ef that was done when Sir Edward Carson was
chosen "by strange irony" to be the First Law Officer of the Crown.

Passing from his review, he issued grave warning against the idea of
conscription: it would be resisted in every village and its attempted
enforcement would be a scandal which would ring through the world. For
Ireland also he had admonition. He had told them before that Home Rule
was an impregnable position. But "no fortress is impregnable unless the
garrison is faithful and united."

This, alas! was already a counsel of perfection for a country so deeply
divided in opinion as Nationalist Ireland had come to be. The old
loyalties had gone--and he felt it. Ending on a personal note, he
referred to his age: he was over sixty; he had done thirty-five years of
work which would have broken down any man less robust in constitution
than it had been his luck to be born. He believed in youth, he said, and
would gladly give way to younger men.

"But one thing I will not do while I have breath in my body. I will not
give way to the abuse and calumny and the falsehoods of men whom I have
known for long years as the treacherous enemies of Ireland."

With all his reticence, he was a sensitive man; and for months now he
could scarcely take up a newspaper, except his party's official organ,
without finding himself accused of imbecility, of idle vanity, of
corrupt bargaining, of every unworthy motive. Worse than all, he
realized the inherent weakness of his position. He told his hearers at
Waterford that the Irish party would not vary its attitude upon the war,
but that we should now become a regular and active opposition. He was
far too experienced not to be aware that during a war--and such a
war--he neither could nor would offer to the Government in power
opposition in the sense in which Nationalist Ireland would understand
the word.

But he took steps at once for raising the Irish question by a direct
vote of censure. On October 18th he moved:

"That the system of Government at present maintained in Ireland is
inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies are fighting in
Europe, and has been mainly responsible for the recent unhappy events
and for the present state of feeling in that country."

His speech avoided all controversial reference to what had preceded the
war, but it reviewed with great power the long series of blunders,
beginning with the delay in putting the Home Rule Bill on the Statute
Book,