r as to the excuses to be made for the Parliamentary tactics of the
Irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many
Englishmen.) There could be no doubt as to the hostility which they,
still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the United
States, had expressed toward England, for they had openly wished success
to Russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called Mahdi
of the Soudan was vociferously cheered at many a Nationalist meeting. At
the Election of 1885 they had done their utmost to defeat Liberal
candidates in every English and Scotch constituency where there existed
a body of Irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into
the hands of the Tories. Now, to many Englishmen, the proposal to create
an Irish Parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand
over to these Irish members the government of Ireland, with all the
opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in Ireland
and to worry England herself. It was all very well to urge that the
tactics which the Nationalists had pursued when their object was to
extort Home Rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when Home Rule
had been granted; or to point out that an Irish Parliament would contain
different men from those who had been sent to Westminster as Mr.
Parnell's nominees. Neither of these arguments could overcome the
suspicious antipathy which many Englishmen felt, nor dissolve the
association in their minds between the Nationalist leaders and the
forces of disorder. The Parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men;
what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself
or not, they will make a bad use of it. In such reasonings there was
more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and
prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds
where they have made a lodgment.

The internal condition of Ireland supplied more substantial grounds for
alarm. As everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood,
or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. Three-fourths of the
people are Roman Catholics, one-fourth Protestants, and this Protestant
fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little
community of sentiment. Besides the Scottish colony in Ulster, many
English families have settled here and there through the country. They
have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal Celtic population, and