pon
Imperial credit, has been established and will probably soon be
largely extended, which is so extravagantly and almost grotesquely
favorable to the tenant that it enables him by paying for the space of
forty-nine years, instead of his reduced judicial rent, an annual sum
which is considerably smaller, to purchase the freehold of his farm.
It is a simple and incontestable truth that neither in the United
States, nor in England, nor in any portion of the Continent of Europe,
is the agricultural tenant so favoured by law as in Ireland, or
anything of the nature of landlord oppression made so impossible. But
though agitation has diminished, it has not ceased, and the great body
of the poorer Catholics still follow the banner of Home Rule.

About a third of the population of Ireland, on the other hand, regard
Home Rule as the greatest catastrophe that could befall themselves,
their country, or the Empire; and it is worthy of notice that they
include almost all the descendants of Grattan's Parliament, and of the
volunteers and of those classes who in the eighteenth century
sustained the spirit of nationality in Ireland. Belfast and the
surrounding counties, which alone in Ireland have attained the full
height and vigour of English industrial civilisation; almost all the
Protestants, both Episcopalian and Nonconformist; almost all the
Catholic gentry; the decided preponderance of Catholics in the lay
professions, and a great and guiding section of the Catholic
middle-class are on the same side. Their conviction does not rest upon
any abstract doctrine about the evil of federal governments or of
local parliaments. It rests upon their firm persuasion that in the
existing conditions of Ireland no Parliament could be established
there which could be trusted to fulfil the most elementary conditions
of honest government--to maintain law; to protect property; to observe
or enforce contracts; to secure the rights and liberties of
individuals and minorities; to act loyally in times of difficulty and
danger in the interests of the Empire.

They know that the existing Home Rule movement has grown up by the
guidance and by the support of men who are implacable enemies to the
British Empire; that it has been for years the steady object of its
leaders to inspire the Irish masses with feelings of hatred to that
Empire, contempt for contracts, defiance of law and of those who
administer it; that, having signally failed in rousing the
a