o which
the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow
the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to
enforce an unpopular law." Now the object of that article, I may be
permitted to explain, was twofold. I desired, in the first place, to
combat the notion which, it seemed to me, if I might judge from a great
many of the speeches and articles on the Irish question, was widely
diffused even among thoughtful Englishmen that the manner in which the
Irish have expressed their discontent--that is, through outrage and
disorder--was indicative of incapacity for self-government, and even
imposed upon the Englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality (I
think it was the _Spectator_ who took this view), and as a disciplinary
measure, of refusing to such a people the privilege of managing their
own affairs. I tried to show by several noted examples occurring in this
country that prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even
cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the State of New York, the
Ku-Klux outrages in the South, and the persecution of Miss Prudence
Crandall in Connecticut, were not inconsistent with the possession of
marked political capacity. I suggested that it was hardly adult politics
to take such things into consideration in passing on the expediency of
conceding local self-government to a subject community. There was to me
something almost childish in the arguments drawn from Irish lawlessness
in the discussion of Home Rule, and in the moral importance attached by
some Englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the Irish of the
things they most desire. It is only in kindergartens, I said, that
rulers are able to do equal and exact justice, and see that the naughty
are brought to grief and the good made comfortable. Statesmen occupy
themselves with the more serious business of curing discontent. They
concern themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it
might not be manifested by less objectionable methods.

The Irish methods of manifesting it, I endeavoured to show, were not
exceptional, and did not prove either inability to make laws or
unwillingness to obey them. I illustrated this by examples drawn from
the United States. I might, had I had more time and space, have made
these examples still more numerous and striking. I might have given very
good reasons for believing that, were Ireland a state in the American
Union, there probab