e the danger
that would arise if the vast moral legislative, and even
administrative powers which every separate legislature must
necessarily possess, were exercised in any near and vital
part of the British Empire, by men who were disloyal to its
interests. To place the government of a country by a voluntary
and deliberate act in the hands of dishonest and disloyal men,
is perhaps the greatest crime that a public man can commit:
a crime which, in proportion to the strength and soundness of
national morality, must consign those who are guilty of it to
undying infamy."

If English people are so blind that they cannot perceive this,
foreigners, whose vision is clearer, have warned them. Bismarck said
that England, by granting Home Rule to Ireland, would dig its own
grave; and Admiral Mahan has recently written:--

"It is impossible for a military man or a statesman to look
at the map and not perceive that the ambition of the Irish
separatists, if realised, would be even more threatening to
the national life of Great Britain than the secession of the
South was to the American Union.

"The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament against
the assertion of which the American Colonists revolted
and which to-day would be found intolerable in Canada and
Australia cannot be yielded in the case of an island, where
independent action might very well be attended with fatal
consequences to its partner. The instrument for such action,
in the shape of an independent Parliament, could not be safely
trusted even to avowed friends."

So then, having reviewed the evidence as calmly and dispassionately as
I can, I answer the two questions which I propounded at the outset of
the enquiry--That the real objects of the Nationalists are the
total separation of Ireland from England and the establishment of an
Independent Republic; and that the men of Ulster in resisting them
to the uttermost are not merely justified on the ground of
self-preservation, but are in reality fighting for the cause of the
Empire.

NOTE.

The following Report of the Annual Pilgrimage in memory of Wolfe Tone,
which took place on the 22nd of June last, and the article in the
_Leinster Leader_ (a prominent Nationalist journal) will show how
closely the Nationalists of to-day follow in the footsteps of Wolfe
Tone.

THE MEMORY OF WOLFE TONE.

ANNUAL PILGRI