ltural industry in the richer parts of the middle and south,
is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution.
Under our stupidily [Transcriber: sic] centralized system, Irishmen have
no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune,
great or small, public or private, to the Government. When they learn
the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal habit, and
not before.

I do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition between
Ireland and the Colonies make against Home Rule. What I do see is ample
material out of which would arise a strong and predominant party of
order. The bulk of the nation are sons and daughters of a Church which
has been hostile to revolution in every country but Ireland, and which
would be hostile to it there from the day that the cause of revolution
ceased to be the cause of self-government. If the peasantry were made to
realize that at last the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was
what it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could help them
to alter, they would be as conservative as the peasantry under a similar
condition in every other spot on the surface of the globe. There is no
reason to expect that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of
Ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active and useful
part in the affairs of their country than the same classes in England or
Scotland. It will be said that this is mere optimist prophesying. But
why is that to be flung aside under the odd name of sentimentalism,
while pessimist prophesying is to be taken for gospel?

The only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities to Irishmen
with a too grudging and restrictive hand. For true responsibility there
must be real power. It is easy to say that this power would be misused,
and that the conditions both of Irish society and of the proposed
Constitution must prevent it from being used for good. It is easy to say
that separation would be a better end. Life is too short to discuss
that. Separation is not the alternative either to Home Rule or to the
_status quo_. If the people of Ireland are not to be trusted with real
power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to
England, and more merciful to Ireland, to take away from her that
semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country,
while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the
s