em--by strengthening the hands and using the services of the party
which, though nationalist, is also constitutional; or by driving that
party also, in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks
of Extremists and Irreconcilables?

4. Whatever may be the ill-feeling towards England, it is at least
undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities in Ireland, and a
political constitution, our opponents argue, can neither assuage
religious bigotry nor remove agrarian discontent.

It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant and Catholic
might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the last smouldering embers of
it all over Ireland. But we may remark that there is no perceptible bad
blood between Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner.
Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact that
Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and hostile ascendency,
which would now be brought to an end. Whatever feeling about what is
called Ulster exists in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact
that there are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are
anti-National. Third, the Catholics would no longer be one compact body
for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other evil purposes; the abatement
of the national struggle would allow the Catholics to fall into the two
natural divisions of Clerical and Liberal. What we may be quite sure of
is that the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are
taken as good reasons for continuing bad government.

It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily remove
agrarian discontent. But it is just as true that you will never remove
agrarian discontent without a constitution. Mr. Dicey, on consideration,
will easily see why. Here we come to an illustration, and a very
impressive illustration it is, of the impotence of England to do for
Ireland the good which Ireland might do for herself. Nobody just now is
likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad fringe of
wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland. Of this Lord Dufferin truly
said in 1880 that no legislation could touch it, that no alteration in
the land laws could effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue
until the world's end unless something be contrived totally to change
the conditions of existence in that desolate region. Parliament lavishly
pours water into the sieve in the shape of Relief Acts. Even in my own
short t