hief contributions of Scotland to Northern
Ireland have been skilled agriculture and successful activity. It is
surely not without meaning that the only steamers of Irish build which
now traverse the Atlantic come from the dockyards, not of Galway nor of
Cork, the natural gateways of Ireland to the west, but of Belfast, the
natural gateway of Ireland to the north.

EPILOGUE.

Not once, but a hundred times, during the visits to Ireland recorded in
this book, I have been reminded of the state of feeling and opinion
which existed in the Border States, as they were called, of the American
Union, after the invasion of Virginia by a piratical band under John
Brown, and before the long-pending issues between the South, insisting
upon its constitutional rights, and the North, restive under its
constitutional obligations, were brought to a head by the election of
President Lincoln.

All analogies, I know, are deceptive, and I do not insist upon this
analogy. But it has a certain value here. For to-day in Ireland, as then
in America, we find a grave question of politics, in itself not
unmanageable, perhaps, by a race trained to self-government, seriously
complicated and aggravated, not only by considerations of moral right
and moral wrong, but by a profound perturbation of the material
interests of the community.

I well remember that after a careful study of the situation in America
at the time of which I speak, Mr. Nassau Senior, a most careful and
competent observer, frankly told me that he saw no possible way in which
the problem could be worked out peacefully. The event justified this
gloomy forecast.

It would be presumptuous in me to say as much of the actual situation in
Ireland; but it would be uncandid not to say that the optimists of
Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee had greater
apparent odds in their favour in 1861 than the optimists of Ireland seem
to me to have in 1888.

Ireland stands to-day between Great Britain and the millions of the
Irish race in America and Australia very much as the Border States of
the American Union stood in 1861 between the North and the South. There
was little either in the Tariff question or in the Slavery question to
shake the foundations of law and order in the Border States, could they
have been left to themselves; and the Border States enjoyed all the
advantages and immunities of "Home Rule" to an extent and under
guarantees never yet openly demand