trongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. The _status quo_
is drawing very near to its inevitable end. The two courses then open
will be Home Rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand
imitation of a Crown Colony on the other. We shall have either to listen
to the Irish representatives or to suppress them. Unless we have lost
all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months are
over, face these alternatives. Liberals are for the first; Tories at
present incline to the second. It requires very moderate instinct for
the forces at work in modern politics to foresee the path along which we
shall move, in the interests alike of relief to Great Britain and of a
sounder national life for Ireland. The only real question is not Whether
we are to grant Home Rule, but How.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 71: The following pages, with one or two slight alterations,
are extracted, by the kind permission of Mr. James Knowles, from two
articles which were published in the _Nineteenth Century_ at the
beginning of the present year, in reply to Professor Dicey's statement
of the English case against Home Rule.]

[Footnote 72: The late J.E. Cairnes, after describing the clearances
after the famine, goes on to say, "I own I cannot wonder that a thirst
for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even
undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and
symbol of their misfortunes--English rule in Ireland--should possess the
sufferers.... The disaffection now so widely diffused throughout Ireland
may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have
its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but
all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, I believe,
be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more
especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of
the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of
humanity--the wholesale clearances of the period following the
famine."--_Political Essays_, p. 198.]

LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

BY W.E. GLADSTONE.

Ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part of the British
territory, and has been with slight exceptions held by English arms, or
governed in the last resort from this side the water. Scotland was a
foreign country until 1603, and possessed absolute independence until
1707