y
where the rival assemblies can appeal to nationalist sentiment. The sore
gets poisoned. What under happier conditions might be no more than a
passing storm of rhetoric, forgotten as soon as ended, will gather
strength with time. The appetite for self-assertion, inherent in every
assembly, and not likely to be absent from one composed of orators so
brilliantly gifted as the Irish, will take the menacing form of an
international quarrel. The appeal will no longer be to precedents and
statutes, but to patriotism and nationality, and the quarrel of two
Parliaments will become the quarrel of two peoples. What will it avail,
when that time comes, that in 1912 the Irish leaders declared themselves
content with a subordinate legislature? It is their earlier speeches of
a very different tenour that will be remembered; and it will be asked,
with a logic that may well seem irresistible, by what right Irish
"nationality" was ever abandoned by Irish representatives.

On these dangers I do not in this brief note propose to dwell, though it
seems to me insane either to ignore them or to belittle them. The point
on which I desire to insist is that they arise not from the
establishment of a subordinate Parliament alone, nor from the existence
of a "nationalist" sentiment alone, but from the action and reaction of
the sentiment upon the institution, and of the institution upon the
sentiment.

Let me conclude by asking whether Irish history does not support to the
full these gloomy prognostications. The Parliament that came to an end
at the Union was a Parliament utterly antagonistic to anything that now
goes by the name of Irish Nationalism. In every sphere, except the
economic sphere, it represented the forces, political and religious,
which the Irish Nationalist now regards as English and alien, and
against which, for many years, he has been waging bitter warfare. Yet
this Parliament, representing only a small minority of the inhabitants
of Ireland, found its position of subordination intolerable. It chose a
moment of national disaster to assert complete equality, and so used its
powers that at last the Union became inevitable. It is surely no remedy
for the ancient wrongs of Ireland--real, alas! though they were--that we
should compel her again to tread the weary round of constitutional
experiment, and that, in the name of Irish Nationalism, we should again
make her the victim of an outworn English scheme, which has been tried,
wh