een perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish
nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have
been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very
different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed.
What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had
done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have
unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union
has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again.
We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and
Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations
one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this
deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the
future."[51]

Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly
international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought
about. Here it is.

"1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the
popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense
desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way
possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United
Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for
and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend
to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion
of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere.

"2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the
Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last
proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to
be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal
acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient
security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious
difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there
is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.

"3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not
vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is
really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each
province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all
matters not essential to the politic