d none can exact "loyalty" from its subjects.

But it seems that we are compromised on other grounds. The inscription
on the Parnell Memorial is trumpeted about the constituencies with equal
energy by opponents wise and otherwise:

"No man has a right to fix the boundary to the march of a nation.
No man has a right to say to his country, 'Thus far shalt thou go
and no farther.' We have never attempted to fix the _ne plus ultra_
to the progress of Ireland's nationhood, and we never shall."

What the precise matter of offence may be one finds it difficult to
discover. Mr Balfour very properly characterises as the utterance of a
statesman, this passage in which Parnell declines to usurp the throne
and sceptre of Providence. But Mr Smith complains that it deprives Home
Rule of the note of "finality." With the suggestion that Home Rule is
not at all events the end of the world we are, of course, in warm
agreement. But if Mr Smith has entered public affairs in pursuit of
static formulae for dynamic realities, if he wants things fixed and
frozen and final, he has come to the wrong world to gratify such
desires. And even if he were to go to the next, he would have to be very
careful in choosing his destination, for all the theologians tell us
that, in Heaven, personalities continue to grow and develop. In fact, if
anybody wants "finality," I am afraid that we can only recommend him to
go to Hell. As for the world, in which we live, it is a world of flux.
Physicists allow the earth a long road to travel before it tumbles into
dissolution, and seers and prophets of various kinds foretell an equally
long cycle of development for human nature, as we now know it. The fate
of all our present political combinations is doubtful, and no nation has
received absolute guarantees for its future. An All-Europe State with
its capital at London, a Federation of the World with its capital at
Dublin, a Chinese Empire with its capital at Paris--these are all
possibilities. Australia may be annexed by Japan, Canada by the United
States, or vice versa; South Africa may spread northwards until it
absorbs the Continent, or shrink southwards until it expires on the
point of the Cape. The Superman may, as I am informed, appear on the
stage of history at any moment, and make pie of everything. And not one
of these appalling possibilities disturbs Mr Smith in the least. But he
is going to vote against justice for Ireland unless we ca