trength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself,
and in caring for the main national interests which it controls. He will
therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in
working such a Government, where a large section of the assembly seeks
not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve,
but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency. In
vain are Irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that
the interests of their own country require them to seek first her
welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from
the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly. Now that the
demand for Irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk
of English Liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the
systematic obstruction of past years. But they will be able, without
alienating their English friends, to render the conduct of Parliamentary
business so difficult that every English Ministry will be forced either
to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions.

The second difficulty is that of maintaining social order in Ireland.
What that difficulty is, and whence it arises, every one knows. It is
chronic, but every second or third winter, when there has been a wet
season, or the price of live stock declines, it becomes specially acute.
The tenants refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible. The
landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce rents by evictions;
evictions are resisted by outrages and boycotting. Popular sentiment
supports those who commit outrages, because it considers the tenantry to
be engaged in a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord.
Evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the teeth of
evidence. Thus the enforcement of the law strains all the resources of
authority, while a habit of lawlessness and discontent is transmitted
from generation to generation. Of the remedies proposed for this chronic
evil the most obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. We have
been trying this for more than one hundred years, since Whiteboyism
appeared, and trying it in vain. Since the Union, Coercion Acts, of more
or less severity, have been almost always in force in Ireland, passed
for two or three years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in
a form slightly varying, but always with the same result of driving the
disease