ere this indeed the ambition of Ireland, did this represent the true
feeling of Irishmen towards England, and the Empire of England, then
Home Rule, on such terms, would be a curse and a crime. Thierry, the
French historian, is a truer exponent of the passionate aspirations of
the Irish heart than anyone who to-day would seek to represent Ireland
as willing to sell her soul no less than the strong arms and brave
hearts of her sons in an unholy cause.

"... For notwithstanding the mixture of races, the intercommunion of
every kind brought about by the course of centuries, hatred of the
English Government still subsists as a native passion in the mass of
the Irish nation. Ever since the hour of invasion this race of men
has invariably desired that which their conquerors did not desire,
detested that which they liked, and liked that which they detested
... This indomitable persistency, this faculty of preserving through
centuries of misery the remembrance of lost liberty, and of never
despairing of a cause always defeated, always fatal to those who dared
to defend it, is perhaps the strangest and noblest example ever given
by any nation." (_Histoire De La Conquete De L'Angleterre Par Les
Normands_, Paris edition, 1846. London, 1891.)

The French writer here saw deeper and spoke truer than many who seek
to-day not to reveal the Irish heart, whose deep purpose they have
forgotten, but barter its life-blood for a concession that could be
won to-morrow by half that blood if shed at home, thus offered without
warrant "as a new weapon of offence to England's hands against the
freedom of the world elsewhere."

The Irishman, who in the belief that Home Rule has come or that
any measure of Home Rule the London Parliament will offer can be a
substitute for his country's freedom, joins the British army or navy
is a voluntary traitor to his country. Almost everything that Ireland
produces, or consumes, must all go out or come solely through England
and on payment of a transit and shipping tax to English trade.

The London press has lately waxed indignant over Servia denied by
Austria a port on the Adriatic, and we have been told a Servia
without a port is a Servia held in "economic slavery," and that her
independence is illusory unless she have free outlet to the sea. But
what of Ireland? With not one, but forty ports, the finest in all
Western Europe, they lie idle and empty. With over 1,000 miles of
seaboard, facing the West and