as, after a short period of pause, followed in Ireland by
results which transcended the expectations of Parliament. There was a
rush on one side to sell, and on the other to buy. From 1904 to 1909
the applications kept streaming in, and the Land Commissioners were
kept at high pressure arranging the sale of estates. The pace, indeed,
was so rapid that it laid too heavy a strain on the too sanguine
finance of Mr. Wyndham's Act. The double burden of the war and Irish
land proved too great. The British Treasury found that they could not
pour out money at the rate demanded by the working of the Act. In 1909
it was found necessary to pass an amending Act, which has given rise to
fierce controversy in Ireland. That Act slightly modified the generous
terms of the Act of 1903, but not before under those terms a revolution
had already been effected. Practically half the land of Ireland had
passed before 1909 from the hands of the landlords into those of the
tenants.

Even on the new terms the process will go on. By voluntary means if
possible, but if not, by compulsion, the land of Ireland will pass back
within twenty years into the hands of the people.

* * * * *

Here, then--in land purchase and the new machinery of local
government--are the two leading facts in the great change which had
come over Ireland since 1893. What do they signify?

Why, this. In 1886 and 1893 the Unionists pointed out, not without some
heat and passion, two main difficulties in the path to Home Rule. One
was the incompetence of the Irish people for local government. "They
are by character incapable of self-rule," was the cry; and we all
remember how Mr. Gladstone humorously described this incapacity as a
"double dose of original sin."

That incapacity has been disproved. The Irish have been shown to be
fully as capable of self-government as the English, Scotch, and Welsh.

The other great difficulty was the unsolved land question. "We cannot
desert the English garrison--the Irish landlords," was the cry. "We
cannot trust the Irish people to treat them justly." But the Irish land
question is now settled. The Irish landlords are either gone or going.
The Irish tenants are becoming peasant-proprietors. All that is
required now is a national authority to stand as trustee and guardian
of the Irish peasantry in paying their debt to the British people--or,
perhaps, even if the material condition of Ireland under Home Rule