its, to extract any
terms they liked out of the English people or bring this country to its
knees. "England's difficulty" would once again become "Ireland's
opportunity." The experience of 1782 would be repeated. Resistance to
Ireland's demands for extended powers would bring about war between the
two countries. In the striking phrase of Mr. Balfour's arresting
article, "The battle of the two Parliaments would become the battle of
the two peoples." It is only necessary to refer briefly to the fact that
the active section of the Nationalist party has continually and
consistently opposed recruiting for the British Army. It is perfectly
certain that, under Home Rule, this policy would be accentuated rather
than reversed. We now draw recruits from Ireland out of all proportion
to its population. Under Home Rule, the difficulties of maintaining a
proper standard of men and efficiency must be immensely increased.

If there were no other arguments against Home Rule, the paramount
necessities of Imperial defence would demand the maintenance of the
Union. But the opposition to the proposed revolution in Ireland is based
not only on the considerations of Imperial safety, but also on those of
national honour. The historical bases of Irish nationalism have been
destroyed by the arguments summarised in this book by Mr. Fisher and Mr.
Amery. It was the existence of a separate Parliament in Dublin that made
Ireland, for so many centuries, alike a menace to English liberty and
the victim of English reprisals. Miss A.E. Murray has pointed out[1]
that experience seemed to show to British statesmen that Irish
prosperity was dangerous to English liberty. It was the absence of
direct authority over Ireland which made England so nervously anxious
to restrict Irish resources in every direction in which they might, even
indirectly, interfere with the growth of English power. Irish industries
were penalised and crippled, not from any innate perversity on the part
of English statesmen, or from any deliberate desire to ruin Ireland, but
as a natural consequence of exclusion from the Union under the economic
policy of the age. The very poverty of Ireland, as expressed in the
lowness of Irish wages, was a convenient and perfectly justifiable
argument for exclusion. Mr. Amery shows that the Protestant settlers of
Ulster were penalised even more severely than the intriguing Irish
chieftains against whom they were primarily directed.

It was the cons