find echo only in
the German tongue. Posen is the error of a master-mind too much given to
hammer at obstacles. He has, however, the hammer. Can it be imagined
in English hands? The braver exemplar for grappling with monstrous
political tasks is Cavour, and he would not have hinted at the iron
method or the bayonet for a pacification. Cavour challenged debate; he
had faith in the active intellect, and that is the thing to be prayed
for by statesmen who would register permanent successes. The Irish,
it is true, do not conduct an argument coolly. Mr. Parnell and his
eighty-five have not met the Conservative leader and his following in
the Commons with the gravity of platonic disputants. But they have
a logical position, equivalent to the best of arguments. They are
representatives, they would say, of a country admittedly ill-governed by
us; and they have accepted the Bill of the defeated Minister as final.
Its provisions are their terms of peace. They offer in return for that
boon to take the burden we have groaned under off our hands. If we
answer that we think them insincere, we accuse these thrice accredited
representatives of the Irish people of being hypocrites and crafty
conspirators; and numbers in England, affected by the weapons they have
used to get to their present strength, do think it; forgetful that
our obtuseness to their constant appeals forced them into the extremer
shifts of agitation. Yet it will hardly be denied that these men love
Ireland; and they have not shown themselves by their acts to be insane.
To suppose them conspiring for separation indicates a suspicion that
they have neither hearts nor heads. For Ireland, separation is immediate
ruin. It would prove a very short sail for these conspirators before the
ship went down. The vital necessity of the Union for both, countries,
obviously for the weaker of the two, is known to them; and unless we
resume our exasperation of the wild fellow the Celt can be made by such
a process, we have not rational grounds for treating him, or treating
with him, as a Bedlamite. He has besides his passions shrewd sense; and
his passions may be rightly directed by benevolent attraction. This is
language derided by the victorious enemy; it speaks nevertheless what
the world, and even troubled America, thinks of the Irish Celt. More of
it now on our side of the Channel would be serviceable. The notion that
he hates the English comes of his fevered chafing against the har