ent. Three other F's seem to me quite as
important to the future of Irish content and public order. These are,
Fair Dealing towards Landlords as well as Tenants; Finality of Agrarian
Legislation at Westminster; and last and most essential of all, Fixity
of Executive Tenure.

The words I have just quoted of Earl Grey, show it to be the conviction
of the oldest living leader of English Liberalism that this last is the
vital point, the key of the situation. Let me bracket with his words,
and leave to the consideration of my readers, the following pregnant
passage from a letter written to me by an Irish correspondent who is as
devoted to Irish independence as is Earl Grey to imperial unity:--

"If the present Nationalist movement succeeds, it will have the effect
of putting the worst elements of the Irish nation in power, and keeping
them there irremoveably. We are to have an Executive at the mercy of a
House of Representatives, and the result will be a government, or series
of governments, as weak and vicious as those of France, with this
difference, that here all purifying changes such as seem imminent in
France will be absolutely prevented by the irresistible power of
England. The true model for us would be a constitution like yours in the
United States, with an Executive responsible to the nation at large, and
irremoveable for a term of years. But this we shall never get from
England. Shall we make use of Home Rule to take it for ourselves?

"Many earnest and active Irish Unionists now say that if any bill
resembling Mr. Gladstone's passes, they will make separation, their
definite policy. If Home Rule comes without the landlords having been
bought out on reasonable terms, a class will be created in Ireland full
of bitter and most just hatred of England--a class which may very likely
one day play the part here which the persecuted Irish Presbyterians who
fled from the tyranny of the English Church in Ireland played in your
own Revolution beyond the Atlantic."

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APPENDIX.

NOTE F.

THE "MOONLIGHTERS" AND "HOME RULE."

(Vol. ii. p. 38.)

On Monday, the 1st of February 1886, the _Irish Times_ published the
following story from Tralee, near the scene of the "boycotting,"
temporal and spiritual, of the unfortunate daughters of Mr. Jeremiah
Curtin, murdered in his own house by "moonlighters":--

"TRALEE, _Sunday_.

"It was stated that the bishop had ordered Mass to be celebrated
fo