equally characteristic. Ireland, on the other
hand, has manifested throughout her whole history an amazing faculty of
assimilating and nationalising everything that came to her from without.

The will to preserve her nationality motived her whole life, especially
in the modern period. The declared dream of Grattan was, as we have
seen, to transform a Protestant colony into an Irish nation. Wolfe Tone
confessed the same inspiration; Emmet's speech from the dock was that
and nothing else. It was the whole of Davis in thought, and of O'Connell
in action. Isaac Butt yielded to its fascination, and found for it the
watchword, Home Rule. It was formulated by Parnell in a speech the
capital passage of which forms the inscription on his monument. It
echoes and re-echoes through the resolutions of every meeting, and
constitutes for many orators their total stock of political ideas. It
provides the title of the Irish delegation to Parliament, and is
endorsed at General Election after General Election by a great and
unchanging majority. A people such as this is not to be exterminated. An
ideal such as this is not to be destroyed. Recognise the one, sever the
ligatures that check the free flow of blood through the veins of the
other, and enrich your federation of autonomous peoples with another
rich individuality. Imitate in Ireland your own wisdom in dealing with
the Colonies, and the same policy will bear the same harvest. For
justice given the Colonies gave you friendship, as for injustice
stubbornly upheld they had given you hatred. The analogy with Ireland is
complete so far as the cards have been played. The same human elements
are there, the same pride, the same anger, the same willingness to
forget anger. Why should the augury fail?

I can hear in imagination the sniff of the unimaginative reader; I can
figure to myself his instant dismissal of all these considerations as
"sentiment." Let the word stand, coloured though it is with associations
that degrade it. But is "sentiment" to be ignored in the fixing of
constitutions? Ruskin asks a pertinent question. What is it after all
but "sentiment," he inquires, that prevents a man from killing his
grandmother in time of hunger? Sentiment is the most respectable thing
in human psychology. No one believes in it more thoroughly than your
reactionary Tory. But he wears his heart on his sleeve with a
difference. He is so greedily patriotic that he would keep all the
patriotism in