ain fabulous creatures, has increased in
strength and the extensions of its demands by every concession made.
The best chance yet offered seems to be in the quiet working of Lord
Ashbourne's Act, by which the tenant becomes the owner and the
landlord is not despoiled. And certainly the crying need of the moment
is legislative finality and political rest. Existing machinery is
sufficient for all the agrarian ameliorations demanded. To do much
more would be to act like children who pluck up their seeds to see how
they are growing, leaving nothing sufficient time for development or
reproduction.

No one would deny such a measure of Home Rule to Ireland as should
give her the management of her own internal affairs, in the same
manner and degree as our County Councils are to manage ours. But this
is not the Home Rule demanded by the leaders of the party. That for
which they have taken off their coats means the loss of the country as
an integral part of the Empire; the oppression and practical
annihilation of the Protestant section; the opening of the Irish
ports to all the enemies of England; or the breaking out of civil war
in Ireland and its reconquest by England. The alternative scheme of
federation is for the moment unworkable. But to hand over the whole
conduct of Irish affairs to the Roman Catholic majority would be one
of those ineffaceable political crimes the greatness of which would be
equalled only by the magnitude of its mistake. The language of the
indigenous Home Rulers and their Transatlantic sympathisers--as well
as the things they have done and are still doing--ought to be warnings
sufficiently strong to prevent such an act of folly and wickedness on
our part. Even our men--men of light and leading like Mr. John
Morley--seem to lose their heads when they approach the Irish question
and to become as rabid in their accusations as the paid political
agitators themselves. I will give these two short extracts, the one
from Mr. Morley's speech at Glasgow, and the other from Lord
Powerscourt's temperate and rational commentary:--

"Mr. Morley says," quotes Lord Powerscourt, "that the Irish people are
more backward than the Scotch or English, which I venture to doubt, at
least as regards intelligence, and gives as the reason:--

"'It is because the landlords, who have been their masters, have
rack-rented them, have sunk them in poverty, have plundered their own
improvements, have confiscated the fruits of their o