where they
need illustration, by the events of history peculiar to England or
common to the British dominion. The one topic, which is specially
attractive to an Irish meeting, is abuse of England as the source of
Irish misery. Community of hatred the mixed Nationalist population has,
but whether such a passion is sufficiently creative to build up a new
national type the reader can judge for himself. With this exception,
laws, political teachings, commercial habits, are all of English origin.

Mr. Gladstone, in recommending to the House of Commons his scheme for
the establishment of an independent Parliament in Ireland, cited as
precedents the independent Legislatures of Sweden and Norway, and of
Austria and Hungary. He dwelt particularly upon the precedent of
Norway:--

'The Legislature of Norway has had serious controversies,
not with Sweden, but with the King of Sweden, and it has
fought out those controversies successfully upon the
strictest constitutional and Parliamentary grounds. And yet
with two countries so united, what has been the effect? Not
discord, not convulsion, not danger to peace, not hatred,
not aversion, but a constantly-growing sympathy; and every
man who knows their condition knows that I speak the truth
when I say, that in every year that passes the Norwegians
and the Swedes are more and more feeling themselves to be
the children of a common country, united by a tie which
never is to be broken.'

If Mr. Gladstone had been better acquain