as I have done, when I think they
must come to the same conclusions as those which have forced
themselves on my own mind--namely, that the Home Rule desired by the
Parnellites is not only a delusive impossibility, but is also high
treason against the integrity of the Empire, and would be a base
surrender of our obligations to the Irish Loyalists; that, whatever
the landlords were, they are now more sinned against than sinning;
and that in the orderly operation of the Land Acts now in force, with
the stern repression of outrages[A] and punishment of crimes, for
which peaceable folk are so largely indebted to Mr. Balfour, lies the
true pacification of this distressed and troubled country.

E. LYNN LINTON.

ABOUT IRELAND.

I.

Nothing dies so hard as prejudice, unless it be sentiment. Indeed,
prejudice and sentiment are but different manifestations of the same
principle by which men pronounce on things according to individual
feeling, independent of facts and free from the restraint of positive
knowledge. And on nothing in modern times has so much sentiment been
lavished as on the Irish question; nowhere has so much passionately
generous, but at the same time so much absolutely ignorant,
partisanship been displayed as by English sympathisers with the Irish
peasant. This is scarcely to be wondered at. The picture of a gallant
nation ground under the heel of an iron despotism--of an industrious
and virtuous peasantry rackrented, despoiled, brutalised, and scarce
able to live by their labour that they may supply the vicious wants of
oppressive landlords--of unarmed men, together with women and little
children, ruthlessly bludgeoned by a brutal police, or shot by a
bloodthirsty soldiery for no greater offence than verbal protests
against illegal evictions--of a handful of ardent patriots ready to
undergo imprisonment and contumely in their struggle against one of
the strongest nations in the world for only so much political freedom
as is granted to-day by despots themselves--such a picture as this is
calculated to excite the sympathies of all generous souls. And it has
done so in England, where "Home Rule" and "Justice to Ireland" have
become the rallying cries of one section of the Liberal party, to the
disruption and political suicide of the whole body; and where the less
knowledge imported into the question the more fervid the advocacy and
the louder the demand.

It is worth while to state quite qu