lo-Irish relations kept the country in a condition of turmoil
which enabled the Unionist party to declare itself the party of law and
order. Adopting Lord Salisbury's famous prescription, 'twenty years of
resolute government,' they made it what its author would have been the
last man to consider it, a sufficient justification for a purely
negative and repressive policy. Such an attitude was open to somewhat
obvious objections. No one will dispute the proposition that the
government of Ireland, or of any other country, should be resolute, but
twenty years of resolute government, in the narrow sense in which it
came to be interpreted, needed for its success, what cannot be had under
party government, twenty years of consistency. It may be better to be
feared than to be loved, but Machiavelli would have been the first to
admit that his principle did not apply where the Government which sought
to establish fear had to reckon with an Opposition which was making
capital out of love. Moreover, the suggestion that the Irish Question is
not a matter of policy but of police, while by no means without
influential adherents, is altogether vicious. You cannot physically
intimidate Irishmen, and the last thing you want to do is morally to
intimidate a people whose greatest need at the moment is moral courage.

The second cause which determined the character of Irish Unionism was
the linking of the agrarian with the political question; the one being,
in effect, a practical, the other a sentimental issue. The same thing
happened in the Nationalist party; but on their side it was intentional
and led to an immense accession of strength, while on the Unionist side
it made for weakness. If the influence of Irish Unionists was to be even
maintained, it was of vital importance that the interest of a class
should not be allowed to dominate the policy of the party. But the
organisation which ought to have rallied every force that Ireland could
contribute to the cause of imperial unity came to be too closely
identified with the landlord class. That class is admittedly essential
to the construction of any real national life. But there is another
element equally essential, to which the political leaders of Irish
Unionism have not given the prominence which is its due. The Irish
Question has been so successfully narrowed down to two simple policies,
one positive but vague, the other negative but definite, that to suggest
that there are three distin