untry
to resist foreign attack, no careful observer of the events of the last
seven years can fail to see that all this evil has already got its grip
upon us. Mr. Dicey himself admits it. "Great Britain," he says, "if left
to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given
by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The obstruction and
the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency
with which they are pursued, arise in part at least from the connection
with Ireland." So then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency,
not elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they stand;
feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty. The supporter
of things as they are is decidedly as much concerned in making out a
case as the advocate of change.

The strength of the argument from Nationality is great, and full of
significance; but Nationality is not the whole essence of either the
argument from History or the argument from Self-government. Their force
lies in considerations of political expediency as tested by practical
experience.

The point of the argument from the lessons of History is that for some
reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we
are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the
point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have
been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the
transactions been more influentially represented on the Board. That is
quite apart from the sentiment of pure nationality. The failure has come
about, not simply because the laws were not made by Irishmen as such,
but because they were not made by the men who knew most about Ireland.
The vice of the connection between the two countries has been the
stupidity of governing a country without regard to the interests or
customs, the peculiar objects and peculiar experiences, of the great
majority of the people who live in it. It is not enough to say that the
failures of England in Ireland have to a great extent flowed from causes
too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of
rulers or of subjects. We readily admit that, but it is not the point.
It is not enough to insist that James I., in his plantations and
transplantations, probably meant well to his Irish subjects. Probably he
did. That is not the question. If it is "absolutely certain that his
policy w