y from the Irish
Party and joined the new organisation in disgust at the scope of the
Irish Council Bill. Sir Thomas Esmonde, who expressed his intention of
resigning, was, with what it must have come to regret as indecent haste,
elected a member of the Sinn Fein organisation, but within a few weeks
declared his willingness "to act with the Parliamentary Party, or any
other set of men who put the National question in the forefront," and
went on to express his opinion that the chances of a Sinn Fein candidate
in his constituency of North Wexford would be nil.

So far at any rate Sinn Feiners must admit that "_beacoup de bruit, pen
de fruit_" sums up their action in regard to Irish affairs. Any success
in propagandism which they may have achieved is to be traced to a
natural impatience, especially among _dilletante_ politicians, whose
experience is purely academic, at the slowness of the Parliamentary
machine in effecting reforms, but any force which it possesses is
discounted by the fact that men whose views are extreme in youth tend to
become the most moderate with advancing years--a fact of which a classic
example is to be found in the career of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of
the most distinguished of the Young Irelanders, who, after a brilliant
career in Australia, returned to European his old age and spent several
years in the attempt to persuade Conservatives to adopt the policy of
Home Rule--a propaganda on his part to which the episode of Lord
Carnarvon bears witness, and which was advocated by him in the
_National_ and _Contemporary Reviews_ in 1884 and 1885. It may well be
that the political groundlings who are at present the backbone of the
Sinn Fein movement will, when they gain political experience, alter
their views in as complete a manner. One can draw an English parallel to
this movement in Ireland. There are in the former, as in the latter,
country a certain limited number of people who hold extreme political
views, which in the case of the English are pure socialism. The English
extremists have been so far successful as to secure the return of one
Member of Parliament in full sympathy with their aspirations. The Irish
extremists have not so far dared to put to the test their chance of
obtaining even one Parliamentary ewe lamb. Without the advantage which
the English _intransigeants_ possess, of a few weeks' knowledge on the
part of one person of the inside working of Parliamentary government, in
exactly