s like a waggon-load of dynamite. New groups will crystallise
about new principles. The future in Ireland belongs to no old fidelity:
it may belong to any new courage.

Assuredly we must not seem to suggest that, in an autonomous Ireland,
public life will be all nougat, velvet, and soft music. There will be
conflicts, and vehement conflicts, for that is the way of the twentieth
century, and they will no doubt centre, for the most part, about
taxation and education. But the political forces of the country will
have moved into totally new formations. One foresees plainly a vertical
section of parties into Agrarian and Urban, a cross section into Labour
and Capitalistic. Each of these economic groupings is indefinitely
criss-crossed by an indefinite number of antagonisms, spiritual and
material. In a situation so complicated it is idle to speculate as to
the conditions of the future. A box of bricks so large, and so
multi-coloured, may be arranged and re-arranged in an infinity of
architectures. The one thing quite certain is that all the arrangements
will be new. In taxation, as I have suggested, a highly conservative
policy will prevail. In education the secularist programme, if advanced
at all, will be overwhelmed by a junction of Catholic and Protestant.
For religion, to the _anima naturaliter Christiana_, of Ireland is not
an argument but an intuition. It seems to us as reasonable to prepare
children for their moral life by excluding religion as to prepare them
for their physical life by removing the most important lobe of their
brains.

The only other prognostication that appears to emerge is the probable
predominance in a Home Rule Ireland of the present Ulster Unionist
party. That group is likely, for many reasons, to retain its solidarity
after ours has been dissipated. Should that prove to be the case,
self-government will put the balance of power on almost all great
conflicts of opinion into the hands of Sir Edward Carson and his
successors. The "minority," adroitly handled, will exploit the majority
almost as effectively after Home Rule as before it. Captain Craig will
dictate terms to us not from the last ditch, but from a far more
agreeable and powerful position, the Treasury Bench. And we undertake
not to grumble, for these are the chances of freedom.

CHAPTER X

AN EPILOGUE ON "LOYALTY"

According to precedent, well-established if not wise, no discussion of
political Ireland must end without s